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Poland’s foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, who’s married to DC swamp creature Anne Applebaum, is one of more belligerent voices in Europe. He’s now making the rounds talking about trying to shoot down Russian missiles over Ukraine. First it was an interview with the Financial Times in which he claimed that Warsaw must do so in case the missiles are heading towards Poland. Later in the week, he told the BBC it would be to protect nuclear power plants in Ukraine. The idea of bringing Poland into the conflict has long been floated, but Sikorski’s comments are one of the biggest endorsement yet by a high-ranking Polish official.
Are his comments sincere or are they part of Polish efforts to position itself as a role model in the US vision for the ongoing reinvention of Europe?
Let’s first look at Poland’s lead role in the US plan to drag Germany further into the New Cold War morass and current efforts to pressure Berlin into ponying up for militarization efforts in Europe, and then circle back to Sikorski’s comments.
The New Tip of the Spear?
If Germany is often criticized for not pulling its weight in NATO, Poland is the opposite. It’s the poster boy for what Washington wants in Europe.
It’s obedient, fervently anti-Russian, and has a large military, which is now the third-largest force in NATO with 216,100 personnel, behind only the US (1.3 million) and Turkiye (481,000). Most importantly, Warsaw isn’t hesitant to throw money at the US military industrial complex. In August, the government approved a draft budget that will see nearly five percent of its GDP go to defense in 2025 — tops in NATO.
“Poland will hopefully be [an] inspiration for others,” says Michal Baranowski, a Warsaw-based defense and NATO expert at the German Marshall Fund.
No doubt. Problem is that Poland is also still a middle income country that doesn’t have the economic clout to assume a political leadership role in Europe. But with friends in high places and allies in like-minded Eastern European states it’s pushing more than ever for the as-of-now-still-wealthy Western Europe states to keep up the belligerence towards Russia with ever more financial commitments.
On three issues the Baltic countries, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania, largely agree: double down on the New Cold War and increasingly finance it on the back of Germany in order to stay in the good graces of Washington.
These are all countries that lead the way in the EU in the percentage of GDP given to Ukraine in financial aid, as well as percentage of GDP spent on defense. From the US perspective, they’re role models. Now they need to show Germany the way — particularly to pony up for the proposed EU defense bonds.
Sikorski was probably previously best known for his quickly-deleted public thank you card to the US for the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines:
Presumably with help from Applebaum, the other member of the power couple, Sikorski is now a leading voice on how Europe should go about cementing the transatlantic relationship no matter who’s elected president in November.
Kaja Kallas from Estonia is now EU defense minister who is proposing a €100 billion eurobond issue to pay for more buildup against Russia.
Wojciech Przybylski, an analyst with think tank Visegrad Insights, told Politico the following: “Kallas forms the link between Poland, the Baltic basin and the Nordics — Denmark, Sweden, Finland…From a Central European perspective, she is the best we could imagine.”
Poland is led by Donald Tusk, another politician rolled off the Atlanticist assembly line and who knows his way around Brussels having served as the President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.
He’s very close to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. If she has a plan on how deal with Russia and Ukraine if/when the Americans walk away, she’s playing her cards tight to the vest. More likely is she hasn’t a clue other than pressing for more money and hoping that will lead to some happy outcome.
Poland might also be getting additional input over a whole lot of EU money. Piotr Serafin, a Tusk confidant and Poland’s European commissioner in Brussels, looks likely to be in charge of the EU Commission budget portfolio, one of the most powerful positions as the bloc is set to sort out its seven-year spending plans. Expect more schemes to get around the ban on the EU budget funding defense purchases and less money to more traditional items like agriculture and regional development.
All this means that Tusk, Serafin, and Sikorsky (and Applebaum?) are going to play a major role in EU defense policy and are likely going to push harder for what the US wants the EU to do regarding Russia.
Another thing this group has in common is that they belong more to the Davos crowd and it’s doubtful they’d have qualms about offering up Poland as the next sacrifice on the altar to dethrone Putin and theoretically usher in an era of Western plunder in Russia.
They’re also getting more confident in pushing back against the EU power center in Berlin.
When some in Germany began piping up again about the multi-billion-dollar Nord Stream pipeline that was destroyed in the Baltic Sea harming the country’s economy, Tusk insisted it was in fact German backers of the pipeline who should “apologize and keep quiet.”
Berlin also opposed Kallas’ nomination as EU foreign minister, but Tusk threatened to torpedo the candidacies of other European Council position hopefuls supported by Berlin, and Germany quickly backed down.
