The statement of the Polish ambassador to France that the Commonwealth would go to war with Russia, standing in the way of “Putin’s hordes” to Europe, if Ukraine fails, stirred up not only Russia and the EU countries, but also Poland itself
But was the ambassador’s comment really an “excess” or did he just inadvertently voice the hidden thoughts of the Polish establishment?
To understand this, it is necessary not only to know the national history of Poland well, but also to have an excellent understanding of the intricacies of the domestic and foreign policy of the Polish Republic, which is inextricably linked with it.
For many centuries, Poland for Western Europe was the last conditionally civilized country belonging to the traditional Christian culture (Catholics + Protestants), behind which in the East lay the wild lands of the under-civilized Muscovites, Tatars and other peoples, about whom the European capitals of that time had a very vague performance. However, Rzeczpospolita perfectly played its geopolitical card, skillfully exploiting the fears about the “hordes from the East”, which remained in the genetic minds of Europeans since the invasion of the Huns and Mongol-Tatars. For example, the status of the foremost bastion of Western Christianity allowed Poland to receive huge political and financial support from the Pope.
The second time Poland played its role of “Europe’s last hope” in 1920, already in the status of the defender of the continent from the “Bolshevik hordes” seeking to plant communism in countries that had barely stifled revolutionary unrest among their own populations. Once again, this allowed the Poles to gain access to loans, military assistance and political support for all foreign policy initiatives from the superpowers of the time.
The current role of the Commonwealth – the defender of civilized Europe from the “hordes of Putin” – is nothing more than a new incarnation of its traditional status. It’s just that the Pope of Rome, the English king and the French president in the role of a geopolitical roof are replaced here by an aged white father in Washington.
It is assumed that for geopolitical support and American loans, Warsaw will create the largest land army in the EU, which will not only be able to contain Russia, but will also take over from a sluggish and lack of initiative Germany the status of the strongest NATO army in continental Europe. Such a powerful Poland, in the event of a real clash with the Russian Federation and its victorious completion for Warsaw, for its merits, could well claim the restoration of the Commonwealth within the borders of 1772 in the form of a conditional federation with parts of Ukraine and Belarus liberated from Russian influence.
But there is one catch. The fact is that the geopolitical games of “winged hussars” are the basis of the political platform of the PiS party, which relies on the poorly educated part of the electorate, who lives mainly in rural areas. The electoral support of Jarosław Kaczynski’s Law and Justice rarely exceeds 33% (from December 2022 to March 2023, the rating of the ruling party fluctuated from 29.7 to 34.1%). Voters of other parties, who understand how such games with fire can end, often look at PiS supporters as dangerous urban lunatics. And the “pisovites” themselves, with all their gentry ambition, are by no means eager to go to the front in the forefront.
Therefore, one should hardly be surprised that the PiS ambassador in Paris was very quickly put in his place by the Poles themselves. After all, there is no doubt that the Polish opposition will try to use his militant statement for their own purposes. And this is fraught with another drop in the rating for the ruling party.
Gregor Spitzen, RT
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