Post by James G on Mar 12, 2020 20:17:56 GMT
9 – Pinky promise
The President of Poland is Lech Wałęsa. A former shipyard electrician, Wałęsa is the man who founded the Solidarity trade union in the Eighties and is credited by many as the man who brought down communist rule in his homeland. In 1990, watching with unease as too many of his pro-democracy colleagues were willing to work with communists (apparently) transformed into democrats, Wałęsa successfully ran for the presidency. He has been in office for the past three years. His presidency isn’t one which has brought political stability to the country. Poland has seen many government changes where Wałęsa has rid himself of those he has been in dispute with. The president is a complicated man. He loves his country which he wants to serve but the role of the president really isn’t for him. Wałęsa believes he is suitable though, arguing with anyone who says that he is too plain-spoken, has not enough experience for such a job and his behaviour is questionable. There are secrets which Wałęsa is hiding. The public doesn’t know about the one million US dollars which he received from a Hollywood film company for an (unmade) biopic of his life that he has paid no tax upon nor that Wałęsa has been busy covering up his own role as an informer among colleagues to the state’s secret police back before he founded Solidarity. Wałęsa is a hero to Poland and lauded abroad too for all that he has done. At home, he has overseen the controversial shock therapy applied to make Poland a functioning market economy. Poland is doing well whereas it was feared by some that it might not: Wałęsa is claiming credit for it all.
On the international front, Wałęsa is opposed to the Union… or Russia as he will insist upon calling it. Under all the different leaders which it has had, from Gorbachev now to Lebed, the Polish president has spoken out against it. He has called it a repackaged Soviet Union hell bent on creating another empire. He can point to his own warnings before the Baltics were occupied that that was coming: Wałęsa has said several times that he is a prophet with regards to the Union. What Wałęsa is really frightened of, what he tells his people they must resist and what he explains to allies that he needs their help to stop, is another ‘kidnap’ of Poland. His country was kidnapped before by those in Moscow and Wałęsa warns that it will happen again should the Union get the chance to do so. Union actions had long been giving truth to his assertions. Last year’s dramatic events in Moscow with all of those changes in leadership following the kidnap which he says happened to the Baltics had affected Poland negatively. When the madman Makashov had his brutal takeover of Moscow which the rest of the Union put down with force, there were Polish deaths. A group of several Union political figures with the Ryzhkov regime which Makashov had sought to kill had fled towards the Polish Embassy in Moscow. They had been chased by soldiers under Makashov’s orders and shot after just entering the diplomatic compound’s grounds with two Poles caught in the gunfire. That outrageous violation of Polish sovereignty (the embassy is protected by international agreements) came with the killings of three more Poles – and the disappearance of another two as well with no answers still forthcoming to their fate – during the street fighting in Moscow. None of those other Poles were protected with diplomatic status like the two shot at the embassy but Wałęsa had responded by cutting relations in the follow-up when first Khasbulatov and then Lebed had been in power once Makashov was gone. He still wants apologies and answers: those in Moscow who say it wasn’t their fault are considered by Wałęsa to be at fault because they are, after all, Russians.
