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Why won't the EU support Poland in its ability to defend itself. (Photo by Klaudia Radecka/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
When Poland joined Nato 25 years ago, it did so to solve an existential problem that it had been plagued by for centuries — the perennial threat of invasion by Germany from the west and Russia from the east. By becoming part of the alliance, Poland neutralised the menace to its west by joining forces with a reunited and (ostensibly) pacified Germany, and eliminated the Russian threat to its east through collective deterrence — at least in theory.
But geopolitics is never so simple, and the nature of conflict has changed dramatically since then. As Russia’s hybrid-war against Poland since 2021 has demonstrated, the latter has had to face a growing and increasingly complex set of pressures from both the Kremlin and its ally Belarus that Nato has had little ability to combat. And since 2022, despite its hopes that its worst security fears could be safely confined to history, Poland has witnessed foreign projectiles striking its territory for the first time since the Second World War.
Although the errant Ukrainian air defence missile that killed two Poles during a Russian barrage on Ukraine in November 2022 garnered the most international attention, incidents of this sort have continued to take place since. In May, I wrote about the discovery of a Russian missile in central Poland that had flown undeterred for up to 500 kilometres before landing just west of a major Polish city, and most recently, in late August, Polish authorities reported that a Russian drone had entered Polish airspace and likely crashed into its territory.
In the days since, Polish ministers have stated that they have not been able to find any trace of the drone, and have qualified their previous claims. Nevertheless, such apparent penetrations of Poland’s hard-won security bubble have come as a shock to the Polish public, whose historically ingrained aversion to aggressive foreign intrusion has made it eager to support proactive measures to defend every inch of the country. In the wake of the most recent incident last month, a survey found that 59% of Poles unequivocally supported Poland shooting down Russian projectiles moving in the country’s direction while still in Ukrainian airspace, which would give Polish pilots and air defence systems ample time to respond to them before they have a chance to threaten Poland itself.
Calls for such a bold change in policy have been growing in Poland since the spring, and finally reached a fever pitch this week when Poland’s outspoken Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski told the The Financial Times that it is the country’s “duty” to down Russian missiles heading toward Polish, and by extension Nato, territory. A proposal to do exactly that had been featured in a landmark defence cooperation agreement signed by Ukraine and Poland back in July — but had been quickly rebuffed by Nato’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who claimed such moves could risk the alliance “becoming a part of the conflict” in Ukraine. Following Sikorski’s most recent comments, in which he claimed that Poland’s Nato membership should not stop it from pursuing its own security agenda, Nato spokespeople have doubled down on Stoltenberg’s pronouncement, claiming that Nato “is not a party to the conflict and will not become a party to the conflict”.
Nato, however, has offered no alternative solutions for how to handle the spillover from the war in Ukraine onto its territory. The European Union too, despite endorsing a Polish-Greek proposal earlier this year for the construction of a pan-European air defence infrastructure, has allowed discussion of the matter to languish in meetings. A disconnect between the alliance’s leadership and its eastern members, who have for years been lauded as its future visionaries, is painfully evident — while cautious Nato and EU leaders in Brussels are most concerned with the optics of such a change in policy and what it may mean for Nato’s role in Ukraine, in countries like Poland, the issue is far from an abstract one, and is connected to immediate national security concerns that require creative solutions within the active Ukrainian battlespace itself. If Nato is unwilling or unable to provide solutions for the threats Poland regularly faces over its own airspace, the least it could do is get out of the way to let Poland keep itself safe in whatever ways it sees fit.
The reality is that Nato is an alliance that was built to respond to the risks of the Cold War and the post-1945 era, and its Article V provision only truly protects Poland and other countries along its eastern flank from outright invasion or aggressive attack. Wayward missiles and drones that “accidentally” enter Nato airspace are much more difficult to guard against, and are thus able to fly under the radar (pun intended) of Nato’s collective defence framework while still posing a very real risk to the alliance’s member states.
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SubscribeMy controversial take on this: for Poland, joining NATO was a mistake.
The United States has only a peripheral interest in the security of Eastern Europe – thus, an American-led response to Russian aggression is likely to be tepid. Poland, on the other hand, has a very strong interest in not letting Russia win the war against Ukraine – since an aggressive, expanding Russia right on Poland’s border is something to be avoided.
The combined countries of Eastern Europe have more than enough population and economic output to build a military as strong as, or stronger than, Russia’s – but since most of them had the option of outsourcing their security to the Anglo-Americans, they didn’t do it, and now they’re dealing with the consequences – Ukraine fighting the Russians alone, while Poland, which (if it were serious about being a Great Power) would have joined the war on Ukraine’s side) is nervously sitting the conflict out, terrified of a Ukrainian defeat, but also terrified of losing the benefits of the NATO alliance by acting without American approval.
There is a neat article about this situation called “The Poland Paradox – How Far-Away Allies Make Small Countries Less Safe.” If you’re into long historical backgrounds (the author talks about Josef Pilsudski and Intermarium, World Wars I and II, and similarities with the situation in the Pacific vis a vis China) then you might like it.
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/the-poland-paradox
You made some valid points.
However, Russian invasion of Ukraine clearly shows benefits of NATO membership.
Why do you think Finland and Sweden joined NATO?
