Bartosz T. Wieliński speaks with Anne Applebaum, journalist, reporter, and prominent voice in American public discourse, and her husband, Radosław Sikorski, Foreign Minister, former Defense Minister, and initiator of the European Union's Eastern Partnership.
Anne Applebaum: We wouldn’t have enough time to list them all. It’s a complete transformation. We’re living in a totally different atmosphere now. But if I had to boil it down to one thing, I’d say: we’re no longer afraid.
Because under PiS [Law and Justice Party], we were constantly fearful. That Poland might leave the European Union, that it would stop being a democracy, that they’d complete their takeover of the judiciary and the courts would become corrupt, that the police would start knocking on opposition doors – because yes, they were already preparing for that.
Now, Poland is not only seen as a legitimate part of the EU and NATO, but as a leader. It’s one of the strongest voices in the EU and known in NATO as the country that spends the most on defense.
That’s how things look from Western capitals. And from the U.S., where I spend a lot of time, you look even better. Many people are talking about Poland as an example of how citizens can stop potential autocrats if they organize themselves.
AA: Not if you take a bird's-eye view. We live in a time when there are very few clear-cut victories like this. In Venezuela, the opposition won, but the government didn’t give up power. In the U.S., some Republican voters and many of the politicians themselves suggest they won’t accept the election results if Kamala Harris wins. So, Poland is proof that we still live in a world where even populist movements accept the rules of the game. The opposition won, and the populist ruling party handed over power, despite moving towards autocracy.
Radosław Sikorski: Well, that barrel of honey is quite large. I could paraphrase the Polish anthem and say, "Democracy in Europe has not yet succumbed as long as we remain," [original: "Poland has not yet succumbed. As long as we remain"] because we truly are an inspiration. When I travel with the Polish delegation, people ask: how did you do it? How did you manage to reverse the populist wave?
And to preempt your next question, which I’m sure you’re about to ask: the same issue that decided our election will decide the next U.S. election – migration. I don’t think we would have won a year ago if Donald Tusk hadn’t convinced a large part of society that we would regain control of our eastern border, that securing the EU’s external border was our top priority.
If there’s a change in the White House in the U.S., it will be because of the unresolved issue of migration. The current administration has tried to manage it just like the previous one did, but they haven’t been able to communicate their goals and actions effectively.
I was taught in sociology that anti-establishment parties gain popularity when the establishment neglects an issue that’s important to society. So, a wise establishment identifies these issues, adopts the rational parts of the demands, and the extreme parties lose support.
There are many definitions of populism, and not all of them are inherently negative. One says that populism is offering simple solutions to complex problems. And we’re simply solving the problem.
RS: I could say that’s not my responsibility, that it’s up to Minister Bodnar, who knows what he’s doing and ensures that investigations and prosecutions are lawful, without giving anyone a free pass. On one hand, he comes from NGOs and was the Commissioner for Human Rights, but on the other, he jokes that he’s been called the "bloody prelate".
But I won’t dodge the question. We are not Robespierre-style revolutionaries – we don’t have the temperament or the power for that, and maybe that’s a good thing.
Also, we have a president who has shielded criminals in the Presidential Palace. He helped them avoid prison by pardoning them and even expunging their records, allowing them to run for the European Parliament, where they’re now thriving in Brussels. We won’t be able to carry out our program as long as the head of state, wielding the veto, sees himself as PiS’s last bastion and takes every opportunity to stick a finger in the government’s eye.
AA: I think sooner or later, yes. The European Union has laws, rules, and values, and while countries may occasionally violate them, they don't typically breach the most fundamental ones. And an independent judiciary is a cornerstone not only of liberal democracy but of a free-market economy.
Every company investing in Poland needs to feel that the rules, laws, and their enforcement are as fair here as they are in the Netherlands or Italy. In the long run, just the rumor spreading abroad that Polish courts are politicized would have distanced Poland from the EU.
RS: Something happened recently that really shocked me, and I’m not easily shocked. My successor in the European Parliament, Krzysztof Brejza, discovered that the system for assigning judges had been hacked. Supposedly, it was a random selection, but the pool contained only names that were "safe" for the government. So, the ruling party could be sure that a politically sensitive case would be handled by a compliant judge.
If PiS had stayed for a third term, the system would have been fully locked in. The secret services, the prosecutor’s office, the media attack machine, and, finally, a compliant judge – this "production line" would have guaranteed that anyone the government wanted to imprison would be imprisoned. As you can see, we weren’t exaggerating when we said before the elections that Polish democracy wouldn’t survive a third PiS term.
