Pope’s Visit to Poland Could Ease U.S.-Soviet Tensions

John Paul II will make his third papal visit to Poland next week. Each of his previous visits, although primarily religious, has demonstrated characteristics that are specifically political. The third trip, like its predecessors, will reflect the states of both Polish church-state relations and Soviet-American competition.

John Paul’s first papal visit in June, 1979, helped inspire the formation of Solidarity 14 months later. Poles, who were hopeless about any political or social change, discovered the strength of their numbers in the euphoric homecoming of “the world’s most famous Pole.”

The second papal visit in June, 1983, constituted a national referendum on the proclamation of martial law in December, 1981. The Pope was adamant in calling for a return to the pre-martial law principles of August, 1980. He saved his first use of the word solidarity for 750,000 young people at Czestochowa and his first direct mention of the banned union for 1.2 million workers and their families in the steel-producing city of Katowice.

The Pope was so successful, in fact, that toward the end of the visit he and the Polish bishops feared that the Polish leader, Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, might have suffered irreparable damage, thus playing into the hands of Soviet and Polish hard-liners. John Paul met Jaruzelski publicly a second time at Krakow’s Wawel Castle, a historic symbol of Polish nationalism, while his meeting with Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was downplayed as a private affair.

While John Paul can demonstrate the complete lack of popular legitimacy of the Polish United Workers Party, he cannot constitute a new political, social and economic order. The first papal visit did not save Solidarity from martial law or guarantee its gains. The second visit did not produce political legitimacy, social unity or reconstruction of an economy mismanaged and burdened with debt by the previous government.

What is likely to be the political character of this third papal visit? An optimist might point to renewed possibilities for some national unity and the beginning of economic reform and reconstruction. This theme can be seen in John Paul’s impromptu address after an unprecedented 70-minute meeting with Jaruzelski at the Vatican on Jan. 13, 1987. The Pope expressed the wish that this “historic” meeting would bring about the “desired results for Poland and for Europe.”

The Jesuit-educated Polish general had come to Italy for his first official visit to the West since martial law was imposed and to meet with Italian business executives, especially Fiat president Giovanni Agnelli. Italy had refused to consider receiving Jaruzelski until the Polish government’s amnesty of political prisoners in September, 1986.

While domestic politics are significant, it has been the changes in Soviet-American relations that have produced the political “window of opportunity” for the third papal visit.

When I visited Warsaw in the summer of 1984, a leading Polish Catholic politician told me that since either superpower could scuttle any domestic Polish initiative, any definitive settlement of Polish domestic estrangement would have to await the return of Soviet-American detente . While few analysts are currently forecasting a return to the halcyon years of SALT I, the superpowers did begin talking again in early 1985, and substantive discussions concerning arms control are at least taking place.

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev has called for economic reform in his country, has invigorated the Soviet Union’s foreign policy and has formed a strong political bond with Jaruzelski. Indeed, official relations between Moscow and Warsaw are better than at any time during the last 25 years. The Soviet leader and the Pope both want a meeting in the Soviet Union to celebrate the millennium of Russian Christianity in 1988.

Non-Poles can only await the outcome of the papal visit and subsequent church-state negotiations within the country. If these go well, however, it would be unfortunate if Washington refused to support the resulting political and economic arrangements. While American leverage is definitely limited, Western and Eastern European perceptions of American hostility would sink any accords, just as would Soviet non-participation.

Such an American veto would lead to even greater hardship for Poles, and it would damage the prospects for peace in Europe. Soviet-American relations not only condition Polish domestic politics; the national unity and economic reconstruction of Poland could greatly advance Soviet-American understanding as well.

This is the political vision of John Paul II, who believes that the road between Washington and Moscow could lead through Krakow and Kiev. Thus his visit to Jaruzelski next week could not only foster greater Polish unity and socioeconomic reconstruction but could also narrow the differences between Ronald Reagan and Gorbachev.