Poland is not a Great Power and unlikely to be due to financial, industrial and population constraints.
If Russia is allowed to win in Ukraine and position of USA is uncertain re security of this region, countries like Poland, Finland and Sweden will go nuclear.
Obviously relying on appeasers of Russia, like Germany and France, for security is a loosing proposition.
The benefits of NATO membership will only truly be demonstrated when the “guarantee” is called upon by a country attacked by a serious national power, ie not such as was labelled “Al Qaeda”.
The obligation is for each member to take such action as it deems necessary, which can include military action (which is not itself obligatory…).
de Gaulle, an astute and perceptive observer, and realistic (and successful) participant in geopolitics, considered that no US President would risk New York for the sake of Lyons. I believe he was absolutely right.
The extremely “near thing” of the Cuban Missile Crisis probably curtailed any possibility of the USA again taking such risks…and that involved a threat to the continental USA, not any country in Europe.
Since Cuba the USA has steered well clear of any direct confrontation with the USSR/ Russia. The stance has been to use economic strength, and subversion, and others doing the fighting. The USA will certainly not again have any direct confrontation with Russia; the risks are too great, the rewards uncertain.
And there is always the cautionary example of Britain’s guarantee to Poland; Poland not saved from domination by another, greater power, but British power totally diminished, the country impoverished and effectively a dependency of the USA.
The NATO obligation of the USA is emphatically NOT such a guarantee and never will be. The USA does not enter such obligations.
If you are referring to the Munich Agreement, it is difficult to see what Britain could have done, beyond what it in fact did, which was declare war on Germany. It is not as if it had a fleet in the Baltic.
The whole point of NATO is to keep Russia down. It should do its job.
That the Poles are paranoid is understandable historically, but madmen shouldn’t define the rationale of geopolitics. To become mad, you either feel overwhelmed by threats, or you never felt an existential threat in your homeland, which can build up delusions of grandeur. In this respect, the aggressive US escalatory geopolitics of its neocon megalomanes perfectly matches the scores of Polish volunteers already fighting in the Ukraine war to make a “Russian Threat” that self-fulfilling prophecy which it has become since the US orchestrated Maidan putsch in 2014. So the real nightmare of Europe has become to be drawn into an escalation driven by the paranoid in the east and the megalomane in the west.
The “new security framework” that Michal Kranz has in mind could well not be one where the tail wags the dog but one that arises out of a NATO breakup starting with a (“populist”) German majority finally being fed up with being reduced to an US Foreign Policy appendix. For then the megalomane will need the paranoid to redeploy their ousted troops and command centers elsewhere.
When did NATO become Nato? I notice this everywhere, not just at UnHerd. It’s lazy writing. I’m sure it’s an autocorrect thing – after a while, people get tired of undoing the autocorrect and then it becomes the norm. But, will UnHerd become Unherd? Will the UK become the Uk? The USA the Usa?
I find this irritating.
Is it a Russian plot to undermine the organization? Lol
There is no evidence, except in the fevered mind of Putin, to suggest that the US orchestrated the Maidan demonstrations.
They may not have orchestrated it, but they were happy with the result if it, because they wouldn’t have liked Ukraine being led by a Russian stooge.
Yanukovich was not a Russian stooge. Where do these memes come from? Ignorance or deliberate propaganda? Ukraine was dependent on cheap Russian gas, which they often could not pay for( remember when Ukraine turned off the gas transiting tonEurope, so that they could use it for themselves?) Yanukovich, the legally elected President representing the 52% of Russian speakers, was told by the EU that by signing the TAA he would have to give up membership of the treaty with Russia ( and others) and hence give up the cheap gas. In what way was he a Russian stooge?
Yanukovich in fact appeared to favour deeper relations with the EU early on, but then changed toward Russia. It seems reasonable that this was under direct pressure from Putin.
For the blind, there is never evidence. The escalative sharpshooting at both sides of the Maidan came from Hotel Ukraina (under Maidan control), as Katchanovski’s video analysis has convincingly shown, the US pressing for a radicalizing change in the Maidan opposition lead became obvious by way of the leaked Nuland “f**k the EU” phone call with Ambassador Pyatt, and a European-mediated agreement disfavoring political radicalization had just been signed the day before, to be drowned in blood by the sharpshooting. In 2017 three Georgians went public on Italian TV with a confession they were the Maidan sharpshooters, hired by the Maidan party with Serhiy Pashinksy being involved and being instructed on-site by an American of the 101 Airborne. And while Yanukovitch had been exhorted to restrict the police from violence, the new government quickly got their American “go” for a “anti-terrorist” attack on separatists from CIA boss John Brennan in April, when the Ukrainian civil peace had gone intendedly south by making Banderist extremists part of the new government.
So the Maidan movement itself has not been orchestrated by the US, but its fascist radicalization in February 2014 has: at the exact moment when European diplomacy threatened America with peace and agreement.
Creating a no-fly zone would quickly (following pressure from Ukraine) become a no-fly zone over all of Ukraine. Zelenskyy has sought to suck in NATO (or individual NATO members) to the war since the beginning. The flaky Poles and their flaky Foreign Minister would happily go for this so let them do so but first invite them to leave NATO.