This study intends to explain why the United States led entirely different policies towards Poland, Ukraine and Belarus under circumstances where realist theory would predict otherwise. Realism being an “environment based theory”, it would indeed predict a state to lead highly similar foreign policies under identical conditions. Yet, within the overall context of managing unipolarity, the US has clearly led different policies toward these three countries from the demise of the Soviet Union to the end of the second Bush Administration (i.e., in the years 1989 to 2008). In seeking to explain that puzzle, this study follows a path hitherto neglected by neoclassical realist scholarship: a strong emphasis on the bilateral dimension in all foreign policies. Poland, Ukraine and Belarus are friendly, undecided and non-friendly states, respectively, as seen from a Washington perspective. What type of power resources seems appropriate in addressing them is likely to depend on this status. The study subsequently shows that different types of power resources or “base values” underlie the various foreign policy tools employed with respect to the studied countries. For that reason, it argues that perceptions of states’ friend, non-friend or undecided statuses should be considered an element of the missing link neoclassical realists identified between states’ power resources and their foreign policy output.

Au lendemain de la fin de la Guerre froide (1989), la Pologne se retrouve dans un environnement géopolitique radicalement modifié, qui l’oblige à redéfinir sa politique étrangère. Dès le début des années quatre-vingt-dix, Varsovie s’emploie à bâtir un «consensus atlantiste» dont l’objectif ultime, au travers d’un rapprochement croissant des Etats-Unis, est d’adhérer à l’OTAN (1999). Ces liens étroits entre Washington et Varsovie suscitent une certaine suspicion en Europe occidentale au point que certains n’hésitent pas à voir en la Pologne, le cheval de Troie des Etats-Unis, un rôle illustré par des faits très concrets comme l’achat, par les autorités polonaises, de 48 avions de chasse et, surtout, l’engagement sans réserve de leurs troupes aux côtés des Américains dès le début de la guerre en Irak (2003). Après avoir retracé l’évolution des relations polono-américaines depuis 1989, l’auteur s’interroge sur le bien-fondé de ce rôle imputé à la Pologne, considérant que ce qualificatif demande à être fortement nuancé en raison d’une certaine déception manifestée par Varsovie à l’endroit de «son plus fidèle ami» comme des réticences américaines à considérer la Pologne comme un acteur essentiel de la scène européenne, au même titre, par exemple, que la Grande-Bretagne

Polish-American Relations since 1989 Is Warsaw the United States’ Trojan Horse? Shortly after the end of the cold war (1989), Poland found itself in a radically modified geopolitical environment which obliged it to redefine its foreign policy. In the beginning of the nineties, Warsaw was busy building an “Atlantic consensus”, moving closer to the United States in order to gain NATO membership (1999). These close links between Washington and Warsaw caused some suspicion in Western Europe to the extent that some readily see Poland as the United States’ Trojan Horse, a role given credence by concrete facts, such as the Polish government’s purchase of 48 fighter planes and, in particular, its unreserved deployment of troops on the side of the Americans at the beginning of the Iraq war (2003). After evoking the development of Polish-American relations since 1989, the author of this article questions the validity of the role attributed to Poland, considering that this might require substantial reconsideration in the wake of Warsaw’s disappointment over its “best friend’s” hesitancy to consider Poland an essential player on the European scene on the same basis as, for example, Great Britain