It had been back then, during March ’92, when Wałęsa had first made a request for military support from overseas. There were Union troops still on Polish soil but in the midst of their long-arranged withdrawal, that came to a halt. The delays were minor and didn’t last long at all before they started once more following legitimate orders from the Union’s military high command. However, Wałęsa had acted rashly – as was increasingly his fashion with regards to anything Union-related – and made a request to the Americans to bring their own forces into Poland less those Union troops following Makashov’s coup strike against Poland. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, had spoken with Wałęsa first and told him that this wasn’t a request that the United States wasn’t willing to act upon. When Bush himself was later spoken to by Wałęsa, the Polish president was informed that the United States had it ‘on good authority’ that those Union troops were answering only to their high command and weren’t about to march on Warsaw. Bush had restrained himself from telling his Polish counterpart to stop being so damn paranoid! There had been other requests made since. Wałęsa used various reasons and means to try and bring about an American military deployment into Poland. He didn’t want to see the Soviet-era Northern Group of Forces replaced by a US Army force of similar size, but instead a token force. Wałęsa envisioned the United States sending some troops and aircraft on a long-term temporary deployment into Poland. With them there, there would be no way that Union forces would cross the border to kidnap Poland once again: Moscow wouldn’t risk a world war by doing that. Each time, first Bush and then Kerrey in the early months of his presidency said no. Washington didn’t see a reason to do this. Problems were foreseen on the diplomatic front (with allies as well as the Union) and the practicalities of a deployment like that were there. In addition, especially under the Bush Administration, there was a fear that reckless actions by Wałęsa could bring about a war with the Union. They didn’t want to send troops to Poland less it start a world war: a position in opposition to the one of Wałęsa where he said that them being there would ensure there wasn’t one. The reckless behaviour from Wałęsa so feared started last year when denied a deployment of US troops to take up station in Poland. He had his own soldiers right on the borders with the Union while Polish aircraft flew close to the frontiers too. There was no need for any of this, the West would say, but Wałęsa argued that it was necessary to deter the Union from thinking Poland was weak and making an attack. The forward Polish military position was costly and dangerous. It guaranteed that something would eventually go wrong. There have been many near misses where clashes could have occurred but those had been averted through luck or common sense.
Not any longer.
September 18th 1993 sees a military clash occur on Poland’s border with the Union. It is an accident. Both Warsaw and Moscow will afterwards say that the other is to blame though with different takes upon how this has happened. Wałęsa tells the world that Poland has been deliberately attacked; Lebed will announce that the Poles started shooting at each other before turning on Union troops.
The incident takes place where the Polish frontier with the Belorussian Republic runs, within the Białowieża Forest (Polish side) / Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park (Belarus). The border is clearly marked yet Polish troops end up inside the territory of the Union when hunting for suspected cross-border military reconnaissance parties. There is gunfire when the Poles are detected and losses are taken on each side. The Poles retreat back to their own country, shooting down a helicopter in Union Border Guards service while doing so. The wreckage of that crash is inside Belarus while also over on Union territory are the bodies of the dead from each side too. In any hypothetical case in a court of law, any Polish defence would fall flat based upon that. What were those Poles doing there in the first place? Wałęsa has overseen the running of patrols by Polish soldiers along the border hunting for suspected Union Spetsnaz coming over into Poland preparing the way for one day that they will kidnap Poland once again. His soldiers have orders to open fire against suspected intruders. Now, in this instance, his soldiers have got lost, believed that they have met intruders into Poland and subsequently engaged them. However, even when presented with these facts, Wałęsa disregards that. He has already made public statements on the matter and heard Poland accused – and threatened too – by the Union. He feels he can’t back down now. Moreover, there is suspicion within him that maybe he is being lied too. Wałęsa doesn’t trust the Polish Armed Forces (another reason why he wanted the Americans in his country) due to the associations that so many of those in uniform had with the ancien régime. Jaruzelski – General Sunglasses – and others at the top are long gone but Wałęsa has a dissident’s distrust of the institution which served the system which oppressed him. It is rather unfair because Poland’s modern military is as patriotic as him but the doubt in his mind over their lack of loyalty with him is there. This colours his judgement on the matter. He starts to believe the falsehood that Poland is wholly innocent in this. If Poland is innocent, then the Union must be guilty.
Within hours of the border clash, Wałęsa is in contact with Kerrey. Poland is under attack with its soldiers killed by Union troops who came across the border. Once more, Wałęsa asks for an American military deployment to Poland. Kerrey has said no before. He doesn’t say no this time.
