Lech Walesa urges the U.S. to retake its leadership post
After the Cold War ended 30 years ago, Europe closed the door on an era of division and entered a new era of peace and integration, one with a future centered around intellectual labor, information, and globalization. But the resulting disruption in job markets, economic inequities, and disputes over migrant labor across Europe have made it apparent that to move forward and not regress, the political, governmental, and economic structures of the past will need “remodeling, even democracy,” said renowned activist Lech Walesa on Monday evening at the Harvard Kennedy School. During a talk on the evolution of post-Communist Europe, the former electrician who led the historic labor uprising in Soviet-controlled Poland in the 1980s worried about how that “remodeling” will get done without substantial U.S. participation. He recalled the period after World War II when the U.S. “used to be the leader for the world,” the “Good Empire” to Communism’s...