Bending Over Backwards the Polish Way
None more than the Polish conservatives, has become utterly hypocritical and contradictory over the Ukraine crisis.
We have, thus far, abstained from devoting much attention to Polish foreign policy as it has so far been logical and predictable. Yet, the 2020s have brought some heavy schizophrenia to polish external relations, in particular when articulated by the current polish conservative government.
Warsaw was treated with particular care by Moscow during the Iron Curtain times, as suppressing a rebellion in Poland would have been incommensurately more politically costly than the lightning Red Army operations in Prague and Budapest.
Thusly, while not as independent and free as Yugoslavia, communist Poland was still awarded a ‘special relationship’ with the USSR and a slightly higher modicum of tolerance comparatively to other soviet satellites.
However ‘mild’ the treatment of Poland might have been, the Katyn massacre, the annexation of polish territory, the economic impoverishment and the totalitarian oppression, left Warsaw with a justifiable paranoia regarding Russia. Add to this the polish experience with successive partitions at the hands of the Tsars.
Consequently, that the poles would be interested in integrating any and all alliances which could assist Poland in the event of a conflict with Russia, is perfectly rational policy. So rational that even Russia understands it. President Putin has made it a point to recognise soviet atrocities against Poland and even sought to make the most of the Katyn Remembrance Day, by paying homage and offering to deepen relations with the old nation.
Nevertheless, while Russia has been apologetic and even facilitated Polish deployments to Afghanistan, Poland has proceeded to undermine Russian interests at every turn. Moscow has awarded Warsaw a certain leeway but with Ukraine and Belarus, the patience ran out. The Russians have also abstained from grandstanding and antagonizing the poles over polish intervention in Iraq or their reneging their commitments in Ukraine – the Yanukovych-opposition deal as well as the Minsk Accords.
Were these the only factors to take into account, one might be critical of the poles for their insolence but the context, in particular for Poland’s conservatives, is far more disorienting.
Ever since entering NATO, Poland has had to send troops to a panoply of theatres which bear zero relevance to its national interests. If one can understand polish deployments to the Baltic, the presence of polish troops in controversial interventions south of the Mediterranean, is utterly bewildering. Far from begrudging these deployments, Poland has gone into them with enthusiasm, aiming to prove its value to its new allies.
Additionally, Poland has eagerly facilitated the West’s ideological subversion of eastern Europe, by partnering with the universalist efforts to convert Europe’s traditionalists into the new dogmatic faith of progressivism. Taken to extremes, these efforts result in ‘colour revolutions’ which contribute only to aggressively expel Russian influence in the continent.
Worse still, the progressivism which the poles facilitate is very much antithetical to conservative values, by financing NGOs and media which promote cultural Marxism, anti-national sentiment as well as racist and anti-religious policies.
These policies have contributed only to increase tensions with Russia which Poland should rationally try and avoid.
With the EU, while Poland has greatly profited commercially, it has had to endure successive betrayals and humiliations. Brussels has only further expanded its powers in non-democratic ways, including by making use of biased courts to ensure that ‘European integration’ is unidirectional. Polish conservatives have protested but not only have their objections fallen in deaf ears, Warsaw has been systematically embarrassed, co-opted, and subverted by the eurocrats. The discrimination which Poland suffers along with countries such as Hungary should be unacceptable to a nation zealous of sovereignty and national pride but yet again, the poles have swallowed it whole.
This attitude reaches an apogee of cognitive dissonance with the 2014-2022 Ukraine crisis where Poland has supported and helped a Ukrainian state whose soviet borders include parts of historical Poland and whose regime is heavily influenced by nazi worshipping factions inspired by hitlerian collaborators who massacred poles, in the first half of the XX century.
As stated, even the Russians understand Poland’s paranoia but aligning with everything the polish conservatives hate, against the polish national interests, in order to incite passions to the brink of nuclear tensions, can no longer be perceived as a rational policy. Poland has gone too far. At a certain point, moderate conservatives should acknowledge that Russia is no longer the greatest natural threat to Poland. Much to the contrary, Russia does not seek to overthrow governments nor does it promote regime change. That is very much the almost exclusive priority of Warsaw’s newfound allies, to the west.
For how long will Poland’s conservatives sacrifice all their standards, values and interests in order to obsessively attack Russia? Must Russia be the only concern of polish foreign policy – one before which all others shall be martyred? Especially a Russia which is largely attacked by the same institutions and totalitarian ideologies and for the same reasons, of those that aggress Poland…
The Westphalian Post 