It is a ‘maybe’. Kerrey says that he needs more information on what has actually happened and he also wants to see the reaction from Lebed to this beyond initial words of condemnation… comments which Wałęsa says are threats. Kerrey must talk with others in his administration, see how Congress feels and also discuss the matter with allies too. An immediate rush to send in American troops isn’t what he will do, not with the US Intelligence Community having many times before warned that Polish actions are likely to soon enough bring about an accidental clash. Yet, Wałęsa hasn’t heard a no. He has heard what he interprets as a yes. This boosts his own reaction to the border clash because he feels that he has American support. There are quickly many more Polish troops heading towards the border. They are on their way to defend their nation, all the while without the knowledge that their own president doesn’t necessarily trust them. American efforts to ascertain what exactly has occurred are frustrated. They don’t have a clear picture and rely too much on Polish information, much of that being laundered at the direction of Wałęsa eager to draw them in. Kerrey is given a confusing picture of the exact sequence of events.
Lebed reacts to the killing of Union border guards and the infringement of Union territory with more than just words. He sends troops to the border himself. All the while that the Poles have been aggressively patrolling on their side of the frontier, with Wałęsa at times having his aircraft stray into Union airspace, Lebed has held back. Poland hasn’t been regarded as a threat to the Union. What is Wałęsa going to do? March his soldiers on Moscow? Now though, things are different. The border clash comes at the time when there are internal political developments within the Union that Lebed is trying to address to emerge victorious. There are political troubles in the Ukraine. That change in leadership there earlier in the year has brought with it a weak and incredibly corrupt new president. Lebed has no time for the man but has been prepared to stay out of internal Union affairs unless they negatively affect the Union as a whole. Some of the leaders down in Central Asia are truly awful whereas he has at first regarded those in Kiev as just an annoyance. Things have changed though. The Ukraine’s new president has caused a bad situation to develop with the Crimea. That is an autonomous region of the Ukraine – similar to the many which Russia has – and one also with many of those ethnic Russians to whom Lebed appeals to. The Crimea had no recognised vote in Lebed’s election but they had recently (long after his Russian presidential election) organised a public vote in support of him in response to Kiev’s actions to try to limit their semi-independence. Each side is to blame here and Lebed himself is no innocent either: he welcomed that show of support, infuriating Kiev in the process. Lebed controls Union military & security forces but the Ukraine has their own domestic force also. They have marched into the Crimea and asserted authority there. There has been little violence with this show of force that has suspended the rights that the government of the Crimea had. The rest of the Union will not support an intervention on behalf of those in Crimea by Lebed – and he doesn’t want to do that at all – but Lebed feels that this is not the time to show weakness neither at home nor aboard. Union forces thus enter the Ukraine and head for the Polish border like they have done in Belarus. The deployment is dressed up as response to Wałęsa but the same act will show those in Kiev who has real military power at their disposal… and who doesn’t.
In Warsaw, Washington and elsewhere – even in much of the Union – powerplays like this aren’t understood. The appearance of strong Union military forces now right up against Poland all down its eastern frontier, in addition to those already in Kaliningrad in-strength, is seen for the threat to Poland that it appears to be. Wałęsa appeals to Kerrey to confirm that he will send troops to his country and, after a pause, there is confirmation made. The mood is right in the United States to do this. Allies in Europe aren’t opposed to it. There is some hesitation but no outright objection here. Poland looks threatened and a ‘small’ American military deployment, with troops that won’t be going to the border itself, does seem reasonable especially when Kerrey convincingly sells it all as something to reassure Poland and keep the peace. He also wants to continue his policy of standing up to Lebed: that political dimension overrides the lingering concerns over the recklessness of Wałęsa. That small deployment isn’t small in the eyes of Lebed nor the Union military high command though. They watch as American forces begin to move from Germany into Poland come October. Across in the western side of their neighbour, the US Army has a brigade group of tanks & armoured infantry joined by the US Air Force sending a composite wing of combat aircraft. The Americans have moved into former Soviet military sites and look like they are there to stay.
