An expansive Walesa reflects on Ukraine, traffic laws and the new world order

Lech Walesa turned 80 a few months ago and has a few things to get off his chest.

Addressing a standing-room-only crowd at the Victims of Communism Museum, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former Polish president warned that the United States cannot forfeit its leadership role in the war in Ukraine.

The former leader of the Solidarity trade union also shared his thoughts on modern information warfare with Russia, the struggle to build a new world order, Poland’s unfortunate geography and what it is like to survive five “documented attempts” on one’s life.

Poland, with its long, tangled history with Russia, has been on the front lines in rallying Western support for neighboring Ukraine as the war, sparked by Moscow’s invasion, nears the two-year mark later this month.

Without naming names or parties, an animated Mr. Walesa said the United States cannot now forsake Kyiv in a moment of maximum peril in the war.

The Biden administration has said the Pentagon is running out of money to aid Ukraine, and Congress has blocked a $64 billion request for new military assistance for the country for weeks.

“I don’t have to prove it to you, do I, that Russia would hit the United States if only it had the strength to do it?” Mr. Walesa asked, speaking through a translator. “This is the only chance, the unique chance when the entire world is united against Russia. A United States senator cannot waste this chance.”

“Later generations would not forgive us,” he said, if the West does not stick by Ukraine in the war.

The onetime electrician from a Gdansk, Poland, shipyard, his familiar walrus mustache gone white and sporting yellow-tinted glasses reminiscent of U2’s Bono, was in a more expansive, philosophic mood for much of the session.

In a gathering featuring suit coats and dresses, Mr. Walesa went tieless, sporting a blue button-down shirt with a 6-inch embroidery of the Blessed Virgin over his right breast.

The event was organized by the Washington-based Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and the Fund for American Studies Project Witness.

Describing himself as a “hands-on,” practical politician, he remarked that “everything that we did was meant to dismantle the old order and start a new order,” though he noted that the new order to emerge out of the fall of Soviet communism in Europe is still struggling to be born.

Displaying his puckish wit, Mr. Walesa noted at one point, “The only thing that works these days are the road traffic laws. Everything else has to be reworked.”

The great nations in the past, including Russia and the United States, he said, grew “by absorbing smaller countries into their borders over a course of time.”

“But at the end of the 20th century, a new concept of growth came around, namely with the United Nations, the European Union and NATO, joining a larger organization by choice,” he said. “So the question for today is which of the two concepts [of expansion] will win because Russia and China still use the old concept.”

“If we act in solidarity with each other, the second concept will prevail,” Mr. Walesa said.

For many of the world’s current problems, such as pandemics or environmental disasters, no one country, however powerful, can hope to address them alone, he said: “If we don’t transition to continent-based and global-based thinking, we’ll be finished.”

Old political divides have to be rethought as well.

“We have to redefine from scratch what it means to be on the left or the right,” he said. “Here in your country, the old divisions between the two parties need to be redefined. You have seen how difficult it is to conduct elections wisely. It all needs to be corrected and fixed because it all stems from the old epoch.”

On the hot topics of disinformation and online information wars, Mr. Walesa had some down-to-earth advice on undermining Russian popular support for President Vladimir Putin’s costly war.

“There needs to be more struggle in the information wars,” he said. “For example, record all the Russian casualties [in Ukraine] and send them to their neighbors. Write, ‘The guy you used to have a drink with at the local bar is dead now because of Putin’s policies. And the woman downstairs, she lost her son because of Putin. Tomorrow, you may be drafted — do you want that?’”

He added that “we must change the proportions by spending more information on propaganda and information, so tell your leaders to think about how to do this.”

The Polish leader touched on a notably broad range of topics in just a little over an hour, including the mystery of the Egyptian pyramids, the gulf between intellectual communism and the system he and other East Europeans lived through in the Cold War, and his home country’s “unfortunate” geographic location directly between Germany and Russia.

“As you know, [Russians and Germans] are tourists and military people,” he said, “and they like to visit each other. The technology of the times was such that they had to walk through Poland to visit each other.”

Having lived one of the 20th century’s most improbable lives, Mr. Walesa was asked about the report that the would-be assassin of fellow Pole Pope John II in 1981 had originally targeted him.

“Ladies and gentlemen, there were five documented attempts on my life, but I had connections above,” he said with a smile. “I knew some saints, and I managed to get out.”

“Some of the things that have happened to me are incredible,” he said. “It must have been God’s finger.”