We No Longer Dream of the United States: Bartosz Wieliński on America, Poland, and the Suicide of a Superpower

00:00:30 Andrew Keen: Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen on America, the daily interview show about the United States. Hello everybody, we're still on the road in Europe. We're in Warsaw today, and I've had the good fortune of coming to the New York Times of Poland, Gazeta Wyborcza, and I'm here with Bartosz Wieliński, who's the deputy editor in chief of the newspaper. Bartosz, welcome to Keen on America.

00:01:23 Bartosz Wieliński: Hi. Hello,

00:01:25 Andrew Keen: You smile, Bartosz, but you're very disappointed with the United States.

00:01:29 Bartosz Wieliński: Disappointed, maybe too strong. I'd say it's just lost illusions towards us, and well, people in my generation worshiped the United States, during communism. Everybody wanted to move to flee to us. It was the land of the dream, and now we confront with different type of country, different type of politics, and we see all those changes that well are striking are simply bad, and well, as I said, we lost the dreams we used to have 20 3040 years ago, they're not there. We don't dream on the US anymore.

00:02:13 Andrew Keen: You've lost your innocence, Father.

00:02:15 Bartosz Wieliński: That's what

00:02:16 Andrew Keen: You've lost your innocence.

00:02:17 Bartosz Wieliński: Innocence. Well, it's not the innocence. I didn't lose anything the US did. I'd say the Americans lost their credibility, they lost the values they believed in, they lost their mind by electing a guy like Donald Trump to be a president of the US, so if anybody lost anything, it was it is the Americans, not the Poles.

00:02:41 Andrew Keen: What's your message to people in the United States who voted for Trump?

00:02:46 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, you did it wrong, guys, and well, if you don't see it now, then you should look around. It's always crude, simply with us. You have the President, who is well, Timothy Snyder said quite a wise thing on that, saying that the suicide of the superpower, and the US was a superpower, probably still is a superpower, but Donald Trump's doing a lot to cripple that superpower, at least to cripple it. He lost your credibility, he lost your morality. We don't live in 20th or 19th century, anymore, having an army that is able to invade a country, to abduct its president, or to kill him, and to shoot airplanes and bomb a city, bomb a school with children, doesn't mean you're

00:03:50 Andrew Keen: Referring to Iran. Yeah,

00:03:51 Bartosz Wieliński: I'm referring to, and doesn't mean that you are superpower. Superpower is something more than a super strength, and there's more questions. While the power mongers in Pentagon and Department of War [as spoken] [as spoken] would laugh on that, but you need to be moral, you need to be credible, you need to have allies and friends and supporters, and America lost both. Does the

00:04:14 Andrew Keen: Suicide of a superpower mean you quoted Timothy Snyder on that? Tim's been on the show before. What do you mean by that?

00:04:24 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, I understand it like deliberately harming yourself, because well, Donald Trump didn't have to start a trade war with other countries, of course. There are issues, serious issues in the commercial exchange between us and other partners, but you could discuss a lot of things. There are ways diplomacy knows that, and partners, and foreign partners, they understood the situation, and you could discuss it, not to impose decisions, which were in the end harmful, not for harmful, not for Europeans, but harmful for UN citizens. You should have, you should have here better, you should have had better advisors than Benjamin Netanyahu, in case of Middle East, and all those, you know, spiritually obsessed people who pushed Americans for this senseless escalation, US started. War with Iran without having strategic objectives. What were the objectives of bombing the Iran? Nobody knows about it. Nobody heard about nobody had Trump saying what his objective in Iran was. Probably he assumed that when he captured Maduro he could do the same thing with Khamenei, but this strategy failed in the first, you know, few days of this, of this confrontation. Americans had a lot of friends in the world, had a lot of influence. US aid was a powerful tool of so-called soft power, of persuading people from other countries to values like democracy, rule of law, freedom of the media. Americans could, could have changed a lot, could they, could make a difference in the countries where democracy and respect towards human rights is not, not a certain thing. And they deliberately destroyed the system, saying we need to save money, not the best invested US money ever in growing democracy and fostering democracy in countries like, like, like Moldova, like Bosnia, like, well, countries in some countries in Africa and in Asia, where there's still chances that there won't be a pure dictatorship, and the simply, simply, simply destroy that. And well, the NATO is the same thing. NATO was extremely profitable investment for the US, because NATO was protecting the US only time when the Article Five was summoned. Article Five, which determines our collective defense that says that not assault attack against one party is attack against all, and it was, it was used only once after the September 11 terrorist attack in 2001 Europeans rushed to help to support the US. Now that Trump is saying that we are not helping, that we are using American resources, which is bullshit, I believe. And the problem with NATO is that if Americans would leave NATO or cripple NATO, there's no way back. They would lose Europe. They lose their influence in Europe. They will lose the position in Europe. I get the feeling that some, you know, there are some very rich and very powerful people in the US connected to the big techs who believe that they could reshape.

