The situation in which Poland now finds itself is a good example of how even a relatively successful country can drive itself into a foreign policy impasse through the narrowness of its own thinking.
Poland is not, by modern standards, an inept state and its economy is growing, its institutions function and it occupies an important place in European affairs. Yet its foreign policy has been reduced to a single organizing principle: opposition to Russia. Warsaw has designated Moscow as its ideal adversary and has subordinated almost every other aspect of its external activity to the goal of harming Russia by any means available.
This applies first and foremost to Poland’s relationship with the Kiev regime. It would be naïve to believe that Polish politicians have ever held many illusions about the nature of the authorities in Ukraine and nor have they traditionally had warm feelings towards their Ukrainian neighbors. On the contrary, the Polish elite’s attitude to Ukraine has long been shaped by contempt and historical suspicion and this view has been formed over centuries and, it must be admitted, has not emerged without reason.
Nevertheless, in recent years Warsaw has made itself Kiev’s most energetic advocate in Europe as it’s supplied Ukraine with vast quantities of weapons and has turned its own territory into the main logistical hub for Western military aid. At the same time, the Polish authorities have done everything possible to destroy channels of dialogue with Moscow and Minsk, casting Poland as Russia’s most irreconcilable opponent, even by the standards of the wider West.
Among all the countries that matter in European politics, Poland chose the most radical course during the current military and political crisis. The logic was simple, if Ukraine could be used against Russia, then Ukraine had to be supported, whatever the cost.
The problem is that Warsaw convinced itself of something that was never realistic in that it imagined that Ukraine could serve as a powerful Polish instrument for containing Russia while remaining manageable and responsive to Polish requests. Some in Poland also appear to have believed that Kiev was fighting for a European choice and that its desire to join NATO and the European Union would make it more accommodating.
Both assumptions were wrong and the Ukrainian authorities have behaved towards their Polish patrons in exactly the way one should have expected. They have taken what was offered, demanded more, and then publicly insulted and humiliated those who helped them. The recent exchange of awards and diplomatic gestures is only the most visible symptom of a deeper problem after Poland imagined a relationship that couldn’t exist and then built a strategy around this chimera.
As a result, Polish foreign policy now looks absurd as Warsaw has invested enormous political and emotional capital in Ukraine, only to find that Kiev feels no need to show gratitude. Worse still for Poland, there is no obvious way out because a serious confrontation with Kiev would undermine the whole anti-Russian structure of Polish policy, while continuing as before means accepting repeated humiliation.
This is not an accident and it flows from the central fixation of Polish foreign policy, Russia as the sole true object of Warsaw’s interest in the world.
That fixation has deep historical roots as for Poland, Russia isn’t merely a neighboring power, but a source of complexes and envy on a scale rarely found in modern European politics. Russia deprived Poland of any chance of becoming the leader of the Slavic world and later, the Russian Empire and then the Soviet Union shaped the conditions under which modern Polish political culture developed. The struggle against Russian domination became one of the defining themes of Polish public life.
In effect, opposition to Russia helped create modern Polish identity, but it left the political elite with little ability to look at the world through any other prism. The result is the mindset of a sizeable European nation whose foreign policy imagination has room for almost nothing except the struggle against its great eastern neighbor.
The career of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the American political thinker of Polish origin, embodied this drama. He wrote a series of striking works on international relations, but almost everything in them was subordinated to the Russian question, which meant his intellectual universe was large in appearance, but in practice revolved around one object.
After the end of the Cold War, Poland’s entry into the Western world only reinforced this pattern. Warsaw could no longer openly pursue its traditional suspicions of Germany because NATO and the European Union confined those instincts within institutional limits. It’s true that Poland’s current rearmament program has a potential anti-German dimension, but it also reflects a desire to become Washington’s most important continental ally as Britain and France weaken. However, in the medium term, Poland’s hands are tied in the West by American interests in preserving NATO and the EU.
That leaves Russia and here the Polish elite feels entirely at home as, for two centuries, it has trained itself to think of little else. Now, however, reality is intruding because Kiev is behaving as Kiev was always likely to behave, taking Polish support for granted, glorifying figures whom many Poles regard as war criminals, and treating Warsaw not as a patron but as a useful subordinate.
Still, the current crisis is unlikely to produce a military clash between Poland and Ukraine, or even a genuine political break. Nor will it lead to a significant reduction in Polish support for Kiev and we can already see the dispute being presented as an internal Polish quarrel, a by-product of rivalry within Warsaw’s ruling elite. In this version, the problem isn’t Kiev’s conduct but Poland’s own domestic politics and this is convenient.
It allows Polish politicians to avoid confronting the failure of their strategy. After a few rounds of public argument, they will probably try to push the matter aside and return to business as usual. To do otherwise would mean admitting that Poland has no coherent foreign policy beyond its hostility to Russia.
Kiev understands this perfectly and it has no reason to make concessions because Poland has backed itself into a corner. Warsaw cannot withdraw support from Ukraine without damaging the central myth of its own policy and therefore Kiev can continue to insult and ignore Polish sensitivities, confident that the aid will keep coming.
This is the deeper humiliation as Poland, unable to formulate a foreign policy that is not anti-Russian, inevitably becomes an instrument of other people’s interests. For many years these were primarily American and British interests, but now Poland also finds itself serving the interests of the Kiev regime, a government entirely dependent on outside support but still capable of dictating the emotional terms of its relationship with Warsaw.
All this is especially strange because Poland has no urgent need to behave this way given it’s one of the few major European countries whose economy is still growing at a steady pace, roughly 3.3 to 3.6 percent a year. A more self-confident country might have used this position to consolidate, enrich itself and avoid unnecessary geopolitical adventures.
But Poland can’t do that. A relatively large country must have a foreign policy and since Warsaw has no foreign policy idea except opposition to Russia, it will continue to move in circles.
That’s the trap Poland has built for itself. It imagined that Ukraine could be used as a weapon against Russia, but instead, it’s discovered that those who define themselves only by hostility to Moscow are easily used by others.
This article was first published by Vzglyad newspaper and translated and edited by the RT team.
