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U.S. dollars wooed ally in Iraq coalition
Poland's military support, warplane deal coincided; $3.5 billion purchase of
F-16s; Bargain included sending American business there
By Robert Little
Sun National Staff
Originally published October 17, 2004
U.S. dollars wooed ally in Iraq coalition
As the Bush administration scrambled last year to pull together a "coalition
of the willing" to wage a war in Iraq, it simultaneously negotiated and
financed an unprecedented multibillion-dollar arms deal with Poland - a
compact that promises to funnel at least $6 billion in U.S. investments into
the former Warsaw Pact nation, which has become one of the United States'
primary wartime supporters.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have criticized Democratic
presidential candidate John Kerry in recent days for suggesting that the
administration used financial inducements to assemble its coalition, calling
his comments an insult to a country like Poland, which dispatched 2,500
troops to fight alongside Americans in Iraq.
But the record shows that early last year, the United States brought the full
force of its powerful economy to bear on prospective military allies,
offering more than $4 billion in an unsuccessful attempt to gain the
allegiance of Turkey and helping to negotiate Poland's $3.5 billion purchase
of 48 F-16 fighter planes from Bethesda-based Lockheed Martin Corp.
The Polish deal also included more than $6 billion in U.S. business
investment that Lockheed promised to channel into Poland, an
economic "offset" that caused Polish officials to call the purchase "the deal
of the century."
Although perhaps not rising to meet Kerry's contention before the war that
the United States formed a "coalition of the bribed, the coerced, the bought
and the extorted" in Iraq, the type of economic incentives won by Poland were
called "economic bribes" this year by Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, the
Republican chairman of the House Armed Services Committee.
Troop withdrawal
Poland's allegiance seemed shakier Friday, when Prime Minister Marek Belka
said that his country will start withdrawing its troops - the fourth-largest
contingent in Iraq - early next year.
The announcement came weeks after Polish officials complained that the F-16
deal is not producing as much U.S. investment as they anticipated, though
they have long denied any relationship between the deal and the troops.
Seventeen Polish troops have been killed in Iraq, and Polish public opinion
has been anti-war from the start of hostilities. Eight other members of the
coalition, including Spain and the Philippines, have withdrawn their troops.
At the very least, the fine print to Poland's mammoth weapons deal
illustrates the benefits - both political and economic - enjoyed by a country
that chose to fight beside the United States.
The deal, which allows Poland to defer payments for eight years and then
begin repayments at below-market interest rates, has fostered such trans-
Atlantic ventures as building General Motors cars in Gliwice, manufacturing
U.S. Army explosives in Bydgoszcz and, after the intervention of the Federal
Aviation Administration, selling Polish airplanes in southern Florida.
High-level support
"Lockheed didn't win the contract, the U.S. government did, with pressure and
support coming from the very highest levels," said Gregory Filipowicz, a
defense industry consultant who lives in Poland and has helped arrange at
least two of Lockheed's "offset" investment deals related to the F-16
contract.
"They created a program that, politically and economically, was very hard to
say no to," Filipowicz said.
"As for the deeper political motives, of course, we'll never know what was
said in the back rooms," he said.
Polish officials say that their political ties to the United States are
unwavering and that their decision to participate in the war was unaffected
by their economic interests.
"Our decisions were not taken on the basis of tactical considerations,"
Foreign Minister Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz said last month during a speech at
Columbia University. "We were not calculating what we can win from this or
that choice.
"We did not expect to make political profits or economic gains. The decision
to support the invasion of Iraq was mainly based on our understanding of the
true meaning of alliance and solidarity."
Still, Cimoszewicz said, they appreciate the benefits - political, economic
and otherwise - of forging a military partnership with the United States.
"The Polish support to the military action against Saddam Hussein and our
role in the stabilization process in Iraq gained us true friends in
Washington," Cimoszewicz said. "Although these decisions in Poland were not
easy to take, they proved to be the right ones."
Poland's interest in fighter aircraft predates the war in Iraq, as does
Lockheed Martin's interest in Poland. Both engaged in an eight-year courtship
as Polish officials debated which of the world's fighter planes suited their
needs, and which of Poland's budding political alliances - with the European
Union or NATO - they most needed to nurture.
The U.S. government also has long taken an interest in which fighter plane
Poland would buy, hoping to secure the former Soviet-bloc nation's allegiance
to NATO. The purchase of such expensive and dangerous hardware as an F-16 is
more than a simple arms deal; it is a decades-long commitment to a weapons
platform, whose support networks and spare-parts chains all lead back to the
United States.
Lockheed got U.S. help
By the time Poland signed its contract to buy F-16s on April 18 last year - a
day when Polish commandos were operating alongside Navy SEALS inside Iraq,
and American troops were struggling to contain looters in central Baghdad
after the fall of Hussein's regime - Polish officials had been prodded and
encouraged at the very highest levels of the U.S. government.
Christopher Hill, then the U.S. ambassador to Poland, said he worked with
Lockheed officials every day on the project. Defense Secretary Donald H.
Rumsfeld discussed the deal with Polish leaders on a visit to Warsaw.
On Feb. 5 last year, as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell was offering
evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons programs to the United Nations, then-
Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller was in the Oval Office with Bush.
He declared on Polish radio later in the day: "It seems to me that his
evidence leaves little doubt." Hussein, he said, "must be ready to face
consequences."
The White House was not the first stop for Miller that day. He met earlier
with Lockheed Martin officials, including then-CEO Vance D. Coffman.
Backed by Congress
The deal's financing, guaranteed by Congress, was approved with similar
attention from the White House. The Bush administration had the loan
guarantee attached to a resolution approved in late 2002 that was needed to
continue operating the federal government while Congress debated the budget,
virtually assuring its prompt passage.
"We certainly think the F-16 is a superior multi-role fighter, and we were
pushing for its sale in Poland," said Jason Greer, a spokesman for the State
Department's Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. "But our interest was
related to Poland's role in NATO, not to anything else."
As far as the economic incentives to the deal, Greer said: "We just don't get
involved. That's strictly a commercial arrangement."
Economic offsets have become a standard component of most large foreign arms
deals. Buyers such as Poland often demand that in return for their purchase,
the seller coordinate some related amount of outside investment to soften the
economic impact.
Direct offsets are