AA: The character of the Polish people wouldn’t allow for that kind of severe repression, but harassment—baseless charges, temporary arrests of those opposing the government—I can imagine. It’s already started.
RS: I speak as a former asylum seeker, someone who was a refugee in the UK. The right to apply for asylum isn’t a free pass to commit a crime, like illegally crossing the border.
Let me give you an example. At the request of a former Afghan ambassador, we are considering helping several Afghan female diplomats who had to flee their country due to persecution by the Taliban. This is a textbook case of a legitimate right to asylum. But these women are waiting for a decision in Iran and Pakistan, not tearing down fences at the Polish-Belarusian border.
It would be grossly unfair for them to wait patiently while some criminals—and I use this word reluctantly, because even if these people were deceived by traffickers, under the law they are criminals—deliberately brought to Moscow and Belarus, can, by shouting "asylum!", gain the right to stay in the European Union.
The Geneva Convention was adopted in 1951, when the Iron Curtain was at its tightest, the Soviet bloc wasn’t letting anyone out, severely punished those who fled, and persecuted their families. That’s why if someone illegally crossed the border back then, they were considered a refugee – because they managed to escape to the free world, not because they were forcibly pushed out.
Today, we’re dealing with an operation run by Russian and Belarusian special services aimed at influencing European politics. We all know this, but it’s worth repeating: they are sending real criminals and people they’ve identified as potentially dangerous to provoke public unrest, which benefits extremist parties that want to dismantle the European Union.
In preparing for our conversation, I read the Geneva Convention. There is an article in it that says any state can propose changes to the convention if international circumstances have fundamentally changed. Isn’t a hybrid war with Russia and a large-scale, long-term foreign operation targeting all of Europe a new circumstance?
And then there are the numbers. They matter too. You know, back in the 1980s, when Poles were seeking asylum in the UK, they called it the "Solidarity wave" – and there were only 400 of us. The Geneva Convention was designed with individuals in mind – tens or hundreds of people, not millions.
Now, I'll share my personal view, though I know it resonates with many citizens. Both the right and the left have made mistakes in this matter. For years, the left has stifled any reasonable debate on migration, basing it on Western European perspectives – justified by a sense of guilt over colonialism – believing that any decision to control the movement of people is racist. This drives the right to fury, as it is naturally suspicious of any migration and other cultures. But I believe we have the right to a sensible, non-racist discussion about which migrants we need, with what skills, from which parts of the world, for how long, and under what conditions. How can we make them productive residents and, in the future, loyal citizens?
The migration strategy we’ve just adopted – our first one, I should note – serves to foster that conversation. It will translate into laws related to employment, education, the visa system, learning Polish, and more.
RS: It was the most intense debate I’ve ever seen in the Council of Ministers. For the first time, it ended with differing opinions. But I’d be surprised if we were unanimous because it’s natural that we're confused about such a difficult and new issue. After all, we’ve gone from being a country of emigrants for over 200 years to becoming a multicultural nation with two million newcomers in less than a decade! It’s a huge challenge that requires a mature dialogue with citizens whose views are still evolving – even within the coalition.
We might have reached more agreement by now if PiS hadn’t deliberately sown confusion for years – on the one hand, inciting hatred against migrants, and on the other, opening the doors in an uncontrolled way, driven by random lobbying from companies or even individual politicians.
AA: There are two different models of migration discourse, and we see this very clearly in the U.S., the UK, France, and Germany.
There is the real conversation, which deals with actual people and their various problems depending on where they come from, with an understanding that every country has its own specific situation. In Poland, that unique situation is the border with Belarus, used, as Radek says, by Lukashenko and Putin. These are problems that can be solved if the government, whether left-wing, centrist, or right-wing, has good intentions.
And then there’s the bad-faith conversation, about imagined, mythologized migrants, that creates a certain figure of the migrant. This is part of the culture war being stoked by the anti-democratic right. Just like in Hungary, where the impact of migration is minimal, but the government constantly sounds the alarm about how migrants are destroying the country, its culture, jobs, customs, and traditions, and how dangerous they are. Orban uses the word "migration" as a scare tactic.
The same thing is happening in the U.S., where, due to populist propaganda, migrants have become synonymous with insecurity. It has reached the point where, when we sense something is changing in our country, and we don’t know why, for what reason, or in which direction – we say "migrants".
That’s why responsible democratic governments – whether left, center, or center-right – must not only address these real problems but also openly acknowledge them, so that populists and autocrats can’t turn them into harmful, metaphorical narratives.
RS: My favorite example of political cynicism is Orban’s so-called educational campaign during the height of the 2014 migration crisis, when Middle Eastern refugees and migrants were walking through Hungary on their way to Germany. The government put up hundreds of billboards with the slogan "Migrants, respect our Hungarian culture" – in Hungarian.
