Freedom fighter. (Working lunch: wisdom ... is social. She seeks her fellows--Thomas Jefferson).(Polish politician Radek Sikorski)(Interview)

Radek Sikorski, a snappily dressed Polish citizen who speaks English better than most Americans, heads the New Atlantic Initiative, a project that encourages free trade between the U.S. and the European Union, military cooperation, and strengthening of the new democracies in central Europe. Prior to arriving at the American Enterprise Institute earlier this year Sikorski traveled with the mujahedin in Aghanistan, wrote two well-received books, and served as deputy defense minister in one of Poland's first post-Communist governments. He later served as Poland's Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. He hasn't yet celebrated h is fortieth birthday. Sikorski is married to prominent British journalist Anne Applebaum, author of the forthcoming book The Gulag. One of his personal projects has been restoring a Polish manor house called Chobielin.

TAE: How long did it take you to buy Chobielin?

SIKORSKI: Years and years. It was in still-communist Poland then. We were one of the first families to do something with the intention of restoring a piece of Polish culture. The house and the land it sat on cost $1,200, the value of a small car (which was a great luxury then). It was a ruin, of course. My goal was to return it to a state where people would say, "Gosh, somehow communism didn't penetrate to this remote place, and this thing was saved." You want to feel rooted in the land, and there we do.

TAE: Are Poles beginning to think of themselves as part of Western Europe?

SIKORSKI: We feel we never left Western Europe. We were wrenched out of Western Europe by Stalin and the Red Army with the cooperation of the allies; a tragedy. Politically, the Second World War ended for us in the 1990s. That was when we rejoined the family of nations we feel we've always belonged to. Western European culture without Chopin or Copernicus is unimaginable. Poland was a democracy in the eighteenth century when absolute monarchy was the fashion of the day. TAE: What are your thoughts on the European Union? SIKORSKI: The E.U. needs to become more transparent, it needs to become more democratic. It needs to clearly define the responsibilities of nation states and of the central E.U. government. Many people are afraid of ever-closer union, ...