This is considered to be breaking a pinky promise made back in 1990.
During discussions regarding the reunification of Germany which ended up with a treaty on how that matter would be settled, there was an informal agreement struck which Soviet negotiators believed mattered a great deal. Nothing was in the text of the Two Plus Four Treaty concerning an exclusion of NATO military forces within the former East Germany nor the countries which had once formed the Warsaw Pact, but there had been discussions had on that. The Americans and the European NATO countries had given reassurances that that wouldn’t be done. Nothing was on paper though. Furthermore, such an agreement – which those on the Soviet side found more important than those on the United States side did – took place between representatives the Soviet Union and the Bush Administrations. Neither of them are any more in late ’93. The successors of each know about what had been agreed three years before though when it came to territory east of the downed Iron Curtain being somewhere that the West wouldn’t move troops into when that was departed from by Soviet – later Union – forces. State Department officials and representatives of governments in Europe bring this up. In Moscow, Lebed is reminded of this by his generals with the high command. One side sees that agreement as null & void; the other regards the breaking of it as a complete betrayal of trust.
Kerrey and Lebed have a telephone conversation (through interpreters) on this matter after Baker and Primakov have already had it out. There is no compromise from each side for the position of the other. No legal deal was struck, Kerrey says, and thus no promise has been broken. Lebed tells him that there was a promise and that has been trampled all over with the usual disregard for the Union that the United States has. The security of the Union is imperilled by this American show of force to support a murderous liar such as Wałęsa! Shouting occurs during this communication between them. The clash of wills sees neither emerge victorious in forcing the other to back down.
American troops get comfortable in their new surroundings while (some distance away it must be said) there are Union armies spread down the Polish border. Each is here to stay with the very possibility that they could be joined by more should the situation warrant it. The chances that each will be pulled away looks increasingly unlikely as the end of ’93 approaches. As to Wałęsa, he has gotten what he wants…
…but he will want more. To a much greater degree than Kerrey does, Wałęsa wants to jab his finger in Lebed's eye.
The President of Poland is Lech Wałęsa. A former shipyard electrician, Wałęsa is the man who founded the Solidarity trade union in the Eighties and is credited by many as the man who brought down communist rule in his homeland. In 1990, watching with unease as too many of his pro-democracy colleagues were willing to work with communists (apparently) transformed into democrats, Wałęsa successfully ran for the presidency. He has been in office for the past three years. His presidency isn’t one which has brought political stability to the country. Poland has seen many government changes where Wałęsa has rid himself of those he has been in dispute with. The president is a complicated man. He loves his country which he wants to serve but the role of the president really isn’t for him. Wałęsa believes he is suitable though, arguing with anyone who says that he is too plain-spoken, has not enough experience for such a job and his behaviour is questionable. There are secrets which Wałęsa is hiding. The public doesn’t know about the one million US dollars which he received from a Hollywood film company for an (unmade) biopic of his life that he has paid no tax upon nor that Wałęsa has been busy covering up his own role as an informer among colleagues to the state’s secret police back before he founded Solidarity. Wałęsa is a hero to Poland and lauded abroad too for all that he has done. At home, he has overseen the controversial shock therapy applied to make Poland a functioning market economy. Poland is doing well whereas it was feared by some that it might not: Wałęsa is claiming credit for it all.
