Mark Brzezinski: A difficult challenge

MARK BRZEZINSKI:

A DIFFICULT CHALLENGE FOR A DIPLOMAT

The 56-year-old son of one of the most prominent Poles in the world of American international politics is about to arrive in Warsaw as the new U.S. ambassador. There is no doubt that this will be the most difficult task in his diplomatic career.

On August 4, the White House officially announced the nomination of Mark Brzezinski to serve as ambassador to Poland. However, the nomination requires Senate approval, which may face complications, according to observers of American political life. Republican senator Ted Cruz appealed to his party colleagues to block the diplomatic appointments of Joe Biden’s administration in protest against the president’s decision to lift sanctions on companies participating in the controversial Russian-German Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. Many politicians in the U.S., Poland, Ukraine and the Baltic states warn that the approval of this project means acceptance of the Russian monopoly on delivering gas to Europe, bypassing the interests of the countries once dependent on the Soviet Union.

Some 70 candidates for diplomatic posts have been waiting for formal Senate approval, sometimes for months, and only seven have received approval so far. Cruz said he will continue his protest until the Biden administration imposes the sanctions against Nord Stream 2 AG required by Congress. It is unclear whether the blockade will extend to Brzezinski’s nomination.

Internal disputes in the American political world were not the only troubles that Brzezinski faced on his way to the Warsaw embassy. His candidacy was opposed by the Polish side, which for a long time delayed the expression of the necessary agreement.

The pretext for this attitude was that the candidate for ambassador, as the son of Zbigniew Brzezinski (a Pole by descent who never renounced his Polish citizenship) is formally a Polish citizen. According to Polish law, a person who is a Polish citizen or has the right to Polish citizenship cannot serve as a diplomat of a foreign country in Poland. Bill Clinton’s nominee for ambassador in the fall of 1993, Nicholas Andrew Rey, faced a similar problem to Brzezinski when he renounced his right to Polish citizenship.

In July, a solution was found by referring to international agreements from the communist era on avoiding dual citizenship of the then Eastern Bloc countries. Zbigniew Brzeziński, Mark’s father, was an American at the time of his birth, but also formally a Polish citizen, and his wife was a citizen of Czechoslovakia. Since parents did not indicate until he came of age whose citizenship he should have (that of his father or mother), he automatically received his mother’s citizenship.

Either way, the attitude of the Polish authorities will not make it easy for Brzezinski to get a good start at the post in Warsaw [see also page 16]. Representatives of the Polish democratic opposition from the period of the People’s

Republic of Poland [1945-1989] have always exalted to the skies the merits of his father Zbigniew, a political scientist who died in 2017, former U.S. National Security Advisor during the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a Knight of the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish decoration, years ago even considered as a candidate for the Polish presidency. Meanwhile, the attitude toward Brzezinski-junior turned out to be diametrically opposed. Some observers stress that this was an expression of the crisis visible in recent months in Polish-American relations, which few people today describe as a “special relationship” anymore.

Brzezinski is a career diplomat and political scientist. He graduated from Dartmouth College, then the University of Virginia School of Law in Charlottesville. He participated in the Fulbright program and spent time in Poland as a fellow. At Oxford University he defended his doctoral thesis titled Struggle for the Constitutionalism in Poland.

In the administration of Bill Clinton he was an adviser on Eastern European affairs from 1999 to 2001, during the presidency of George Bush he ran a private practice and lectured at Columbia University.

During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, he was an advisor to Barack Obama, and after Obama was sworn in as president, he was considered for the position of U.S. ambassador to Poland, but was eventually appointed ambassador to Sweden. He served in that position until 2015.

His two-year older brother Ian Joseph Brzezinski is an American expert on foreign policy and military affairs. He served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Europe and NATO Policy (2001-2005), under President George W. Bush.

His two years younger sister Mika is a popular journalist and television presenter for the MSNBC network.

Mark Brzezinski is fluent in Polish.

The last US ambassador to Poland was Georgette Mosbacher. She took up the post in August 2018 on the nomination of President Donald Trump. Mosbacher completed her mission in January. Until the new US ambassador to Poland arrives, US interests are represented by Bix Aliu as chargés d’affaires ad interim.

Mark Brzezinski with Lech Wałęsa