RS: Not long ago, the construction industry in the UK wouldn’t have existed without Poles. I bring this up because we need to remember that these seemingly neutral economic and market issues have political contexts and consequences. I’m convinced that without Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to open the UK job market – which, in 2004, at the time of our EU accession, was an act of friendship towards Poland, but also led to concentrations of Poles in previously homogeneous British towns – maybe Brexit wouldn’t have happened.
RS: No. The negative outcome wasn’t the migration itself but the lack of foresight and loss of control.
AA: Do you remember one of the main slogans of British Eurosceptics? "Take back control". It had both a literal and metaphorical meaning. People felt like they had lost control – over information, social changes, demographics, the economy. And since immigration ties all those elements together, it became a symbol of that insecurity. That’s why it’s so important for any democratic government to show its citizens that it does have control over the flow of people.
RS: We need to be honest about a few hard truths.
First, on the other side of the Mediterranean, there’s a billion people who, for obvious reasons, would rather live here than there, and we can’t blame them for that. But when there are fewer than 500 million of us in the EU, we can’t accept a billion people, which means there has to be regulation. So, we need to set rules for that regulation based on the needs of our society. That might sound superior or selfish, but it’s our ancestors who built the systems, values, and prosperity that attract others to Europe. So, we have the right to decide who gets in and who doesn’t. And that’s why we have consulates, border guards, and visas – to serve this purpose. The more idealistic side of the left needs to accept this.
Before anyone criticizes, yes, it’s more complicated than that. Someone might bring up, for example, the 19th-century United States and Australia, where the doors were wide open, and almost anyone could come. But both countries were expanding territorially, and it seemed – though there were already people living there—that there was enough land and resources for everyone. "Come and build your future". But today, the U.S. and Australia don’t have open doors anymore. Why? Because back then, there was hardly any social welfare, and newcomers started on the same footing as locals. The state and society benefited without bearing significant costs. But when there’s a high level of social services and a high standard of living for almost everyone, that becomes a strong magnet, and the host society might not be able to bear the costs. In that case, an open border becomes unsustainable, and regulation is necessary.
AA: What sets today’s network of autocrats apart is that regimes with no common ideology are collaborating. Communist-totalitarian Darwinist China, nationalist Russia, the Stalinist relic of the Kim family in North Korea, and the theocratic regime in Iran are all finding shared interests and opportunistically working together. Not always and not everywhere, but in specific areas that suit them.
So, when North Korea needs money, support in international isolation, and help with its nuclear program, and when it has plenty of soldiers, while Russia needs soldiers and ammunition and has money and know-how, they do business. Even though just a few years ago, Moscow was part of a global coalition trying to limit Pyongyang’s nuclear capabilities.
Actually, no, there is one idea – or rather, emotion – that unites them: hatred of us.
AA: Not the West, but the democratic world. That includes Europe, North America, and large parts of Asia and the Pacific – Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, Japan. They see us as a threat because they lack independent courts, free media, public criticism, and an open economy. Any form of diversity is unwelcome or outright suppressed – and we have all of that.
So, when the Belarusian, Chinese, or Venezuelan opposition uses the same language we do – talking about human rights and rights in general – they understand that they need to collaborate to break this unity of human aspirations. The democratic world is beginning to grasp this new model of tyrant cooperation, but we haven’t yet built a strong coalition to counter it. That’s the task for the next generation of politicians.
RS: The European Union has always been divided, is divided, and will remain divided. We are, after all, a family of democracies, and just like in any family, we work through our differences. In fact, like any healthy family, we only settle on a policy after discussion.
But look at how badly Putin miscalculated what we're capable of. If you had told me before his invasion of Ukraine that the EU would not only cut Russia off from the SWIFT banking system, stop buying Russian gas and oil, start supplying Ukraine with weapons, and even freeze the Russian central bank’s reserves, eventually using profits from those frozen reserves to give a massive loan to Ukraine, I would have skeptically said, "Wow". Yet, we did it. So, we're not as broken as even we sometimes think we are.
Europe has already provided Ukraine with well over 120 billion euros in aid. That’s a massive effort – and despite the heated debates, public support across Europe for helping our embattled neighbors hasn’t faded.
In other words, democratic societies are slow to react, because, as well-off democracies, we just want to be left in peace. But once we cross someone off the list as a politician or a partner because they've betrayed us, lied, or committed crimes, we can be surprisingly consistent in our response.