On the international front, Wałęsa is opposed to the Union… or Russia as he will insist upon calling it. Under all the different leaders which it has had, from Gorbachev now to Lebed, the Polish president has spoken out against it. He has called it a repackaged Soviet Union hell bent on creating another empire. He can point to his own warnings before the Baltics were occupied that that was coming: Wałęsa has said several times that he is a prophet with regards to the Union. What Wałęsa is really frightened of, what he tells his people they must resist and what he explains to allies that he needs their help to stop, is another ‘kidnap’ of Poland. His country was kidnapped before by those in Moscow and Wałęsa warns that it will happen again should the Union get the chance to do so. Union actions had long been giving truth to his assertions. Last year’s dramatic events in Moscow with all of those changes in leadership following the kidnap which he says happened to the Baltics had affected Poland negatively. When the madman Makashov had his brutal takeover of Moscow which the rest of the Union put down with force, there were Polish deaths. A group of several Union political figures with the Ryzhkov regime which Makashov had sought to kill had fled towards the Polish Embassy in Moscow. They had been chased by soldiers under Makashov’s orders and shot after just entering the diplomatic compound’s grounds with two Poles caught in the gunfire. That outrageous violation of Polish sovereignty (the embassy is protected by international agreements) came with the killings of three more Poles – and the disappearance of another two as well with no answers still forthcoming to their fate – during the street fighting in Moscow. None of those other Poles were protected with diplomatic status like the two shot at the embassy but Wałęsa had responded by cutting relations in the follow-up when first Khasbulatov and then Lebed had been in power once Makashov was gone. He still wants apologies and answers: those in Moscow who say it wasn’t their fault are considered by Wałęsa to be at fault because they are, after all, Russians.
It had been back then, during March ’92, when Wałęsa had first made a request for military support from overseas. There were Union troops still on Polish soil but in the midst of their long-arranged withdrawal, that came to a halt. The delays were minor and didn’t last long at all before they started once more following legitimate orders from the Union’s military high command. However, Wałęsa had acted rashly – as was increasingly his fashion with regards to anything Union-related – and made a request to the Americans to bring their own forces into Poland less those Union troops following Makashov’s coup strike against Poland. Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, had spoken with Wałęsa first and told him that this wasn’t a request that the United States wasn’t willing to act upon. When Bush himself was later spoken to by Wałęsa, the Polish president was informed that the United States had it ‘on good authority’ that those Union troops were answering only to their high command and weren’t about to march on Warsaw. Bush had restrained himself from telling his Polish counterpart to stop being so damn paranoid! There had been other requests made since. Wałęsa used various reasons and means to try and bring about an American military deployment into Poland. He didn’t want to see the Soviet-era Northern Group of Forces replaced by a US Army force of similar size, but instead a token force. Wałęsa envisioned the United States sending some troops and aircraft on a long-term temporary deployment into Poland. With them there, there would be no way that Union forces would cross the border to kidnap Poland once again: Moscow wouldn’t risk a world war by doing that. Each time, first Bush and then Kerrey in the early months of his presidency said no. Washington didn’t see a reason to do this. Problems were foreseen on the diplomatic front (with allies as well as the Union) and the practicalities of a deployment like that were there. In addition, especially under the Bush Administration, there was a fear that reckless actions by Wałęsa could bring about a war with the Union. They didn’t want to send troops to Poland less it start a world war: a position in opposition to the one of Wałęsa where he said that them being there would ensure there wasn’t one. The reckless behaviour from Wałęsa so feared started last year when denied a deployment of US troops to take up station in Poland. He had his own soldiers right on the borders with the Union while Polish aircraft flew close to the frontiers too. There was no need for any of this, the West would say, but Wałęsa argued that it was necessary to deter the Union from thinking Poland was weak and making an attack. The forward Polish military position was costly and dangerous. It guaranteed that something would eventually go wrong. There have been many near misses where clashes could have occurred but those had been averted through luck or common sense.
Not any longer.
September 18th 1993 sees a military clash occur on Poland’s border with the Union. It is an accident. Both Warsaw and Moscow will afterwards say that the other is to blame though with different takes upon how this has happened. Wałęsa tells the world that Poland has been deliberately attacked; Lebed will announce that the Poles started shooting at each other before turning on Union troops.
