Poland’s Revanchist (Expansionist) Ambitions – Another Lever Washington Is Pulling Against Russia Should Ukraine Collapse

Photo Credit: Philippe Rekacewicz

Washington to build a new permanent military base in Poland

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At this moment (July 9, 2022) the ultimate fate of Ukraine is unclear, but whatever its future holds in store, it looks more and more somber. Will it survive at all as a nation? If so what will be its boundaries? On what will its economy be based as its industrial heartland in the east is lost and its access to the Black Sea continually constricted? In the fluid military situation that exists and with no serious negotiations taking place Ukraine’s future looks darker and darker.

Some argue Ukraine is already  on life support if not in a state of cryonic suspension.

There is indications that Washington is “quietly” encouraging Poland to consider occupying parts of western Ukraine should the Kiev government collapses.

Ukraine and Poland share a 330 mile (approximately) border. Such a move on Poland’s part – which could not happen without a green light from Washington and NATO – could likely inflame the revanchist ambitions of Hungary, Rumania and Slovakia, whose ethnic communities populate Ukrainian territory near the border of both countries. A Polish land grab in western Ukraine would also represent a threat to Belarus, Ukraine’s neighbor to its north and strong Russian ally. Unlike Ukraine which is “unofficially” a part of NATO, Poland is a participating member of the (not so) defensive military alliance. A Polish seizure or annexation of western Ukrainian lands would put NATO right at Russia’s door, a development which I believe Moscow would not tolerate. It would also keep the extreme tension that currently exists between NATO and Russia alive and well – thus it very well might happen.

Some history is in order here., the complexity of which should not be underestimated.

Since the end of the Cold War and Poland’s transition from a communist to a capitalist  economy it has continually moved rightward politically. This has included becoming a NATO member, increasing the seethingly conservative role of Poland’s Catholic Church and pursuing an expansionist foreign policy that includes trying to control a swatch of Central Europe from the Baltic to the Black Sea that would give it a strategic lever over trade from points east (China and India) to Europe. Referred to as the “Three Seas Initiative” , the three being the Baltic, Black and Adriatic Seas, it includes cooperation between a number of players (Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Rumania, Slovakia and Slovenia. But at least as Warsaw understands it, Poland would be the lynchpin of the system, a way to dominate China’s Belt and Road Initiative into Europe and (what was) Russian oil and gas exports to Germany and other points west.

A fundamental force of its foreign policy has been Russophobia building on Poland’s harsh experience with the then Soviet Union during most of the 20th Century, real enough, although any careful study of Polish-Soviet and then Polish-Russian relations reveals that Poland was far from an innocent factor or an eternal victim. Indeed the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 was essentially a British and French supported effort to take as big a chunk of the emerging USSR, still weak in its infancy and thus strangle it in its cradle so to speak. Contemporary Polish European policy continues in this anti-Russian tradition and  dovetails nicely with NATO expansion policies and that alliance’s pressure against Russia – although the latter is no longer Communist and has become, like Poland itself a market economy albeit with government regulation – a kind of new Keynesian model.

Nothing suggests the degree to which Poland and the US – through NATO – are joined at the hip more than the recent announcement that NATO will be building a new permanent military headquarters in Poland for its Fifth Army “in response to new threats from Russia.” This is not the first time in recent years that Poland has lobbied for a permanent U.S. military base. in 2018 Poland was asking for Washington to build a base that it would call “Camp Trump” but at the time the project went nowhere. Concerning the building of the current announcement to build a base, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling party, commented as recently as this past April that would be “open to having U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil” and would welcome a 50% increase in the number of U.S. troops in Europe.