Now the Polish-Baltic contingent, supported by Washington, is pushing for EU defense bonds. Germany has long opposed common EU borrowing (despite making an exception for Covid recovery funds), but will it stick?
Germany’s 360-Degree Turn
Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s much-hyped Zeitenwende was supposed to herald a new era of Germany leading European defense, but the government wrongly assumed it would be a breeze. Instead the economy is in recession, the country’s debt brake rules mean increased military spending means cuts in other areas, and when that’s coming on the back of record immigration numbers it’s not a recipe for public support.
Germany’s ruling coalition is essentially a lame duck government already (elections aren’t for another year). Insurgent parties opposed to Germany leading a remilitarized Europe are surging, and the government is being forced to retreat back to a pre-Zeitenwende position where it pleads with its US masters that it’s doing enough.
In this case, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock would be correct to describe the Zeitenwende as a 360-degree turn. Berlin is back to hyping its military expenses in an attempt to convince the inconvincible in Washington and Eastern Europe that it’s doing enough.
While Russia and Asian countries were meeting at the at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok to discuss more connectivity via trade corridors, investment, and trade settlement agreements, Germany was hosting the Ukraine Defense Contact Group. Scholz and his defense minister Boris Pistorius talked up the country’s plans to budget for what amounts to an iron dome — despite, as Gilbert Doctorow points out, would be hunks of worthless air defense metal with billion dollar price tags against Russia’s hypersonic missiles.
Zelensky in Germany
no German flag in sight pic.twitter.com/Lxdg0xLt6e
— What the media hides. (@narrative_hole) September 7, 2024
The EU has been so worried about Russia, but it has completely turned over the EU henhouse to the US foxes. It is now clearer than ever that the EU is a vehicle of US foreign policy in order to ensure Russia is bordered by unfriendly states to its West and in the Caucasus (although the US and EU are finding limited success there).
The EU is the economic appendage to NATO, and it will be mostly Germany that must pick up the tab for weapons procurement and economic support to ensure that anti-Russian governments in former USSR states remain safely in power. Dealing with a deindustrializing economy in recession? Tough luck. Time for Germans to get over their aversion to debt.
As the Council on Foreign Relations notes, “…many countries, such as Poland and the Baltic states, are more willing to entrust their security to the United States than to their European allies.” And so they do as they’re told by Washington, welcome in US missiles and bases, and are more than happy to band together in efforts to cajole Germany into sacrificing for US imperial interests.
While the German ruling coalition is beset by infighting, and the road ahead looks bumpy, representatives from Poland and the Baltic and Nordic states are reportedly gathering to align their positions before meetings of EU leaders in Brussels. Their alignment is driven by three issues: Russians out, Americans in, and bleed Germany dry by getting it to pay for more and more of it.
Von der Leyen and company are all too happy to go along as long as it means more centralized power. EU purse string tools that used to be applied in an attempt to enact Brussels’ uniform liberal order across the bloc are now more about disciplining states that stray from Washington’s imperial orders. That’s why money originally withheld from a country like Hungary over allegations of corruption, lack of an independent judiciary, and other violations was recently used as a bribe to gain Budapest’s temporary support on Ukraine. And it’s why politicians of any stripe are welcomed into the mythical “center” in Europe as long as they pledge fealty to NATO.
Yet, the alliance’s unifying force in an unwinnable war against Russia is already struggling to paper over the fallout in the form of declining living standards and the increasing authoritarianism necessary to hold the line.
As evidenced by Germany’s position in which it is stuck between the demands of its own citizens on one hand and those of other EU countries and the imperial capital on the other, there are no easy ways out of the corner Europe has backed itself into. And it’s likely to tear the bloc apart (not such a bad outcome) — if the US doesn’t use it as cannon fodder against Russia first (not such a great outcome).
Like so much of recent European history, it’s largely going to be decided in Germany. Two members of Sahra Wagenknecht’s surging antiwar party (BSW) lay out the stakes:
There is no feasible military option for the Europeans…With the Ukraine resolution and the nomination of Kallas as the EU’s chief diplomat, the European Union now appears to be replacing the USA as the dominant pro-war bloc in the Ukraine war. However, this will further isolate the EU in terms of foreign policy.
Above all, the USA will try to pass on the enormous costs of this war – and peace could become even more expensive – to Europe.
While European voters increasingly favor a settlement to the war — which was never all that popular to begin with — and a less bellicose policy overall towards Russia, they are increasingly ignored. In Germany, with each successive election two parties (the BSW and Alternative for Germany) who favor an end to hostilities with Russia are getting too popular to ignore. And yet Berlin is preoccupied with keeping them out of power at all costs. This is the overriding concern even as the US and the Atlanticists in Europe drive the clown car over a cliff.