The incident takes place where the Polish frontier with the Belorussian Republic runs, within the Białowieża Forest (Polish side) / Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park (Belarus). The border is clearly marked yet Polish troops end up inside the territory of the Union when hunting for suspected cross-border military reconnaissance parties. There is gunfire when the Poles are detected and losses are taken on each side. The Poles retreat back to their own country, shooting down a helicopter in Union Border Guards service while doing so. The wreckage of that crash is inside Belarus while also over on Union territory are the bodies of the dead from each side too. In any hypothetical case in a court of law, any Polish defence would fall flat based upon that. What were those Poles doing there in the first place? Wałęsa has overseen the running of patrols by Polish soldiers along the border hunting for suspected Union Spetsnaz coming over into Poland preparing the way for one day that they will kidnap Poland once again. His soldiers have orders to open fire against suspected intruders. Now, in this instance, his soldiers have got lost, believed that they have met intruders into Poland and subsequently engaged them. However, even when presented with these facts, Wałęsa disregards that. He has already made public statements on the matter and heard Poland accused – and threatened too – by the Union. He feels he can’t back down now. Moreover, there is suspicion within him that maybe he is being lied too. Wałęsa doesn’t trust the Polish Armed Forces (another reason why he wanted the Americans in his country) due to the associations that so many of those in uniform had with the ancien régime. Jaruzelski – General Sunglasses – and others at the top are long gone but Wałęsa has a dissident’s distrust of the institution which served the system which oppressed him. It is rather unfair because Poland’s modern military is as patriotic as him but the doubt in his mind over their lack of loyalty with him is there. This colours his judgement on the matter. He starts to believe the falsehood that Poland is wholly innocent in this. If Poland is innocent, then the Union must be guilty.
Within hours of the border clash, Wałęsa is in contact with Kerrey. Poland is under attack with its soldiers killed by Union troops who came across the border. Once more, Wałęsa asks for an American military deployment to Poland. Kerrey has said no before. He doesn’t say no this time.
It is a ‘maybe’. Kerrey says that he needs more information on what has actually happened and he also wants to see the reaction from Lebed to this beyond initial words of condemnation… comments which Wałęsa says are threats. Kerrey must talk with others in his administration, see how Congress feels and also discuss the matter with allies too. An immediate rush to send in American troops isn’t what he will do, not with the US Intelligence Community having many times before warned that Polish actions are likely to soon enough bring about an accidental clash. Yet, Wałęsa hasn’t heard a no. He has heard what he interprets as a yes. This boosts his own reaction to the border clash because he feels that he has American support. There are quickly many more Polish troops heading towards the border. They are on their way to defend their nation, all the while without the knowledge that their own president doesn’t necessarily trust them. American efforts to ascertain what exactly has occurred are frustrated. They don’t have a clear picture and rely too much on Polish information, much of that being laundered at the direction of Wałęsa eager to draw them in. Kerrey is given a confusing picture of the exact sequence of events.
Lebed reacts to the killing of Union border guards and the infringement of Union territory with more than just words. He sends troops to the border himself. All the while that the Poles have been aggressively patrolling on their side of the frontier, with Wałęsa at times having his aircraft stray into Union airspace, Lebed has held back. Poland hasn’t been regarded as a threat to the Union. What is Wałęsa going to do? March his soldiers on Moscow? Now though, things are different. The border clash comes at the time when there are internal political developments within the Union that Lebed is trying to address to emerge victorious. There are political troubles in the Ukraine. That change in leadership there earlier in the year has brought with it a weak and incredibly corrupt new president. Lebed has no time for the man but has been prepared to stay out of internal Union affairs unless they negatively affect the Union as a whole. Some of the leaders down in Central Asia are truly awful whereas he has at first regarded those in Kiev as just an annoyance. Things have changed though. The Ukraine’s new president has caused a bad situation to develop with the Crimea. That is an autonomous region of the Ukraine – similar to the many which Russia has – and one also with many of those ethnic Russians to whom Lebed appeals to. The Crimea had no recognised vote in Lebed’s election but they had recently (long after his Russian presidential election) organised a public vote in support of him in response to Kiev’s actions to try to limit their semi-independence. Each side is to blame here and Lebed himself is no innocent either: he welcomed that show of support, infuriating Kiev in the process. Lebed controls Union military & security forces but the Ukraine has their own domestic force also. They have marched into the Crimea and asserted authority there. There has been little violence with this show of force that has suspended the rights that the government of the Crimea had. The rest of the Union will not support an intervention on behalf of those in Crimea by Lebed – and he doesn’t want to do that at all – but Lebed feels that this is not the time to show weakness neither at home nor aboard. Union forces thus enter the Ukraine and head for the Polish border like they have done in Belarus. The deployment is dressed up as response to Wałęsa but the same act will show those in Kiev who has real military power at their disposal… and who doesn’t.