00:08:10 Andrew Keen: This is the Silicon Valley crowd, the Peter Thiels, and yeah,

00:08:14 Bartosz Wieliński: They believe that they could reshape the way the politics being made through the platforms that could influence way the way people behave through technology, they could create some kind of new technological ligature, they could just reverse development of politics and society back in the times before the Enlightenment. They called it dark enlightenment. They want to well reshape it, and we in Europe, we reject that, and we will defend our societies against the influence

00:08:53 Andrew Keen: You've lived through two particularly dark periods in the 20th century, of course, war, the invasion of Nazi Germany, and then colonization by Soviet Russia, is this the third disaster in Poland's modern history?

00:09:14 Bartosz Wieliński: No, no, disaster happened, hopefully. So I'd say this is a well time of opportunity. Each crisis is an opportunity, and well, in Europe we are, we are forming something new. Also, it's not just the Thiel and Musk, they want to reshape things. We in Europe also want to shape the way that Europe is being run. We are in the middle of creating a new European state that will have its own rules and that will run in a way that each member of European Union will be respected within his sovereignty and laws, and so on, but we are creating a new structure, new political, economical, and also military structure in Europe, and Trump's policy is an opportunity to hasten up that project, so I believe that we can speak of any disaster, but of accelerated evolution of Europeans, and looking at the history of my country, those disasters from the past learned us that we need to have allies, we need to be strong together. It, and we need to have allies at the credible, the allies sold us to the Soviet Union after World War Two, and the Americans did that together with Britain and the French

00:10:42 Andrew Keen: At the altar,

00:10:43 Bartosz Wieliński: And the altar before, before Yalta, the Herman Conference, so, so this is that the lesson from the history that you need to be strong enough to defend yourself, and you have to be strong not to be, you know, imposed of any political decision above your head, but being part of the beginning of European countries also guarantees you that your security will be won't be affected by anyone from the outside, so that's why I wouldn't say that we have a disaster, we have a problem, we have a crisis and a crisis opportunity, and that could be a beginning of European Golden Age,

00:11:26 Andrew Keen: And if this is indeed a crisis of opportunity or crisis with opportunity in the beginning of what you call a European golden age. What kind of relations could you imagine having with the United States?

00:11:40 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, we'd like to have as close relation as we could, and if we could return,

00:11:45 Andrew Keen: It's like an ex, it's like after a divorce, everyone always says, well, I have decent relations with my ex-wife,

00:11:51 Bartosz Wieliński: But we hopefully we didn't divorce yet, so we are still

00:11:58 Andrew Keen: Listening to you. It sounds as if, at least from your point of view, the marriage is over.

00:12:05 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, the marriage is over because the Yanks have gone crazy [as spoken; unclear]. Maybe there's a therapy, maybe the new elections in two years will change a lot, or not, but still, this is a moment. Well, this is not a Trumpist to say that Europe must take more responsibility. We heard that from George W. Bush, we heard that from Obama, we heard that from Biden. So this is not about Trump. The US has capacities of the US has limits, and it's also a shame, and it's been a shame that Europe couldn't produce ammunition for artillery to sustain, you know, a few weeks of heavy fire exchange, so we were living, we have no illusions towards Russia since 2014 when they started annexation of Crimea, but in the same time we didn't take after to look after increasing production of you know, essential war materials, so that was a shame. The shame is that we don't have a European arm industry, though. Well, now restarting it is a shame that many decisions in foreign policy in European Union require, you know, unanimity of our members that we can't, you know, change the rules that the community is having, and the decisions are forging a common decision is a nightmare. So, there are many problems we face, but I'd say that the best way would be to reconcile with the US, and even in couples in crisis, the reconciliation and therapy is possible, and maybe this is that, that would be a good point, good starter, but we don't know what the Americans want, because when you look at, when you listen to people who give advice to Donald Trump, you have, you could have an impression that those guys, they want to establish an authoritarian rule in the US, that they want to cripple check and balance, they are fed up with democracy, and they would like to rule through to algorithm and to have really authoritarian, what does

00:14:32 Andrew Keen: That mean? Roll through algorithm.

