Tomorrow, President Joe Biden will mark the first anniversary of the Russian invasion not in Berlin or Paris — but in Warsaw. There, he will turn a blind eye to Poland’s nationalist government, and pat President Andrzej Duda on the back for his leading role in supporting Ukraine. Thanks to the war, Poland is having its moment in the sun.
Since the first day of the invasion, Poland’s support for Ukraine has been unwavering. It has sent significant amounts of military equipment, including dozens of tanks, and its army is training Ukrainian soldiers to use 14 Leopard-2 tanks as quickly as possible. On the diplomatic front, it never ceases to beat the drum for its besieged neighbour. After all, Poland has an existential interest in thwarting Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions, especially with Russian troops looming across the border in Belarus.
To establish its authority at the heart of Europe, it plans to amass the largest land army in the Continent, with 300,000 troops, and has just announced a hike in defence spending from 2.4% to 5% of GDP to facilitate it. Already, it has welcomed more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, more than any other European country.
Warsaw also appears to be forging a regional alliance of Nato nations in Eastern Europe. From the Baltic to the Black Sea, the “Bucharest Nine”, a group that formed after the Russia’s annexation of Crimea, are united by a traumatic history of Soviet Russian dominance and occupation. On Duda’s initiative, Biden will meet with the group, which is pushing for more Nato resources to be moved to its Eastern flank.
Balkans expert Timothy Less calls this the “new Warsaw Pact”, which rather than defending Russia’s interests, seeks to protect central and Eastern Europe from the Russians. For Less, this is a strategy that echoes the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth born in the late Middle Ages, as well as the Intermarium, a fanciful plan by Polish leader Józef Piłsudski to form a superstate from the Baltic to the Black Sea after the First World War. Behind each of these alliances was a fear of bullying neighbours over the centuries — Prussia, the German Reich, Austria-Hungary and, of course, Russia.
Poland’s Eastern European alliance, according to Less, “would marginalise France and Germany, threaten the predominant position of the EU in Europe and galvanise its seeming slow-motion decline”. It’s a vision that will appeal to Eurosceptics across the Continent: a new era in which the US gradually moves its military resources from Germany to Poland, a growing hub of power and influence.
Alas, the tale of Franco-German decline is almost as old as the EU. While Poland might have impressive military ambitions, its politics is still riddled with contradictions. Its hardline nationalism comes across as immature and foolish, as seen in its provocative games with its largest trading partner, Germany, and the entity that has allowed it to flourish, the EU.
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