Nothing suggests the degree to which Poland and the US – through NATO – are joined at the hip more than the recent announcement that NATO will be building a new permanent military headquarters in Poland for its Fifth Army “in response to new threats from Russia.” This is not the first time in recent years that Poland has lobbied for a permanent U.S. military base. in 2018 Poland was asking for Washington to build a base that it would call “Camp Trump” but at the time the project went nowhere. Concerning the building of the current announcement to build a base, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling party, commented as recently as this past April that would be “open to having U.S. nuclear weapons on its soil” and would welcome a 50% increase in the number of U.S. troops in Europe.

“Rzeczpospolita” is the official name for Poland and a traditional name for some of its predecessor states. The tem Rzeczpospolita has deep historical roots harking back to the time when Poland was a genuine force in European affairs its  foreign policy then, as now, characterized by an expansionist vision. Between 1569 t0 1795, in concert with its neighbor to the east, Lithuania, a Polish-Lithuanian federation existed that extended from the Baltic Sea in the north to near – but no quite to – the Black Sea in the south. As is the case – and not just with Poland – two maps exist fo Central European countries. The “map on the wall” outlines the country’s borders; but then there is “the map in the draw” as well which reveals the country’s true territorial, revanchist ambitions. (I have heard to referred to derisively as their “hard on map”, the one they drool over.) Poland’s “map in the draw” includes much of western Ukraine, also referred to as Galicia, where a Polish speaking population has long existed. (1)

From the end of the Polish-Soviet War of 1919-1920 Poland incorporated large chunks of what is today western Ukraine that included the city of Lvov. Those areas were lost to Poland and reincorporated into the Ukrainian Republic of the USSR at the end of World War II. Prior to the 20th century this region was one of contention and instability between Poland and Russia going back to the late 18th century when Poland experienced three partitions and lost control of the area. During World War II, the Nazis were able to coopt the participation of Ukrainian ultra-nationalists under the leadership of Stefan Bandara, an ultra-nationalist Nazi collaborator. Not only was Bandera’s organization responsible for the murder of 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews but it also turned its racist wrath on perhaps as many as 250,000 Poles which in classic Nazi terms it also viewed as inferior peoples.

Although all the above WW2 history is well documented, the current Ukrainian government denies Bandera’s racist heritage and looks upon him as some kind of Ukrainian national hero with his statue in many Ukrainian towns, including Kiev. Should Polish expansionist plans to gobble up western Ukraine come to fruition, Warsaw will have found that it has swallowed up a population with a strong racist anti-Polish bias. Yet this does not seem to have dampened Polish ambitions. To strengthen failing government, on less than two months ago, the Zelensky government announced a law “on enhanced opportunities for Polish citizens“. According to this law Polish refugees in Ukraine would have equal rights with Polish citizens and Polish citizens in Ukraine would likewise enjoy the rights of Ukrainian citizens. THe law also agreed on joint border and customs controls, and then on a single border embracing both countries should Ukraine become a member of the European Union.. Some interpreted this as the first step towards Polish annexation of western Ukraine should the Kiev government collapse.

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Like so many other U.S. foreign policy fiascos brought to us by the likes Blinken, Sullivan, Victoria Nuland, news of the events in Ukraine is beginning to fade from the front pages of the U.S. media. Nothing new here. More or less happened in Syria, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan recently and a whole slew of other places before that. As the U.S. – or its proxies – begin to lose and the extent of the fiasco becomes more commonplace, time to move on. No surprise that media attention – long before the recent Shinzo Abe assassination – began to shift to East Asia, distorting the nature of the “Taiwan Crisis” which for the most part, Washington itself has created.

Meanwhile back in Europe the full impact of the debacle that is Washington’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine continues to unfold, the devastating consequences are only now shaping up. Poland has been coaches and shaped by Washington to play a major role in its anti-Russian campaign as the Ukraine’s political significance either fades or collapses.  Having refused under U.S-UK pressure to take the Minsk II Accords seriously for eight years, Ukraine’s Zelensky led (at least nominally) government then walked out of talks with Russia in Istanbul, talks that gave the appearance of some progress towards a negotiated solution until, once again, Washington and London lowered to boom: If Ukraine reaches an agreement with Russia there, aid – both military and financial – will be cut off. Ukraine ended the talks, By failing to take Minsk II seriously, Ukraine has lost its sovereignty over the Lugansk and Donetsk Republics  which one way or another will be annexed to Russia “forever” as well as any serious claim on the Crimea.. By nixing the Istanbul talks, it threatens to lose much more. How much more remains to be seen.

