More Political Turmoil In Europe: The Polish Case

Poland is NATO’s front line vis a vis Russia. Not that Poland is in any way a military match for Russia, but compared to other regional countries between the Baltic and the Black Seas, Poland has a far greater demographic and economic profile. It has also shown a desire to build a real defense against its fear of Russian military pressure. There are two ways of looking at Poland’s US fueled military buildup, and both contain elements of truth. One is that it reflects real Polish fears of Russian intentions, rooted in a centuries long history. The other view, which is a not uncommon Russian view with some historical precedent, is that it reflects Polish nostalgia for what Russians choose to view as Poland’s “imperial” past. The common element is the struggle both countries experience in coming to terms with the history and culture of the other.

These considerations are of more than academic interest in the context of the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine. When Russia initiated its special military operation the current ruling party in Poland, Law and Justice (PiS)—which is broadly populist, nationalist, and socially conservative—eagerly and aggressively assumed the mantle of a frontline state supporting Ukraine, both materially and rhetorically. Virtually all military aid to Ukraine has been funneled through Poland and there is reason to believe that much of the military direction for Ukrainian forces comes from US command posts in Poland. Russia has not hidden its displeasure at this, although official Russian reaction has, by and large, remained measured.

This Polish policy approach is very much in keeping with the nationalism of the PiS leader, Jarosław Kaczynski, who, as the Deputy Prime Minister of Poland (until late last month), had oversight over the defense, justice and interior ministries. In fact, since PiS took over from the very EU-centric government of Donald Tusk in 2015, the PiS government, de facto led by Kaczynski, has adopted an aggressive and, at times, openly hostile attitude toward not only traditional Polish enemies (Russia and Germany). In fact, this attitude has also embraced other NATO members in addition to Germany, including countries with Poland has no historical arguments (Norway) as well as historical and current political allies (Hungary).

In place of neighborly relations with surrounding countries, the PiS regime has seemingly embraced the illusion of being a key ally of the US and the UK. Doubts about this policy have been increasing in Poland as the war in Ukraine drags on and Ukraine’s prospects appear worse and worse. The prospect of ending up with shared borders with a Russia that PiS has severely antagonized is beginning to look like a bad tradeoff for the passing satisfaction of talking tough to Russia. There is also a growing suspicion that Poland is being used by the West. Add to all this the very real hardships that Poland is suffering from both the Sanctions War and the tsunami of Ukrainian refugees and draft dodgers and it’s easy to understand that many Poles are having second thoughts about the PiS approach.

While the PiS regime may have thought that it could tweak Putin’s nose with impunity early on, the latest developments raise the very real prospect of war touching Poland itself. For example:

US Signals Ukraine It Can Use HIMARS Against Russian Targets In Crimea

Russian Military Given Formal Order To Target Ukraine's Long-Range Weapons From US

Russia has expressed the view that the HIMARS systems are actually being operated by US (and possibly UK) personnel, due to the steep learning curve involved with these advanced systems. Polish complicity in this could open Poland to retaliatory attacks against command centers on Polish soil or in Polish air space. In fact, there are some who believe that this is current US policy: to provoke Russia into “overreaction”. Thus we see repeated provocations—expanding NATO, encouraging Lithuania to blockade Russian territory, and now encouraging Ukraine to attack Crimea. The US, of course, is many thousands of miles away from the conflict, but Poland is right there.

So with that in mind, this morning I listened to a long podcast at The Duran that featured a Polish member of The Duran Community:

Collective west social collapse w/Ania

I wish I could recommend viewing the hour and a half podcast, but Ania is unfortunately somewhat challenged in expressing herself in English. However, she and Alex Mercouris make some good points about the current situation in Poland, and the rising discontent.

Ania points out that around 4 million “refugees” have crossed from Ukraine into Poland during the conflict. For perspective, Poland’s population at any given time is about 38 million. These Ukrainians have included very large numbers of military age men, fleeing the possibility of military call-up if they remained in Ukraine. Poland has provided these people with generous payments and de facto Polish citizenship. The “refugees” have responded with what Ania gingerly describes as a sense of entitlement as well as criminality. No one knows where the money will come to support these people.

In the meantime, the sanctions are biting Poland hard. Poland, like many other coal using countries, is heavily dependent on Russian coal, which is sanctioned. Poland actually has abundant coal reserves—enough, says Ania, to last 500 years—but EU regulations have forced Poland to cut its own output drastically. The result is that Poland now imports coal from “Columbia”, which is to say, Poland continues to buy Russian coal, which is now labeled as coming from Columbia. The situation is only made worse by Polish government policies that are forcing remaining Polish producers to operate at a loss on the promise of making them whole at some future date.

