Global Courant 2023-04-29 11:22:52
The war in Ukraine affects the EU’s center of gravity. The EU looks to the East, although the shift so far is military. Poland seeks new role. But what does this mean for Europe?!
In his keynote speech on Europe in August 2022 in Prague, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that “the center of Europe is moving eastward.” Various analysts who have spoken before and after this speech have supported the same idea.
This means that the influence of the states of Central and Eastern Europe, such as Poland, the Baltic States, but also of Sweden in the north has strengthened significantly after the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. We have a moral strengthening, greater legitimization of their political positions. After the warning that they have been making for years about Putin’s warmongering nature is confirmed.
At the same time, the largest EU states, Germany, France and Italy see themselves as objects of criticism in the EU. These countries were wrong in their assessment of Putin. Germany did not believe that Putin would shake the world order with a massive attack to forcefully change the borders in Europe. She believed that Russia would respect the favorable gas and oil supply agreements in any situation; it was similarly judged in Italy, where the tendency to see business with Russia as separate from politics prevailed for a long time. But France was mistaken because of a traditional admiration for the size of Russia.
The shift of gravity to the East in practice
On the one hand we have a military displacement. There has been a massive relocation of NATO troops to the eastern states of the EU. NATO has now deployed the largest number of soldiers in Poland (10,500 soldiers), followed by Lithuania (4,000 soldiers), Bulgaria (3,300 soldiers), Romania (3,300 soldiers), Slovakia (2,100 soldiers), Estonia (2,000 soldiers), Latvia (1700 soldiers), Hungary (800 soldiers). The US has established a permanent military garrison in Poland and will also establish one of its commands for Europe there.
On the other hand, the states of Eastern Europe have become more central, as their stability and security issues are now at the center of attention of the European Union and NATO. The endangerment of these states on the direct border with Russia is seen as endangering the democratization project of the West.
In these countries themselves, the new situation has activated the determination not to be satisfied with the role on the periphery of the EU and to influence the community more strongly. It is Poland and the Baltic States, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania that are insisting on going one step further in the Western armament of Ukraine.
In this context, with the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the importance of Poland for the EU increased “overnight”. This is related to the fact that “all transport to Ukraine must go through Poland,” Marek Madej, a political scientist at the University of Warsaw, told DW.
Poland (39.9 million inhabitants) is the country that has accepted the largest number of Ukrainian refugees on its territory, over 1.4 million. Poland’s aid to Ukraine last year was massive, 7.5 billion euros (For comparison: Germany, population 84 million, has made available to Ukraine 14 billion euros in military, economic and reconstruction aid). Also, Poland is helping Ukraine militarily. Poland itself is building a powerful army, investing 3% of its gross domestic product on the military.
As an appreciation for all this, this state on the border with Russia was visited twice within 11 months by the US President, Joe Biden.
With the war in Ukraine, European attention also shifted from the focus imposed by Polish domestic politics since 2015: from the independence of justice and the separation of powers in Poland. For the moment, it seems that the harsh rejection of almost all the refugees from Poland has been forgotten. With this attitude, the Polish government said it also protected the Christian West from the flood of refugees from the world. Poland has now gained a legitimacy it did not have.
The new situation and decision-making structures in the EU
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has declared that he sees Europe “before a historic turning point”. For this reason as well, the Polish government is striving for a reorganization of the centers of power in the EU – keeping history in mind. The Polish government has intensified contacts with eastern states such as the Baltic States, as well as with Romania and Finland, in order to create a special group with them. They are mainly countries affected by the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939 (with which the way was opened for the Nazi attack against Poland and for the division into spheres of influence of the states of central and eastern Europe.)
With the new groupings, the Polish government wants to increase its influence in the EU, led according to Prime Minister Morawiecki by Germany and France, which Poland does not want. However, not all the states that Poland gathers have this goal.
On the other hand, Poland sees itself more widely as a leader of the former communist states of the east. At a press conference in Washington with Vice President Kamala Harris in early April, Polish Prime Minister Morawiecki said “that there is a new Europe – a Europe that remembers what Russian communism was. Poland is the leader of this new Europe.” However, the best-known post-communist alliance, the Visegrad alliance, consisting of Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, has been defunct since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. This is mainly due to the pro-Russian attitude of Hungary, but also to the difference in the attitudes of other countries.
Poland’s Imaginations of Europe
Due to the actual weight of Poland in Central and Eastern Europe, the Polish government sees itself as the leader of this region. Otherwise, based on the statements of Prime Minister Morawiecki, the Polish government imagines Europe as an alliance of national states, e.g. as a Germany-France-Poland-Ukraine alliance; and as a Poland-Romania-Ukraine alliance. The Polish Prime Minister proposed this at the end of March in Bucharest. Morawiecki represents the Right and Justice party, a party with so far uncertain chances of winning the elections in the fall.
Polish concepts of Europe differ from Western ones
On March 20, Morawiecki gave a keynote address on Europe, in Germany, at the University of Heidelberg. In it, he called the move towards the federalization of Europe by the EU, which is defended by Germany, France and many other countries, “illusory and utopian”. In his speech he exalted the nation state. Rolf Nickel, former ambassador of FRG in Warsaw and author of the book “Feinde Fremde Freunde: Polen und die Deutschen” (Enemies, foreigners, friends: Poles and Germans), finds the explanation for this Polish attitude in the difficulties that Poland has had in history to protect her nation state.
The position against European integration is one of the differences between current Polish attitudes and the general spirit in the EU. The second area where the attitudes of Poland, but also of the Baltic States, differ mainly from the German-French concepts of Europe is the attitude towards Russia.
In imagining the future of Europe, the vast majority of EU states, Germany, France and Italy see Russia as a great state, with which Europe will have to deal. Whereas Poland, the Baltic States and any other country are for isolating Russia and limiting contacts with this country on many levels.
Shifting the center of gravity in the face of decisive factors
Poland and the Baltic States are now taken more seriously and listened to attentively in Brussels. Sources from the EU say that representatives of these countries speak with confidence in European forums. They are also respected because they are potentially the most endangered states.
Both Poland and the smaller Baltic states are currently valued above their real weight in world politics. The economic and political parameters, the capacities of the eastern states, their “hardware” as states, are of course the same as before the outbreak of the war in Ukraine.
The new geographical shift, the new expansion of the EU to the East has not yet happened. EU membership of countries like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova is far away. With Ukraine, however, the EU and NATO are drawing up intensive support programs. The aim is for Ukraine to receive maximum support, even without joining the EU.
Despite the maximum shift of attention to the states in the east of Europe: in addition to Ukraine’s self-defense war, there remains the military and economic aid of the USA, but also of Germany, France, Italy and Spain, as well as Great Britain for Ukraine and their attitude towards Russia that will influence the path to peace. This is due to the great economic, political and military capacities of these states.
In post-war Europe, when judgments have been freed from the current alarming military and economic pressures, it will be seen where today’s war has ultimately led the European Union and Europe./ DW
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