Yes, the negotiations are undoubtedly asymmetrical, with Russia essentially dictating the terms. As Russian and allied troops gain ground in Eastern Ukraine the terms of any settlement shifts. So it is with creating “facts on the ground.” What Ukraine can salvage of its national future continues to shrink with every square mile that the Russian and Donbass militaries gain at the expense of the lives of Ukrainian soldiers. The danger of a Ukrainian national implosion grows. As it is, the Kiev government exists today only because of U.S./NATO economic and military life support without which it would simply collapse. Such a collapse, should it happens creates a political vacuum that assures the region even more suffering and war.

Europe has seen all this before “in spades” as they say. Any good history of WW One, the collapse of the Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires all within a few years of each other both prior to and in the aftermath of “the war to end all wars” vividly reflects. The defeat of the Ottomans in the Balkans prior to WW 1 (1910-12) led to the Balkan Wars. First, countries of the region – Greece, Bulgaria, Serbia, Rumania united to chase out the Turks. In the aftermath of the Ottoman collapse the same allies immediately, without hardly taking a breath, then turned on one another with a viciousness that defines description. One of Leon Trotsky’s finest political journalism details the carnage in his volume The Balkan Wars.

Then as WW 1 ended the vacuum and wars of territorial expansion shifted somewhat further north with clashes between Poland and Russia – the Polish-Soviet War of 1920 – the result of which shaped (at the moment) the fate of Lithuania, Belarus and last but not least Ukraine, all of which were reshaped once again by WW2.

To be clear, Poland is not the only European country with “a map in the draw’ and expansionist ambitions that is being utilized by more powerful countries – be they UK, Germany or USA – to weaken and partition Russia. Another example – frankly there are many – of European revanchism – Finland’s plans during WW2 to annex Soviet Karelia (that had a large Finnish speaking population. During the war, Finland was allied with Nazi Germany. The Finns do not refer to “World War II”; instead they speak of the “War of Continuation” or the “Continuation War” suggesting that in WW 2 they were just continuing defending their country from Soviet military incursion as they did during the “Winter War” rather than invading another – the USSR – which they did. In  the same manner, Finland to this day refuses to admit it was a part of the Axis Alliance with Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan, which it was. The Finnish “map in the draw” included annexing Soviet Karelia with its sizeable Finnish speaking population and expelling the Russian speaking people from the region to other parts of Russia – a clear policy of revanchism and ethnic cleansing. Not only did the plan fail but when the war ended the USSR expelled Karelia’s Finnish speaking people out of the USSR to Finland, some 420,000 of them, many of whom reside since then in Finland’s eastern regions ending centuries of Finnish linguistic and cultural presence there. The expulsion of Finnis from Karelia remains a sore issue to this day although, with the selective memory that often characterizes conflict with an ethnic character, the Finns – or many of them – seem to forget that during the years 1940-44 when Finnish forces controlled Soviet Karelia, they had engaged in a process of ethnic cleansing of the Russian population of the region.

Although there is much to yet unfold in Washington’s proxy wars to weaken Russia, overthrow Putin and carve up Russia into smaller “more manageable” units for Western governments to extract that country’s energy and mineral wealth, there is no doubt that currently Poland is a major card in Washington’s political deck. As someone whose roots stretch back in part to Poland (Bialystok), it saddens me to see the direction, the subservience to Washington that Poland has become. Unfortunately,I don’t see that changing soon.

More on Poland, Ukraine, NATO’s anti-Russian campaign in the future..