00:14:34 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, you have a society, everybody has an access to social platforms, and the algorithm could choose and promote only that messages that you approve. You are right-wing conservative, and on the social platforms you control. The readers get only conservative voices, and the liberals and the left, which are being, you know, silenced through the algorithm. Artificial intelligence could well adjust, could analyze the posts that are being, you know, put into the networks, and simply, there's a modern censorship, and if you don't have an access to information then you, if you are deprived of the information, you can't make objective choice during the elections. We had the problem with the propaganda in the times when the PiS party ruled in Poland. The we know what censorship is, because it was fundamental of communist rule in Poland. So we also need the consequences. The other problem, because it's another one way, it's another one, one way imposing such limits to the free exchange prolog autocrats is that at one point they start to believe in their own propaganda, and that's beginning of despotism [as spoken; unclear], but well, this is not the situation we have the US, they just plan it, but if US would become an authoritarian state, there is no way we could be to get on the same boat.

00:16:11 Andrew Keen: What happens if the Democrats win the 2020 2028 election, and whoever is the next president apologizes to Europe and said, look,

00:16:21 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, we don't

00:16:22 Andrew Keen: Believe in Trump, and we want it's rather like a husband and wife, and let's get back to the old relationship, is that possible,

00:16:32 Bartosz Wieliński: Partially, for sure, but only partially, because the other problem is this new consciousness of Europeans, the feeling of their strength, feeling of the unity. Well, EU is in the middle of crystallization of creating, you know, new structures that bind us stronger together, and do we have different Europe than in 2016 and different Europe than in 2020 24 So, so I think that partially, of course, nobody would require us to apologize for the thing, but well, there will be some in the lack of confidence, but of course you could work hard and the confidence will be back, but I think that's well, we enthusiastically supported Joe Biden when he was back, and there was no serious frictions between us and him and his leadership during the Ukraine war, when the war broke out, was fundamental, because Europeans were not ready to handle that crisis and that problem, and well, we need the change to happen as soon as possible.

00:17:54 Andrew Keen: Do you speak, though, as I said, you're the Deputy Editor in Chief of the New York Times, or the Polish equivalent of the New York Times, the Gazeta Wyborcza? But do you speak on behalf of progressive Poland? What about Conservative Poland, populist Poland, they agree with you.

00:18:13 Bartosz Wieliński: I think that populist Poland wouldn't agree with me at nothing, simply. I don't think because Donald Trump symbolizes that new, this new approach to politics, and they still believe in him. He symbolizes those desire to make things better, to get rid of politicians who they believe are all corrupt and powerless, to get use of the European Union, which they believe as a source of red tape and, you know, bureaucracy and Polish populists, they believe they are chosen people. That's funny. We have this very strong messianic religious element here. The same with, like, with the MAGA in the US, and they also believe that Poles are destined to be special allies to the US. Poland should be the Israel of Central Europe. That was the dream of some, some territories of the foreign policy never happens, and that could impair the thinking toward Donald Trump, but the other problem is Donald Trump is hugely unlike in Poland, like in other countries in Europe, although the support for dislike, disliked, yeah, hated, even well, hated, no, but disliked, they're not trusted, and this is enough. If you don't trust us, President decades of this worshiping of the US ended, and I think that Donald Trump will be weaker and weaker, and the final blow will be dealt in during the midterms in November. So the thing I can't understand is why the populists still keep on supporting him and keep on asking him for support despite the evident loss of political power that he has.

00:20:09 Andrew Keen: How has Ukraine changed all this, but Russia,

00:20:13 Bartosz Wieliński: In which sense? What you mean?

00:20:15 Andrew Keen: Well, the success, perhaps, of Ukraine, or relative success in resisting Putin's Russia, has that given the rest of Europe and Poland the confidence to fight back against superpowers?

00:20:27 Bartosz Wieliński: Actually, if I. Ukraine have failed, and really was conquered within three days, within a week, and that was pronounced by even by the US intelligence agencies. That would have mean that we'd have tanks at our border, and Belarus would become a part of Russia, which is evident, and Moldova probably also would be invaded, would have been invaded, so we would have terrible, terrible existential crisis on our borders, not to speak about, you know, millions of refugees and provocations, and so on, but Ukrainians saved us, that they are fighting for our freedom. Also, they're protecting us from Russia dying in order to protect the Europe from Russians, and we need to be grateful for them and support them as much as we, as much we can, and the support for Ukraine is dwindling in Europe, which I feel is a bad sign, and there's also a result of Russian information on the hybrid world. Do

00:21:43 Andrew Keen: You think that there's a symmetry between relatively successful Iranian resistance to the United States, and the relatively successful Ukrainian resistance to Putin's interaction.

