Radosław Sikorski

Infobox Officeholder
name = Radosław Tomasz Sikorski

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imagesize =
small

caption =
order = Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland
term_start = November 16, 2007
term_end =
vicepresident =
viceprimeminister =
deputy =
president = Lech Kaczyński
primeminister = Donald Tusk
predecessor = Anna Fotyga
successor =
order2 = Minister of National Defense of the Republic of Poland
term_start2 = October 31, 2005
term_end2 = February 7, 2007
vicepresident2 =
viceprimeminister2 =
deputy2 =
president2 = Aleksander Kwaśniewski, Lech Kaczyński
primeminister2 = Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz, Jarosław Kaczyński
predecessor2 = Jerzy Szmajdziński
successor2 = Aleksander Szczygło
order3 = Senator from 4 Bydgoszcz district
term_start3 = 2005
term_end3 = 2007
Alongside: Kosma Złotowski
vicepresident3 =
viceprimeminister3 =
deputy3 =
president3 =
primeminister3 =
predecessor3 =
successor3 =
birth_date = birth date and age|1963|02|23
birth_place = Bydgoszcz, Poland
death_date =
death_place =
constituency =
party = Law and Justice (2005-2007)
Civic Platform (2007-)
spouse = Anne Applebaum
profession = Journalist
religion = Roman Catholic


footnotes =

Radosław Tomasz "Radek" ["Radek" is a diminutive of Radosław.] Sikorski (pronounced|raˈdɔswaf ˈtɔmaʃ (ˈradɛk) ɕiˈkɔrskʲi) (born 23 February 1963 in Bydgoszcz), is a conservative Polish politician and journalist. Currently he is the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Poland.

Sikorski was much involved in the Solidarity unrest in the late 1970s, and chaired the student strike committee in Bydgoszcz in March 1981. Stranded in Britain when martial law was declared in his homeland in December 1981, he studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Pembroke College, University of Oxford. While at Oxford he was a member of the infamous all-male dining society The Bullingdon Club, whose members then included the current leader of the British Conservative Party David Cameron. He then worked as a freelance journalist. In 1984, he took British citizenship. In the mid-1980s, Sikorski worked as a war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola. For a photograph taken in Afghanistan he won the World Press Photo prize in 1988. From 1990 he was an advisor to Rupert Murdoch on investments in Poland.

Returning to Poland, in 1992 he briefly became deputy defence minister in the Jan Olszewski government. From 1998 to 2001 he served as deputy minister of foreign affairs in the Jerzy Buzek government. During the latter appointment, Sikorski became notorious in the Polish expatriate community, Polonia, for designing and promoting a particularly strict policy regarding Polonia's citizenship status in Poland. [ [http://cafe.wp.pl/zapis.html?id_czata=388 Wirtualna Polska: Radek Sikorski] , Internet Chat Transcript from April 11, 2001] [ [http://arch.rzeczpospolita.pl/a/rz/2003/11/20031119/200311190138.html?k=on;t=2003111920031119 Rzeczpospolita, Spór o wizy i paszporty] , Nov 19, 2003] As a result of that policy, Poland refused to recognize the acquired citizenships of Polish emigrants, including hundreds of thousands of recent refugees from Communism and their children, and insisted that they be subject to all obligations of Polish citizenship, while at the same time making it impossible to renounce such citizenship because of an extremely cumbersome administrative procedure. This policy became known as the "passport trap" because it was mainly implemented as harassment of departing travellers (primarily citizens of the United States, Canada, and Australia) who were prevented from leaving Poland until they obtain a Polish passport. [ [http://www.voyage.gc.ca/dest/report-en.asp?country=241000 Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada: Travel Report, Poland] , accessed on Feb. 5, 2007]

From 2002 to 2005 he was a resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative. He returned to government in Poland as Minister of National Defence in 2005. He resigned on February 5, 2007 allegedly due to conflicts with the Polish PM Jaroslaw Kaczynski and the chief of military intelligence Antoni Macierewicz.

He left the Law and Justice parliamentary club on September 12, 2007 and joined the main opposition Civic Platform party as its main candidate to the Sejm in the 2007 parliamentary election from Bydgoszcz. [ [http://www.live-pr.com/en/former-polish-defense-minister-sikorski-defects-r1048143358.htm
] , Sep 12, 2007] Following the election, he became Minister of Foreign Affairs under Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

He is married to the American journalist and historian Anne Applebaum; they have two children, Aleksander and Tadeusz. He owns a manor in Chobielin.

Sikorski is a pro-American politician, believing that that cooperation between the two countries can lead to the modernization of Poland's military. However, he is a strong supporter of Poland's membership in the European Union. He is a strong supporter of a decentralized state, free market economy, and social conservatism.

On August 20, 2008, Sikorski, the government's point man on missile defense, signed a missile defense agreement with Condoleezza Rice of the United States over the vociferous objections of Russia. The agreement came less than two weeks after the breakout of the 2008 South Ossetian war in Georgia.cite news|title=New York Times: Eyeing Georgia, Poland Expresses Worry|url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/world/europe/21poland.html|first=Nicholas|last=Kulish|source=New York Times|date=August 21, 2008|access date=August 21, 2008] "Parchments and treaties are all very well," Sikorski said, "but we have a history in Poland of fighting alone and being left to our own devices by our allies."

In 1990, Sikorski published a book about the Soviet-Afghan War entitled "Prochy świętych" ("Dust of the Saints"). In 2007, Polish journalist Łukasz Warzecha published an interview with Sikorski in book form titled "Strefa zdekomunizowana" ("The Decommunized zone").

References

External links

* [http://www.pentagon.gov/photos/Dec2005/051207-D-2987S-040.html Pentagon]
* [http://www.pljournal.com/politics/missile-diplomacy-radek-sikorski-interview.html Interview with Radek Sikorski in PLUS Journal]
* [http://www.fletcher.tufts.edu/forum/archives/pdfs/32-1pdfs/Sikorski.pdf Interview with Radek Sikorski in Fletcher Forum of World Affairs]
* [http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/podcast_details.php?podcast_id=93 NATO's Past, Present and Future] Speech before the Chicago Council on Global Affairs