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Poland Lines of Authority
Many proposals for restructuring the armed forces
commands
suffered the same fate as those for reforming military
doctrine.
In 1992 no clear apportionment of military and civilian
policymaking powers existed in practice, and many civilian and
military
offices and directorates performed redundant functions.
For
example, the military Directorate of Logistics Planning
and the
civilian Department of Procurement performed similar
tasks. The
relative authority of officials at comparable levels of
the two
organizations (such as military chiefs of staff and
viceministers
of defense) also remained undefined.
The locus of ultimate military command remains a hot
issue;
Jan Parys, minister of national defense in the Olszewski
government (and the first civilian to hold that position),
was
dismissed by President Walesa because Parys complained
that his
ministry was a powerless bureaucracy under Walesa's
complete
control. In mid-1992 Walesa ceded nominal approval of high
military appointments to Janusz Onyszkiewicz, minister of
national defense in the newly formed government of Hanna
Suchocka. Although Walesa's move was presented as a
concession to
the stature of Onyszkiewicz, many observers believed that
peacetime command of the Polish Army would remain an issue
of
contention between the presidency and the Council of
Ministers.
Establishing civilian control over the Ministry of
National
Defense was a necessary move toward Western-style
democratic
rule. However, in the early 1990s high civilian officials
often
were named because of political influence rather than
expertise,
especially in the newly redesigned Department of Education
(see Military Training and Education
, this ch.). In fact, few
civilians brought any military policy experience with them
into
Poland's postcommunist governments. This was mainly
because
Solidarity had avoided involvement with military and
internal
security policy in the contentious 1980s, fearing that
opposition
on those fronts might be a pretext for harsher government
repression. Even after the fall of Jaruzelski, the first
Solidarity government replaced communist officials in the
defense
and internal affairs establishments very cautiously to
avoid
antagonizing the PZPR in its last two government
strongholds.
Once the PZPR collapsed in 1990, however, the pace of
reform
increased.
Data as of October 1992
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