Poland Accuses Republicans Of Being Unpatriotic

Weirdly, against expectations, today is a bit of a slow news day.

Putin gave his much anticipated speech to the Russian Federal Assembly, but there were no big announcements, no big revelations. Putin did take the opportunity to remind the collective West of why they hate him so much:

FriendOfRussia @NoMoreNATO

"President Putin said, See what they do with their own peoples - the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, mockery of children, and pedophilia are declared the norm. The norm of their life." #StandWithRussia🇷🇺

Perhaps the bigger news, bigger than Putin’s confidently delivered speech—which was along the lines of a SOTU in the US—is the presence in Moscow of China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, for meetings with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. When last we heard from Wang, a few days ago, he was responding to Blinken’s weak and hysterical pronouncements about weather balloons by calling Blinken’s pronouncements “weak” and “hysterical.” Lavrov’s most recent statements were also directed at the US. He stated that if the US wants to de-escalate, it should start withdrawing NATO personnel and equipment from Ukraine.

Meanwhile, after shuffling around Kiev briefly, and perhaps collecting a backhander for Hunter,

Ian Miles Cheong @stillgray

Caption this.

Zhou was on to Warsaw where he delivered a pretty standard boilerplate type speech to celebrate the one year anniversary of the collective West’s shock and awe campaign against Russia and the world. It was filled with what passes for soaring rhetoric in American politics, but is actually forgettable BS that will be little noted by normal Americans. He called Putin a “dictator”—but failed to call for regime change. He called Zelensky “a man whose courage would be forged in fire and steel.” He advanced the dubious proposition that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia”. In an equally dubious strain, he implied that the countries of the collective West are “the democracies of the world” and “have grown stronger, not weaker.” The idea was that the collective West would stand with Ukraine. As far as I know he didn’t mention Afghanistan. Overall, I agree with Alex Christophorou that this typically sorry performance will be dismissed as proceeding from weakness.

No doubt, however, this was the kind of American BS the Kaczyński regime in Warsaw was hoping to hear. The Poles are asking for permanent US bases and many more American boots on Polish soil than the current total of 11K. Which brings up the subject of recent Polish rhetoric, which has become increasingly unhinged. Poland has been using its self perceived “key ally” status with the US to throw its weight around in Europe, including pressing its demands for $1.5 trillion in reparations from Germany. When those demands were first made—and don’t imagine I’m terribly sympathetic to Germany—I maintained that this was a transparent ploy by the US to pressure Germany. Poland was simply a very willing participant. Over recent months top Polish officials have been calling out European leaders and nations in extremely undiplomatic terms, deepening feelings of enmity toward Poland. In my view, once America drops Poland and pivots to some other part of the world—China?—Poland will end up regretting the role they’ve played and the hostility they’ll have engendered among their neighbors.

Doug Bandow has an article out today that goes into some of the unhinged rhetoric emanating from Warsaw these days. I’m not necessarily a fan of Bandow, and in fact he gets the situation a bit backwards:

Poland Waits to Pounce

Biden should beware of making the Poles co-guarantors of order in Europe.

Poland will only pounce when told to do so by the US. Poland will never be a co-guarantor of order in Europe. It’s the foolish Kaczyński regime that should beware of getting too close to the Neocons. Nevertheless, Bandow usefully gathers some of the quotes:

Mark Brzezinski—the American ambassador to Poland and the son of [Ur-Neocon] Zbigniew Brzezinski, … noted …, this is the first time that the U.S. president has visited the country “twice in one year.” This should be perceived, he added, as a sign that “Biden cares about Poland, its citizens and their security.”

Hey, I copied that directly from The Hill, so I have to assume he really said that, laughable though it may be.

“The visit of U.S. President Joe Biden is a great opportunity for Poland, Ukraine, but also for the entire NATO, as well as a chance for President Andrzej Duda to try to convince Joe Biden to unblock the issue of transferring planes to Ukraine,” former Polish president Bronisław Komorowski recently commented.

...

Undersecretary of State Pawel Jablonski makes clear that Poland’s goal is to make sure that “Russia is defeated, loses face and is held accountable.” President Andrzej Duda sees no option besides a Ukrainian victory, with the Russians brought to their knees …

Furthermore, in his interview for the newspaper Corriere della Sera published on February 9, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki argued that “victory over Russia constitutes both Polish and European raison d’état.” When asked why Poland opposes negotiations with the Kremlin, Morawiecki contended that Russia is a “terrorist state” and there could be no peace until Putin is replaced.

...

It is worth noting that three days earlier, in an interview with El Mundo newspaper, the Polish prime minister admitted the current situation may escalate to a third world war if Russia is “forced” to leave occupied territories in Ukraine; yet he claimed, “We take into account all scenarios.” This fits nicely into Morawiecki’s remarks made the same day in Warsaw, where he urged that “the West must turn this war into a Waterloo for Russian imperialism and colonialism.”

“Poland is ready to take co-responsibility for shaping the new world order. Poland is ready to become one of the key links in post-imperial Europe. It is not enough to defeat Russia. It is also necessary to build a world in which Russian imperialism and colonialism, Russian domination, will not find a place for themselves,” the prime minister concluded.

Do you get the idea that these guys in Warsaw are getting too big for their britches? That they’re cruising for a major bruising down the road? Unhinged rhetoric like that—and like what follows below—may please Zhou and his Neocons handlers, but it will do little but lessen any compunction Republicans might feel when the time comes to dump the Poles.

When Le Figaro’s Laure Mandeville recently asked Andrzej Duda about his opinion about the recent U.S. survey in which more than 40 percent of Republicans expressed their willingness to make territorial concessions to stop the war in Ukraine, the Polish president lashed out; he said that if they “want to give Russia territory as a concession, let them give theirs!” The Polish leader added that he does not believe that “there are any American patriots who think otherwise.”

With more military equipment and U.S. boots on the Polish ground on Duda’s wish list for Joe Biden’s visit in Warsaw, Biden should remember assessments that neither the U.S. nor other Western countries are ready for an all-out confrontation with Russia, both at the regional and global level—let alone the possibility of nuclear escalation.

I imagine Putin and Lavrov are having a good laugh over all this. They know that Europeans are increasingly jittery about follow America, much less would be European hegemon-iacal Poland.