Poland’s famed “Solidarity” leader and ex-President Lech Walesa rode into Denver on Thursday and, in a short interview, gave a sharp critique of U.S. efforts to promote democracy.
The problem: For all its military and economic power, the United States “is not a political and moral leader to the world.”
That has contributed to chaos in Iraq and left the world unprepared to face new challenges as varied as terrorism and worker welfare in a tumultuous global economy, said Walesa, 63, unpacking in a downtown hotel.
An electrician and shipyard worker in the 1970s, Walesa led a trade union movement that defied the Soviet Union.
Since then, as a Nobel peace laureate, he has championed democracy and human rights. He came to Denver to speak tonight at Regis University.
The erosion of U.S. political and moral clout began at home.
“Is it true anyone can be president of the United States?” Walesa asked. “In order to run, he or she must have $100 million.”
And abroad, Walesa said, Americans seem to rely mostly on force. “They use their military.”
After World War II, it was different. Americans inspired the world, rebuilding Europe and Japan. But “after the Cold War, the United States did not come up with any plan for the world.” That lack of a plan at a turning point “demonstrated that the United States no longer was a leader,” he said.
The world needed “better security structures,” and the United Nations had become “too much red tape.”
U.S. officials “should have either forced some readjustment of U.N. structures” or worked effectively to build international coalitions for action in Iraq and elsewhere.
“The United State failed to do either of these two things. That’s why we are living in an insecure world today,” he said.
Part of the problem in Iraq, he said, is that “Iraqi people do not use their right to democracy.”
Some 1,500 Polish soldiers serve in Iraq. Poland has strongly supported U.S. military efforts in Iraq and elsewhere. That’s because Poles know enough of the world to “sense and anticipate new threats” of terrorism, Walesa said.
If the U.S. had not responded as it did to the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, he said, “these mad people would have attacked” elsewhere. Moscow. London. Paris. “The United States actually did save world peace by reacting as it did.”
But now in a vacuum, conflict festers and workers face growing uncertainty about their jobs amid globalization. Governments and workers will have to establish “a whole new structure, a new platform” to ensure worker welfare, Walesa said.
