Posted: 31.08.2022 14:06:00

Landlord ambitions

How Poland is trying to become the new European centre of power

In recent years, our western neighbour has been increasingly trying to pursue a policy that runs counter to the general line set in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. And the reason for this is the insufficient radicalism of old Europe: weak, according to the ‘eagles’ from Warsaw, Anti-Belarusian and Anti-Russian sentiment does not allow, as they believe, to curb the Union State once and for all. Now Vampires from the ruling PiS party dreamily roll their eyes up, wishing everyone would fear and hate Belarus and Russia just as much as they do... However, each new package of sanctions is adopted with increasing difficulty, the sectors vital for the EU do not get into them over and over again. Under these conditions, Poland is increasingly drifting towards those who are able (as it seems to it) to ensure both real independence and to give forces and means for independent actions against the recalcitrant. This, of course, is about the United States, for which the next Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth has become a reliable ally in the East and, at the same time, an important lever for bringing confusion to the already discordant ranks of Europeans, and about Great Britain, which assigns an important place to the Poles in building a buffer quasi-formation called the Intermarium.

The President of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko,

“Take a look at Poland. It is the most aggressive state in relation to Belarus. I do not understand why?.. What do they [Polish politicians] need? Their leaders have the approval rating below 30 percent. They have saddled up a U.S. horse and are galloping around Europe. The Germans hate them but tolerate them. Why? Because the United States supports them. They are ready to gobble up a part of Ukraine. They have their eyes on the entire Belarus. It will not work.”
During a visit to Miory Rolling Mill metal sheet and tinplate factory, August 8th, 2022


Frenemies

Perhaps, not even a couple of days have passed in recent months for Polish officials not to put a hairpin on Germany. Either Deputy Foreign Minister Martin Przydacz, well-known to us, attacks Chancellor Scholz, criticising him for his unwillingness to support the refusal to issue visas to Russians, then Arkadiusz Mularczyk, deputy from Law and Justice party, declares that Germany is obliged to pay (for several years) reparations for the inflicted damage during the years of the World War II. Sometimes people who are quite empowered make very strange statements. For example, not so long ago, the chairman of the National Bank of Poland Adam Glapinski accused the Germans of... the desire to return the lands transferred to Poland following the Potsdam Conference.
The very fact that the foreign policy context is used for dirty insinuations with might and main, and in relation to one of the most powerful states in Europe, already indicates that Poland is ready to raise the stakes and achieve goals in domestic and foreign policy without regard for the means.


Lion and eagle between two seas

Indeed, the Poles have traditionally strained relations with Germany and, even being now on the same side of the barricades, they do not miss the opportunity to bite each other, but Poland co-operates with the British on a different level. The reason for this is the key position of our western neighbour in the global Intermarium project. Its idea was born from the wild imagination of the fierce enemy of Ukrainians and Belarusians, Marshal Pilsudski back in the first half of the 1920s, and was a concept of a large-scale buffer between the Soviet Union and the countries of Western Europe. 
So, now, almost a 100 years later, the intermarine idea has been extracted again from some dusty archives. However, this time, business-like dandies from the banks of the Thames River took patronage over the project. According to their plan, Poland becomes the formal leader of the association, with which the Balts and Ukrainians coordinate their actions. 
The British, on the other hand, become the patrons and main beneficiaries of the project, because they get access to the political and economic resources of these countries, the opportunity to sell weapons to expanding and modernising armies, and also achieve long-desired access to the Black Sea ports of Ukraine. Why do you think that British weapons, mercenaries and Ukrainians instructed by them are so drawn to the area of Odessa and Nikolaev, but they try not to meddle in the hottest sector of the front in the Donbass once again?
Experts believe that in 2020 they tried to draw Belarus into Intermarium as a secondary satellite, to turn it into a kind of Polish-British colony. However, the plan collapsed, and the country became not an eastern outpost of the Intermarium, but a real thorn in its body, haunting Western strategists for two years now thanks to the unbending will of the Head of State and the consolidation of patriotic forces.

 

Para bellum?

If Poland acted only with threats, blackmail and succeeded only in Anti-Russian sentiment clowning, one could look at it with pity. However, since spring there has been a clear trend of preparing the political establishment of our western neighbour for large-scale military provocations. 
While ordinary Poles travel to Belarus on a visa-free basis to buy cheap fuel, eat plenty of tasty food and buy inexpensive and high-quality stuff, their elite rush around the world with maniacal persistence, buying up a variety of weapons.
Thus, the amount of the deal with South Korea alone is $15.3 billion, which automatically makes this contract the largest in the history of the country. According to the signed agreements, Poland buys 48 FA-50 fighters (not a very good analogue of the American F-16, apparently chosen because of the ease of development and speed of production), 980 K2 Black Panther tanks and 648 K9 self-propelled artillery mounts. Combat aircraft will be delivered in the near future, since the Minister of Defence of the next Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth Mariusz Blaszczak said that his country could not wait long. Impressive numbers, right? Especially when one consider that, in addition, Warsaw is buying 116 M1A1SA Abrams tanks, which have been decommissioned by the disbanded marine battalions, and has already signed a contract for the supply of 250 units of the latest M1A2SepV3 modification. Thus, its tank forces will become the largest in Europe, leaving the British, Germans, and French far behind.
Extremely huge money is being spent on rearmament and expansion of the army in the absence of a direct threat under the pretext of artificially inflated military hysteria, and the country is corny lacking sugar, fuel prices are rising at an unprecedented pace. However, the approaching winter does not bode well. 
Instead of caring for the common people, the politicians of the ruling party are trying to soothe phantom pain and realise ‘from sea to sea’ Poland’s dilapidated dream. But the ‘wars of memory’, which are so actively waged in parallel with this, play a bad role, forcing us to forget an indisputable historical fact: as soon as Poland became aggressive towards its neighbours, the mechanism of reckoning was immediately launched. As a result, the landlords either received a painful click on the nose and crawled away to heal their wounds (losing territories), or Poland completely ceased to exist as a state.
Therefore, the western neighbours of Belarus should seriously think about whether the crazy aspirations of the political elites are so important to them, the Poles? Isn’t it better to build bridges rather than blow them up?

By Anton Popov