Of course, as elsewhere, there is widespread profiteering and corruption associated with the sanction “workarounds”, and everyone knows it. In fact, Ania openly says that many of the Ukrainian draft dodgers paid bribes to both the Ukrainian as well as the Polish border guards.

Ania blames much of this on the mystique of America among many Poles—including the PiS government. The idea seems to be that America will magically protect Poland, just as it defeated Russia in the Cold War. The preference has been to rely on America rather than do the hard work of developing neighborly relations with surrounding countries. This is made worse by the typical Polish perception that Russia remains the Soviet Union—an obviously complicated topic, which Ania recognizes.

On the other hand, Poles like Ania—who have lived in the US—are aware that the reality of America is different than the mystique. Ania openly states that Zhou did not win the election, with full recognition of what that says about the US political system. She also maintains that the US MSM is doing to Putin what they did to Trump, and that the Dems are deliberately trying to destroy America.

With all this going on, with times getting ever more difficult in Poland due to sanctions and the flood of Ukrainian refugees, with worsening prospects in Ukraine and the increasing danger of real war for Poland, Ania predicts that the current Polish government will fall by the end of the year. In other words, it will join the growing list of political casualties to the misguided Globalist war on Russia.

I’ll close with a quote from an opinion piece, which was written in late May. It’s a bit tendentious in parts, but the overall perception probably isn’t far off. For a proud nation like Poland the perception must be very bitter, indeed:

Poland Just Got Played By Germany

The cold reality is now setting in that everyone was taking advantage of the Polish leadership’s imperial nostalgia to manipulate it into doing their bidding in Ukraine.

Poland keeps racking up strategic losses in the days after merging into a de facto confederation with Ukraine. First, Zelensky told the attendees at this week’s Davos Summit that they can literally take over whatever “particular region of Ukraine, city, community or industry” that they want, which suggested that he doesn’t feel comfortable with his Polish allies completely controlling his country. Then Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki demanded that Norway partially subsidize his country’s geopolitical project with Ukraine, presumably because Warsaw realized that the US-led West is unlikely to give it any of the approximately $300 billion in Russia’s foreign assets that they seized but will instead use those funds to buy more influence in Kiev via the scheme that Zelensky just proposed.

You can imagine how Norway responded.

After being played by Ukraine and the US-led West in general, Poland is now getting played by Germany. Polish President Duda claimed just the other day that Berlin went back on its word to replace his country’s tanks that were sent to Ukraine ...

These three strategic losses in a row, literally one after another and day by day, prove that Poland’s actually getting played by everyone. Its so-called “allies” knew that they could easily manipulate that country’s leadership into doing whatever they wanted in Ukraine by playing to their nostalgia for restoring the long-lost Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Blinded by these desires, the ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS per its Polish abbreviation) party surrendered Poland’s strategic autonomy to others and eagerly did their bidding. They expected to receive some illusory prestige that they could then spin to deceive their increasingly unhappy base, which they fear might “defect” by voting for genuinely nationalist parties during the fall 2023 elections in protest of PiS’ Ukrainization of their country.

The cold reality is now setting in that everyone was taking advantage of the Polish leadership’s imperial nostalgia to manipulate it into doing their bidding in Ukraine. Poland absorbed over 3,5 million Ukrainian refugees in the span of just three months and afforded them de facto citizenship rights (which includes very generous social benefits) so that they wouldn’t invade Western European countries like Germany. It then sent literally half of its tanks to Ukraine and before merging with its neighbor into a de facto confederation in the expectation that it would exercise hegemony over it, yet Zelensky just played them by asking the elite at the World Economic Forum to literally take over whatever “particular region of Ukraine, city, community or industry” that they want, which will erode Polish influence in Ukraine.

It's very likely that Poland has done even more for Ukraine than has been publicly disclosed, all of which is being financed by its taxpayers’ hard-earned funds. Warsaw unrealistically expected that the US-led West would hand over the lion’s share of Russia’s $300 billion in stolen foreign assets so that Poland could take the lead in reconstructing Ukraine, yet any objective observer would have known that they’d rather keep it for themselves, including to finance their own corrupt projects in that country via Zelensky’s latest scheme. The Polish leadership is now left looking like the village idiot after everyone so effortlessly manipulated it into doing their bidding in Ukraine, which the Polish people are increasingly becoming aware of and might thus punish PiS at the polls during the fall 2023 elections.

So, once again, Neocon policies are spreading chaos—but this time in Europe, rather than in the Middle East and Africa. Political turmoil in a strategically located country like Poland will likely have effects throughout the region.