AA: I know a bit about the debates in the EU and NATO over whether to kick Hungary out or not. While it might look like "typical European indecision", it’s actually a very calculated choice to keep Hungary inside the tent and try to work with them, rather than turning them into a 100% enemy outside. And, if needed, that decision can always be reversed.
RS: I met with Viktor Orban at a conference in Berlin about the future expansion of the EU into the Balkans. And I'll admit, I was tempted to say, "Viktor" – because we’ve known each other for 30 years; he studied at my college on a Soros scholarship – "Here’s a set of quotes of what you’ve said about the EU and how terrible it is, but now here you are at this conference, passionately trying to convince us to expand the EU to include Serbia. Do you really wish Serbia that much harm?"
RS: I believe God uses all kinds of people for his purposes. Just like PiS with its antics and disregard for the rule of law ended up strengthening the European Court of Justice – it’s now working full steam, something that’s never happened before – Orban will push us to develop better mechanisms for enforcing standards, not just for new members but also for current EU states.
AA: The EU is only now learning how to use the tools it already has. Its main institutions and mechanisms weren’t created with the idea of questioning a member state’s internal politics. There was this assumption that if you’re in the EU, you're a democracy, so we don’t need to discuss that. The situations in Hungary and Poland have forced that conversation for the first time.
RS: A good example of how brazenly playing games with your allies can backfire in the long run is Orban. He’s given us the undeniable argument for moving away from unanimous votes when it comes to sanctions.
RS: That’s why I keep saying our right-wing shouldn’t be worrying about Germany wanting deeper integration; they should be more concerned about the Germany of their dreams, one that no longer wants integration.
Most federations, confederations, and unions of states fall apart when the most dominant member no longer sees any benefit in being part of the group. Look at the breakup of Yugoslavia – it was Serbia that destroyed it.
That’s why I’m worried about PiS uniting with Sovereign Poland.
RS: Because the real ideology behind PiS – its mental software, not its printed program – is written by Ziobro. That’s why PiS, which used to be just eurosceptic, is now outright europhobic. After this unification with Ziobro, PiS is going to start becoming an openly anti-European party.
Back in 2007, PiS’s election manifesto stated that strong European institutions are a safeguard for smaller countries against the dominance of the larger ones. They used to understand these things – now they’ve forgotten.
AA: I have options. I can choose between the madhouse here, the madhouse in the US, or I can escape for a vacation to the madhouse in England, France, or Germany. Poland isn’t so unique in that regard.
AA: The grassroots haven’t changed..
RS: The grassroots are still mostly pro-Ukrainian. It’s the leadership that’s radicalizing. I’ve been on Capitol Hill in various roles over the past 30 years, and I remember what they used to say about Reagan – those who now consider him the paragon of Republican virtue, the symbol of the old responsible Grand Old Party.
AA: Yes, today, for instance, you hear Democrats referring to the Bush family – whom they viewed 20 years ago as hardline right-wingers leading a reckless foreign policy – as moderate patriots now.
My last book was about how and why people radicalize. It focused mostly on the right wing – but the left radicalizes in the same way. I drew examples from the US, UK, Spain, and Poland. It turns out there are many catalysts, but the common one is called the internet. These "MAGA Republicans", who adopted Trump’s "Make America Great Again" slogan as their logo, are an extreme group in an otherwise not-so-radical party. But they dominate because they understand the internet – extremism thrives online. The more extreme the statement, the more engagement it gets. The sharper the take, the more clicks, the more likes.
AA: Exactly, nothing more to add.
RS: I understand all this, and yet, I still can’t come to terms with the fact that people I once knew, people I used to get along with, now believe in ridiculous conspiracy theories, like the Smolensk assassination plot.
AA: The thing is, they don’t even believe it themselves. It’s just some of the people clicking on their tweets and memes who do. They spread these rumors about Haitian migrants eating dogs because it doesn’t matter whether people laugh or are genuinely shocked; what matters is that their narrative dominates the conversation that day.
I’m glad you mentioned that Haiti hoax because it perfectly illustrates the phenomenon. The most ironic part is that J.D. Vance, the guy spreading this story, knows it’s not true. He’s from Ohio, and he’s fully aware that Haitians don’t eat dogs and that it wasn’t the Democrats who brought them in – it was actually the Republican governor of Ohio, who needed more workers, and various evangelical churches that have missions in Haiti and wanted to help these people fleeing constant crisis and civil wars.
RS: And it all started with a woman whose cat ran away. The cat came back two days later, but political strategists had already latched onto the theme.
AA: And soon enough, the manipulated photos started circulating – people still trust pictures, after all. And all of this happens because we have a digital information system that not only allows lies but promotes them because these lies are its lifeblood, fueling the whole business.
