New Polish Defense Minister Wladysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, who’s a political appointee with absolutely zero military experience, said in an interview with local media that “I assume every scenario, and I take the worst ones most seriously” when asked about the possibility of Russia attacking his country. This is nothing but shameless scaremongering aimed at justifying Poland’s subordination to Germany last week after it informally rubbished its reparations demands and agreed to form a “military Schengen”.
Here are some background briefings for those who haven’t been following this all that closely:
* 24 November 2023: “NATO’s Proposed ‘Military Schengen’ Is A Thinly Disguised German Power Play Over Poland”
* 17 January 2024: “Leaked German War Plans Against Russia Are Aimed At Advancing The ‘Military Schengen’ Proposal”
* 19 January 2024: “Germany Is Rebuilding ‘Fortress Europe; To Assist The US’ ‘Pivot (Back) To Asia’”
* 22 January 2024: “The ‘Baltic Defense Line’ Is Meant To Accelerate The German-Led ‘Military Schengen’”
* 1 February 2024: “Poland Subordinated Itself To Germany On Two Fronts Over The Past Week”
They’ll now be summarized for the reader’s convenience.
German-backed Donald Tusk’s return to the Polish premiership emboldened the bloc’s de facto leader to implement the next phase of its hegemonic plans whereby it sought to expand its military influence across the continent. To that end, it proposed the “military Schengen”, which it clinched with the Netherlands and Poland last week to facilitate the shipment of troops and equipment to its new tank base in Lithuania. This corridor will likely be expanded up to Estonia and possibly Finland in the future.
The resultant “Fortress Europe” that’s being built at an accelerated pace nowadays ominously resembles its World War II-era counterpart in terms of structure and the strategic intent of preparing for war with Russia, which Poland is now scaremongering about to justify subordinating itself to Germany. The domestic context within which Kosiniak-Kamysz claimed that he’s taking seriously the scenario of Russia attacking it was addressed in these two analyses below:
* 10 January 2023: “Poland Is In The Throes Of Its Worst Political Crisis Since The 1980s”
* 14 January 2024: “Tusk’s Appeal For Patriots To Support Ukraine Is A Distraction From Poland’s Political Crisis”
In brief, Tusk has resorted to totalitarian means for imposing his envisaged German-inspired liberal–globalist model onto this traditionally conservative-nationalist society, which provoked its worst political crisis since the 1980s. He feebly tried to distract the public from this on a faux patriotic basis by hyping them up about the false threat that Russia poses to their country from the east, but this narrative was easily discredited after remembering that Poland borders the Russian region of Kaliningrad in the north.
With this in mind, both his and Kosiniak-Kamysz’s claims are discredited since Russia could already attack and invade Poland from that direction without having to first storm through Ukraine, not to mention via Belarus which has a much larger border with Poland. Whereas the first peddled this lie to distract from Poland’s political crisis, the second is reviving them to justify last week’s “military Schengen” deal that’ll see German troops freely transit to and from Poland for the first time since World War II.
Even more concerning is Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Szejn extending a “herzlich wilkommen!” (“warm welcome”) to German troops in the middle of last month if they want to permanently deploy in his country like they just agreed to do in neighboring Lithuania. The only possibly chance of preemptively mitigating public anger at this unprecedented violation of Polish historical memory and sovereignty is to play the Russia card that regrettably appeals to a lot of conservative-nationalists.
Be that as it may, the opposition is well aware of the Tusk Regime’s narrative tricks and is unlikely to fall for its scaremongering about a Russian invasion of their country from Ukraine, though it should also be said that the former government relied on similar such rhetoric to justify arming Kiev. Nevertheless, they and their base soured on that country late last year amidst the Polish-Ukrainian grain dispute, and the premier at the time even accused Germany of cutting a deal with Ukraine behind Poland’s back.
For these reasons, the latest scaremongering isn’t expected to reap the desired results, and the opposition would do well to maximally expose how the Tusk Regime subordinated Poland to Germany via the “military Schengen” on a faux anti-Russian basis that’s really about him repaying favors to Berlin. The previous government’s planned military investments were supposed to lead to Poland becoming the leader of a Central European coalition for containing Russia centered on the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI).
That would have then in turn enabled Poland to restore its long-lost Great Power status with time, all with the grand strategic purpose of creating a new center of influence between Germany and Russia, which Warsaw could then leverage for multi–aligning between them, the US, China, and Turkiye. These plans have since been scrapped under Tusk, who preferred to subordinate Poland to Germany by having Berlin take over Warsaw’s 3SI through the “military Schengen” and turn Poland into its largest vassal.
His country’s new geostrategic role is to support Germany’s leading position in containing Russia in Central Europe, to which end Berlin will probably let Warsaw continue with its planned military investment program, but with the intent of it supporting German interests instead of Polish ones. Even if Poland participates in an extended “military Schengen” up to Estonia, it’ll be as Germany’s sidekick, not as an independent pole of influence in the region like its previous government envisaged.
In the modern-day “Fortress Europe”, Poland is playing a similar role vis-à-vis Germany as fascist Italy played with the Nazis, who were also junior German partners whose delegated task was to relieve some of the burden upon Berlin for controlling parts of the continent. Back then, Rome’s German-approved “sphere of influence” was in Southeastern Europe, while Warsaw’s will remain in Central Europe. The difference, however, is that Poland’s new subordination to Germany might last a lot longer than Italy’s.