Poland is the largest of a dozen mainly eastern European candidates in talks on joining thewesternbloc, which hopes to expand its membership from 2004 onwards.
Unfortunately, there is considerable evidence that Olivetti is not the only Western manufacturer of machine tools to have transferred strategically significant equipment to the Soviet bloc.
The EU, a club of Western liberal democracies, has struggled recently to keep some of the bloc's newer members on what it considers the proper legal path.
As the Bush Administration and Congress consider future steps in responding to dramatic events in Poland (and elsewhere in the Soviet bloc), it is imperative that American and Western policies be governed by a recognition that undisciplined economic and financial assistance to Poland will have unintended and undesirable repercussions both for the Poles and for the American taxpayer.