With the help of his US colleague Trump, the Polish president is splitting and thus weakening NATO. For historical reasons, this can never be Poland’s interest.
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Poland’s national trauma of division and division has grown a need for security that is unparalleled in Europe. With hardly any other member of the European Union, with the exception of the Baltic States, historical traumatization has such an impact on daily politics.
The presidential election campaign, which ends in the first round of voting on Sunday, is also shaped by the need for security and isolation. The threat awareness can be manipulated, as the governing party PiS did with its central campaign theme: the protection of traditional values and social models from the liberal, tolerant gender society. The LGBT agenda, the rights of various ways of life, are built into traditional threat scenarios, and this is particularly important for the Catholic and rural majority of the population.
However, Poland has found a bit of peace in classic security policy. The embedding in NATO is solid, the solidarity of the alliance is noticeable. The special attention of the USA via NATO in arms cooperation does the rest to alleviate the fear of aggression in Russia. Russian maneuvers in Belarus, the deployment of missiles with potential nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, and the destabilization of neighboring Ukraine – all of this is directly experienced by the Polish population. The largest contingent of refugees in the country comes from across the border, from Donbass in Ukraine.
If the incumbent President Andrzej Duda is received in the White House four days before the election of US President Donald Trump and Trump pronounces a clumsy election recommendation, then that falls under the category of political rule breaking and democratic indecency, as is the case with Trump, but also the PiS is now used to. Trump made a grave mistake, however, by suggesting to Duda that those soldiers he intended to withdraw from Germany were stationed there.
Trump and his security adviser (who is desperately trying to justify the relocation) have developed a logic of the left and right pockets: The US maintains its troop strength in Europe, only Germany is “punished” for its unwillingness to pay.
Poland is rewarded. This milkmaid’s bill does not work for either NATO or Poland. The permanent stationing of a US combat brigade could put the final blow to the NATO-Russia basic act – which has been hollowed out by Russia – and thus take away one of the last bits of codified security from Europe. Poland would then be at the center of an escalation that it cannot want. Trump’s indecent offer even more promotes a division of NATO itself, especially since the US President wants to conclude a security contract with Poland. That is absurd. With a treaty of its own, the United States and Poland would give NATO a vote of no confidence and destroy the alliance. The loss of security for Poland would then be immeasurable. So Duda plunges his country into a serious conflict with his trip to Washington. With the help of the United States, stability-fixated Poland is splitting Europe. A president must first come up with this volte.
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Your view of the Polish President’s security policy:Readers’ discussion
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