RS: I firmly believe that Poland needs to maintain strong relations with America, and I work hard to keep contacts with both sides of the political divide over there. I have to admit that some Republican ideas can be intriguing. For example, if their concept for ending the war in Ukraine involved threatening Putin with increased aid to Ukraine, that would be great. That’s exactly the point – to disrupt Putin’s calculations.
AA: When we speculate about how this campaign might end, we’re really groping in the dark. It could be a landslide victory for Kamala Harris, a triumph for Trump, or a narrow win for either of them. The polls are literally 50-50, but we don’t know if we can trust them. Polling used to work because someone would call a registered voter and ask their opinion. But now, people in their 20s and 30s don’t even answer calls – they communicate in entirely different ways. And others, like me, have stopped answering any unknown calls.
And as always, we have to consider our bizarre voting system, which the rest of the world can’t quite grasp. Even if Harris wins the popular vote across the U.S., our system, created in the 18th century, will choose the winner based on the advantage in a few key states. It’s not the number of individual votes that counts, but the number of votes from the states.
RS: The Founding Fathers of the U.S. studied the example of Poland, where foreign courts would bribe the nobility in free elections, and they came up with the Electoral College to prevent bribery in presidential elections. The electors were supposed to have the right to choose someone other than the popular candidate to protect the republic from populists. They were meant to be a filter.
AA: But from the start, it never worked as ideally intended. Due to various compromises when forming and admitting new states, it ended up that only a few states – not even the biggest ones – are really important. So, in the end, the future president of the U.S. will be decided by maybe ten thousand people in Pennsylvania, and we don’t know who they are, what media they consume, or what impulse or judgment will guide them on election day. They don’t necessarily have to choose the candidate running the better campaign.
AA: Yes.
RS: Yes.
RS: Democracies and constitutions are only as stable and solid as the character of the people in key positions. If PiS had won this election, I had a plan to write a book titled "50 Responsible for the Fall of Democracy in Poland" – because it really was about 50 people in crucial roles who caused the crisis by not fulfilling their constitutional duties.
AA: I see it a little differently. Democracy also depends on the engagement of ordinary people. It’s not just about voting, but about taking an interest in public matters, getting involved. You don’t need to join a party; you practice democracy by doing things with others, getting involved in social movements, organizations, or even small neighborhood projects.
At the start of democracy, people weren’t used to this because the communists worked hard to discourage grassroots initiatives. They wanted people to see politics as a distant formality, a theater playing out far from their everyday lives.
RS: As the "Solidarity" generation, we believed that communism had discredited itself so thoroughly that there was no longer a need to explain why democracy or European integration were good things. But some procedures, especially the EU ones, are really complicated and can seem abstract. They need to be explained.
But to do that effectively, we must learn from what we see happening in the democratic West. For potential autocrats, lying has always been the primary way to influence minds. But today, it’s incredibly easy to spread lies, and very hard to expose them outside of one’s own bubble. The communication revolution has caused us to lose the common spaces where facts are verified.
That's why I support regulating social media, controlling their algorithms, and restoring the significance – and strengthening the business model – of traditional media. We need spaces that organize discussions, highlight important issues, discredit extremists and manipulators, and fact-check claims.
RS: I’ve had these discussions both here and in the European Parliament. If something is bad for our minds, for our way of life – because it makes us addicted, destroys democracy, hinders our children’s ability to learn, and reduces attention spans – then as a society, we have the right to do something about it.
One of my favorite examples: In the 1970s in the U.S., it was discovered that some TV ads had subliminal messaging that our brains picked up on unconsciously, influencing consumer choices. What did the Federal Communications Commission do? They simply banned it, despite the power of the advertising industry and TV networks.
AA: This doesn’t have to be censorship. All we need is transparency. Algorithms should be open, so we can see the criteria they use to sort and rank content. Then, we could modify them to show more diverse options and give people real choices or even a range of opinions.
RS: Or at least to stop promoting aggression.
AA: Many things seemed impossible because they required intervention in long-established systems, global business models. Like, how do we tackle air pollution when it’s not just a few companies, but the entire industrial system relies on polluting? We thought we had no control. But when citizens and politicians realized that the manufacturers were doing something wrong, it turned out we could regulate it, create new laws, and the world didn’t collapse. If we could regulate smoking chimneys and toxic waste, why not social media?
RS: And it would also be good for the platforms themselves. Regulation is one option, but another is direct government intervention when violations reach a criminal level. So, either you limit yourselves and still make money, just a little less or differently, or we end up with scenarios like in France, where they arrested the owner of Telegram. Take your pick.
Translation: Patrycja Eiduka