00:21:58 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, I wouldn't call Ukrainian resistance relatively successful, because it's quite successful. It's very successful, because Ukrainians managed to save the country, and they managed to fight back, that would be seen, the bombing, the mass missile attacks against Russia, targets inside Russia, and deep inside Russia. This is a very successful campaign, and Ukrainians claiming back the land slowly. Now, the future of Crimea is unsure after all those strikes and cutting off the communication of this peninsula, that will be an interesting development to observe. So, I wouldn't say that they're relatively successful, and the other thing is, you can't compare Iran to Ukraine, Iran is a dictatorship, Ukraine is still a democracy, and there's no genocide, and no pressure towards our citizens in Ukraine. The only similar thing we just say is military planning of the opponents, both Putin and Trump and Netanyahu. They believe they could conquer a huge country within a week, and they both failed. Putin has a clear objective, political objective he wanted to achieve. He wanted to have a Russian flag over Kyiv, and to have at least to have a conquered country, puppet country, or something like that, or just incorporate Ukraine to Russia as another republic. Trump has no politically political objective in Iran, and the thing is, I still can't understand why the Americans wanted this, this, this war? I can understand why the Iranians wanted it, but sorry, I can't understand why Israelis wanted to have it, but why Americans joined them. This lunacy is a pure lunacy, and well, I think that war in Ukraine has no such global impact like war in Iran. Well, even in Poland, if you go to the petrol station, you see how high the price of petrol is, and the problem of deliveries of the deal in the price of oil is significant for everybody, and I don't see this war to be settled, despite all those declarations by Donald Trump. The situation is unclear still, and I don't think that Iranians could win with the US, and pretty sure the Ukrainians one day will win over Russia, and Russia will pay a heavy price for that, for all the crimes they commit. When you say Ukraine will win over Russia, what does that mean? Well, that would mean that Russia will be forced to withdraw the forces, or at least to freeze the conflict of the best solution to say it, well, the less positive scenario I have is to freeze the conflict along the front line, which would mean that Russia will have to deal with a lot of, you know. Internal problems afterwards, demobilization of troops crippled the economy, demographical change. They lost, you know, a few 100 1000s of people. Some of them are heavily wounded invalids. They are disabled people, without hands, without legs, without ice victims of severe traumas, they won't be able to sustain it, and even if it's restart selling gas and oil, they wouldn't be able to deal with such a violence, but the best scenario I see this possible, that Ukrainians would reclaim some taken lands, and that they could simply start some offensives against Russian territory, like they did two years ago, and those bombing campaigns against targets in Russia also shows that they have mustered technology. Probably nobody ever mustered, and they're extremely effective with using that, and this is not the last word, because they still develop new means to harm Russians. Let's just look, the Black Sea Fleet doesn't exist anymore. It's not only the cruiser Moskva that was sunk, but a lot of different vessels, which are simply hidden inside the ports and protected by nests and nets and other measures to save them in case of Ukrainian attack, and well, yeah, Ukraine has all the cards using a transmitter for to win the war,

00:27:26 Andrew Keen: But as you've said that the new division in politics isn't between left and right, or socialists and free market people. It's between Democrats and anti-democrats. You see it in Poland, you

00:27:39 Bartosz Wieliński: Absolutely,

00:27:40 Andrew Keen: You know a lot about Germany, where your papers, the former correspondent there. Do you see that everywhere? There's this division between Democrats and anti-democrats,

