Poland has been one of the loudest cheerleaders in encouraging NATO’s drive to war. On 23 January the Polish prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki outlined Poland’s intent to send tanks it purchased from Germany to support Ukraine against the Russian invasion, with or without Germany’s consent. The original contract for the Leopard 2 tanks stipulated that any re-export of them must be approved by Germany. Since the collapse of the USSR and the socialist bloc, the formerly socialist Polish state has reintegrated into a capitalist economy and established itself as the US’s most committed ally in Eastern Europe.
After the fall of the Polish People’s Republic in 1989, Poland aligned itself to western imperialism by joining NATO in 1999 and the European Union in 2004. It sent 35,000 troops to support NATO’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2001 and 2003. In 2017, under the presidency of Barack Obama, the US deployed 4,000 military personnel to Poland as part of the US strategy to maintain its presence in Eastern Europe and to try to contain Russian expansion in the region. In 2020, Poland requested the establishment of a US military base, to be named ‘Fort Trump’. It was widely viewed as a vanity project for the then-US President, and didn’t take off, but a further 1,000 US troops were deployed to Poland.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, a reactionary bigot and leader of the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice Party, created a strong bond with Donald Trump; essentially endorsing Trump in his failed 2020 re-election bid. Since Poland’s abandonment of socialism, the far-right has grown exponentially and there has been a mainstream commitment to condemning and villainising Poland’s socialist history.
Under Duda’s presidency, right-wing ideology has festered and grown: in 2022 600,000 Polish citizens joined a far-right nationalist protest. Duda has pledged to fight ‘LGBT ideology’, made abortion illegal in Poland and openly bans Muslim refugees from entering the country. While in office, Trump praised Poland’s racist anti-immigration policies that have been the basis for refusing Muslim refugees, while accepting Ukrainian and other white refugees, stating these anti-immigration policies should be adopted worldwide. Trump was also quoted saying ‘I have a very good personal relationship with [Duda]’.
Duda’s relationship with current US President Joe Biden is not as cosy as it was with Trump, with Biden calling the Polish government ‘totalitarian’ during his election campaign, but the two countries are still drawing closer. On 15 November 2022 Poland was struck by a Russian-made missile. The warmongering imperialist press ran with stories of Russia targeting Poland, without any evidence, creating a dangerous narrative. Article Five of the NATO Convention states that an armed attack on one NATO country – which Poland is – is considered an attack on all NATO countries. Although Biden and the Polish government eventually dialled down tensions by saying the missile was a stray from the Ukrainian air defence, denied by Ukrainian President Zelensky, the event showed how the NATO aligned countries and their press look for every opportunity to escalate the conflict.
Shortly after the event, on 21 November 2022, a senior US Army general told news website Politico that ‘Poland has become our most important partner in continental Europe’. Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Poland’s NATO budget has increased from 2% to 3% of its GDP, now the third-highest defence expenditure by share of GDP of all NATO countries.
The Polish ruling class is divided over its relationship with the EU imperialist bloc, and instead is drawing closer to the US, with NATO’s presence in Poland becoming stronger. Poland as of now is heading down a far-right path that is intent on sowing reaction and division, targeting minority groups and destroying any class consciousness that may have been present previously, as it pursues its nationalist project and becomes a puppet of US imperialism. Opposition in Poland does exist, with many people protesting against Duda’s oppressive policies.
Maya Vot Sobaka
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No 292, February/March 2023