In Warsaw, Washington and elsewhere – even in much of the Union – powerplays like this aren’t understood. The appearance of strong Union military forces now right up against Poland all down its eastern frontier, in addition to those already in Kaliningrad in-strength, is seen for the threat to Poland that it appears to be. Wałęsa appeals to Kerrey to confirm that he will send troops to his country and, after a pause, there is confirmation made. The mood is right in the United States to do this. Allies in Europe aren’t opposed to it. There is some hesitation but no outright objection here. Poland looks threatened and a ‘small’ American military deployment, with troops that won’t be going to the border itself, does seem reasonable especially when Kerrey convincingly sells it all as something to reassure Poland and keep the peace. He also wants to continue his policy of standing up to Lebed: that political dimension overrides the lingering concerns over the recklessness of Wałęsa. That small deployment isn’t small in the eyes of Lebed nor the Union military high command though. They watch as American forces begin to move from Germany into Poland come October. Across in the western side of their neighbour, the US Army has a brigade group of tanks & armoured infantry joined by the US Air Force sending a composite wing of combat aircraft. The Americans have moved into former Soviet military sites and look like they are there to stay.
This is considered to be breaking a pinky promise made back in 1990.
During discussions regarding the reunification of Germany which ended up with a treaty on how that matter would be settled, there was an informal agreement struck which Soviet negotiators believed mattered a great deal. Nothing was in the text of the Two Plus Four Treaty concerning an exclusion of NATO military forces within the former East Germany nor the countries which had once formed the Warsaw Pact, but there had been discussions had on that. The Americans and the European NATO countries had given reassurances that that wouldn’t be done. Nothing was on paper though. Furthermore, such an agreement – which those on the Soviet side found more important than those on the United States side did – took place between representatives the Soviet Union and the Bush Administrations. Neither of them are any more in late ’93. The successors of each know about what had been agreed three years before though when it came to territory east of the downed Iron Curtain being somewhere that the West wouldn’t move troops into when that was departed from by Soviet – later Union – forces. State Department officials and representatives of governments in Europe bring this up. In Moscow, Lebed is reminded of this by his generals with the high command. One side sees that agreement as null & void; the other regards the breaking of it as a complete betrayal of trust.
Kerrey and Lebed have a telephone conversation (through interpreters) on this matter after Baker and Primakov have already had it out. There is no compromise from each side for the position of the other. No legal deal was struck, Kerrey says, and thus no promise has been broken. Lebed tells him that there was a promise and that has been trampled all over with the usual disregard for the Union that the United States has. The security of the Union is imperilled by this American show of force to support a murderous liar such as Wałęsa! Shouting occurs during this communication between them. The clash of wills sees neither emerge victorious in forcing the other to back down.
American troops get comfortable in their new surroundings while (some distance away it must be said) there are Union armies spread down the Polish border. Each is here to stay with the very possibility that they could be joined by more should the situation warrant it. The chances that each will be pulled away looks increasingly unlikely as the end of ’93 approaches. As to Wałęsa, he has gotten what he wants…
…but he will want more. To a much greater degree than Kerrey does, Wałęsa wants to jab his finger in Lebed's eye.