00:27:52 Bartosz Wieliński: Yeah, but we see that well, 20 years ago, as is the German example, 20 years ago when I arrived the first time in German as a correspondent was before the elections to the Bundestag in 2005 and biggest party, so the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats, together they have more than almost 70% of votes. It was huge, each party gathered 35 34% of votes. Now the Christian Democratic party is has a support of 20% social democratic party has a support of I don't know 15 or 17% and the AFD, the populist right wing party has almost 30% so that shows that democratic parties became smaller, and in order to play any role in the country, they need to reunite. They need to create a coalition, coalition that has more than one, more than two or two members. And in Germany, it will be like, well, like it is in Poland, the AfD from the one side enemy of the democratic democracy and the rest that will join forces to fight for democracy, something we have in Poland, we have a coalition that is well colorful from right to left, which supports democracy, wants to mend Polish democracy, crippled after eight years of PiS government, and the PiS was strong and anti-democratic, and other two other non-democratic parties that try to establish their own coalition in and try to win next presidential elections. You have the same problem in Austria when you have very strong far-right party called FPÖ, the Freedom Party of Austria, and smaller parties from left to right that oppose those right wing policies the same situation you could have in France, but France is another problem that among the enemies of democracy there is also a far left party France Insoumise led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon. And we have the there's a theory of the horseshoe, I'm using the correct term, horseshoe, yeah, that's, you know, at the ends of the horseshoe, the ends of the horseshoe are close together, you know, the far right and far left at the end of the horseshoe, and they are close together. That means that they far right and far left could work together in order to, they have some common goals, like, you know, reshaping the state system in order to dismantle democracy, as we, as we, as we know it. So that's a specific situation, and you have the same

00:31:12 Andrew Keen: Situation in Poland.

00:31:15 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, in Poland, we don't have strong far left, but well, there is some far left in Poland, and I see that they're also willing to fight with Democrats. They believe the methods are not radical enough, and so on, but still this Popperian division between supporters of open society and enemies of open society is still there, and it's very actual, and that means also that politicians should stop thinking along the party lines only, they need to have a big picture, and to think on the state, on the stake. There is, because the stake is huge. The stake is the future of democratic society. If they fail, the populist enemies of the democracy will take over, and one stop democracy is destroyed. It's crippled. We've seen that. Hungary, how far they could go. We've seen that in Turkey, which is not democracy anymore.

00:32:16 Andrew Keen: Hungary is in a much better shape now than Turkey.

00:32:20 Bartosz Wieliński: Well, of course, because that lasted only 16 years, and the country is smaller. And well, in the European Union, you have fundamental open borders. If you don't like the government, if you don't like the way the country is being run, you just could just move from Hungary to Austria, from Hungary to Germany, from Hungary to Poland. We have this internal immigration, which is being, you know, well, not enforced, but it's possible to just to go to pack your stuff and go. I don't like Victor Orban. I moved to somewhere else. You can't move from Turkey anywhere. You need to stay there, because if you move from Hungary to Germany, you could work in Germany. Nobody could say that there's no work for you because you're Hungarian. You could send your school to German school, and you could pay your taxes in Germany, and there would be a problem with that. That's that's European Union, and that's also well provoked, that this regime wasn't too, too restrictive in terms of, you know, some martial things. They can't simply, they didn't harm people like, like, like talks to, but of course, anger is in better shape than talking in terms of democracy, but, but still, the damage done is terrible.

00:33:45 Andrew Keen: Bartosz, let's end with your message to Americans. What, what's. You can't speak, of course, on behalf of Poland, let alone Europe,

00:33:54 Bartosz Wieliński: Hopefully,

00:33:54 Andrew Keen: But what is your message to Americans in terms of the damage that's been done? I'm not sure all Americans quite understand the level of distrust and anger and disappointment that you and some of your fellow journalists we spent the afternoon talking about it feel and presumably also many of your readers

00:34:18 Bartosz Wieliński: I'd say guys do anything in order not to lose Europe because if those bridges are burned if those bridges are destroyed between Europe and US, that'll be hard to rebuild. So, so wake up, and you have still a lot of friends in Europe. We still want to believe in America as land of promise and the land of freedom. Well, don't, don't destroy that, what? Well, that's the damage that you fostered for so many, for so many years. Trump will be gone sooner or later. So, so let's ensure that he wouldn't be able to destroy that was crucial and essential for us. That's my message.

00:35:10 Andrew Keen: There you have it. Bartosz Wieliński, the Deputy Editor in Chief of Gazeta Wyborcza. His message to the United States, or to Americans, is wake up,

00:35:24 Bartosz Wieliński: Wake up,

00:35:25 Andrew Keen: Wake up, everyone. Thank you so much, Bartosz, for and in big. Rating, not all Americans would be happy, I think, with what you said, but it's certainly not - you're not putting your punches. Thank you so much.

00:35:38 Bartosz Wieliński: Thank you. Okay.

00:35:41 Andrew Keen: Hi, this is Andrew again. Thank you so much for listening or watching the show. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe. We're on Substack, YouTube, Apple, Spotify, all the platforms, and I'd be very curious as to your comments as well on what you think of the show, how it can be improved, and the kinds of guests that you would enjoy hearing or listening to in future. Thank you

00:36:07 Unknown Speaker: Again, you