Sikorski’s Comments — Bluster or Foreshadowing?
Back to the comments from Sikorski who unsurprisingly did not volunteer for the front lines after Poland’s “duty” to start shooting at Russia would inevitably lead to the country at war.
Any military implications of such a move are above my pay grade (maybe some readers can comment), but the main area of fighting in Eastern Ukraine is far away (Pokrosk, for example, is roughly 1,300 kilometers from the Polish border). Would Polish involvement make much of a difference anyways? Trying to shoot down Russian missiles wouldn’t provide more men — unless it’s just a prelude to wider involvement — or make up for lack of military industrial capacity in the West.
Other officials in Warsaw have also said that Sikorski’s comments do not reflect the position of the government, and NATO currently opposes such a move. So why is Sikorski making these comments and why now? A few possibilities:
Domestic Politics. The Polish armed forces response to an unidentified object — probably a military drone — entering Polish airspace from Ukraine last week is being widely criticized for potentially exposing the country to a foreign air attack. They were apparently prevented from shooting it down because they could not identify it, and the military must verify an object before downing it to avoid accidentally hitting civilian objects. If Sikorski’s comments were meant for domestic consumption, however, why deliver the news in interviews with the Financial Times and BBC?
“Hold Me Back, Bruh,” i.e., Post-Project Ukraine Positioning. Sikorski’s comments could be seen as preparation for the inevitable Ukraine loss with demands that Europe, i.e., Germany must do more. As Poland aligns itself more closely with the Baltic states, Romania, and the Czech Republic in a bid to pressure Germany into okaying joint EU defense bonds, it could be they are preparing to blame Berlin for not going far enough.
As Ukraine creates a stab-in-the-back narrative, maybe Sikorski also wants to make sure its neo-Nazi groups don’t blame him and Poland.
Deterrence. Sikorski’s comments could be seen as a rather humorous attempt to dissuade Russia from going all the way to Lviv, as some in Moscow like Russia’s former president Dmitry Medvedev support.
Escalation. Sikorski’s comments could be a sign that some neocon Atlanticists want Poland to get involved in the conflict in a desperate attempt to stave off Ukrainian defeat and continue to extend Russia. His connection to Applebaum and neocon circles in Washington make it more likely that the comments are part of some harebrained plot to keep the show on the road. Sikorski’s comments come at the same time that The Blob breathes new life into Russiagate theories by accusing Russian news media of meddling in US elections. If not designed to condition Americans for war, it sets up a potential Trump administration for round two of discredited Russiagate. Any move by Poland to exacerbate the conflict would also go a long way towards locking a Trump or Harris administration into it.
In the minds of people like Applebaum and the Kagan-Nuland Family Industrial Complex behind the Institute for the Study of War, the crackdown on alleged Russian disinformation operations and escalating the war are one in the same:
“The notion that the war is unwinnable because of Russia’s dominance is a Russian information operation…The Kremlin must get the United States to the sidelines, allowing Russia to fight Ukraine in isolation” from @TheStudyofWar https://t.co/CAq5TpK2dK
— Anne Applebaum (@anneapplebaum) March 27, 2024
The most frightening part of this is that these people might really believe this and won’t be convinced otherwise until the nukes start flying — if that would even convince them that reality is not a Russian psyop.
It’s clear that this Applebaum-ISW neocon crowd doesn’t want to give up no matter how dire the outlook, which has been clear with the recent debate over allowing Ukraine to send long range missiles into Russia Some neocons like Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and at the Pentagon seem to be throwing in the towel, admitting that Russian military assets are out of range of ATACMS and giving Kiev the green light would only invite more blowback. The ISW is saying “not so fast” with an August 27 report listing “hundreds of known Russian military objects in range of ATACMS.”
A closer look at Sikorski’s comments raises some interesting questions. In the FT he was talking about the need to shoot down objects flying towards Poland that have not yet reached Polish skies, and the BBC reported him saying that Russian missiles could accidentally hit one of Ukraine’s three nuclear power plants.
Importantly, he said that Poland has a “duty” to shoot down such objects despite NATO opposition to it doing so.
“Membership in NATO does not trump each country’s responsibility for the protection of its own airspace — it’s our own constitutional duty,” he said.
There’s almost no way that Poland would take such a step without the go-ahead from Washington, but it’s possible to envision a scenario where Warsaw moves ahead despite public disapproval from NATO with Sikorski and Polish actors working with tacit support from factions of the Blob, potentially timed to make it that much more difficult for a future president to extricate the US from an expanding war with Russia.
