Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine that it was prompted to commence in response to the US-led West refusing to respect its security guarantee requests from December triggered the worst security crisis since World War II after Washington’s unprecedented and preplanned reaction. Those who agree with the Kremlin’s interpretation of events blame America for setting this sequence of events into motion while its opponents lay the blame squarely on Moscow. Few among these two sides have explored whether any third party might also have been at fault as well. The author posits that Poland’s ruling “Law & Justice” party (PiS per its Polish acronym) actually deserves a lot of the blame.
This conservative-nationalist movement had earlier been at serious odds with the liberal-globalist elite in Brussels. Its pro-sovereignty reforms in the judicial, media, and other spheres were considered to be contrary to the EU’s so-called “values” and its self-professed “rule of law”. The bloc had already begun a sustained pressure campaign against this aspiring Central & Eastern European (CEE) leader that even included a joint US-German Hybrid War aimed at manipulating the public’s perceptions of PiS ahead of the next vote in fall 2023. It deserves mentioning that the ruling party only narrowly won in summer 2020, which is why it’s so concerned about possibly losing the next elections.
Instead of reaching a pragmatic and mutually beneficial rapprochement with regional rival Russia that could have enabled Poland to focus entirely on thwarting its “allies’” Hybrid War threats against it, PiS decided to make one of the most dangerous gambles in the country’s history by further provoking tensions with that Eurasian Great Power. This was a desperate attempt to worsen Russian-NATO tensions in order for PiS to present itself as the US’ most powerful anti-Russian vanguard in the hopes that this newfound position would compel America and Germany to reconsider their regime change campaign against it ahead of fall 2023’s elections.
There was another motivation at play too and it was for PiS’ conservative-nationalists to surprisingly compromise on their much-touted values at home by suddenly transforming into the most pro-refugee country on the continent through Poland’s planned (and ultimately successful) hosting of over 2 million Ukrainian refugees if a conflict broke out in that neighboring country like what eventually ended up happening. The strategic purpose behind this was to reform the party’s reputation in the eyes of Brussels’ ruling liberal-globalist elite while simultaneously instrumentalizing these “Weapons of Mass Migration” (WMM) in order to expand their country’s envisioned “sphere of influence” in Ukraine.
Objectively speaking, the most rational course of action with the least amount of risk would have been to pursue a rapprochement with Russia like was earlier explained, which prompts the question of why PiS reacted so irrationally by risking so much – up to and including the beginning of World War III that President Putin thankfully averted through his decisive special operation – in order to remain in power. The answer can’t be known for sure but likely concerns what former Russian President and current Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev shared on Telegram. He described PiS as a radical ideological movement obsessed with reviving Poland’s past glory and fully indebted to the US.
Instead of accepting that their “allies” had turned against them for purely ideological reasons connected to the American and German liberal-globalist elite’s hatred for PiS’ conservative-nationalist outlook, the ruling Polish party thought that it could reduce this unexpected Hybrid War pressure upon it by doing even more for the US than ever before while also diluting its domestic position against refugees by accepting millions of Ukrainian ones for partially geostrategic reasons. This was nothing more than a desperate attempt to remain in power at all costs, including if PiS had to transform the very fabric of Poland’s post-World War II hitherto largely ethno-religiously homogenous society.
The American-German opposition proxy “Civic Platform” (PO per its Polish abbreviation) would be pleased with PiS’ domestic socio-cultural concessions regarding the massive influx of literally millions of Ukrainian refugees into Poland while the ruling party’s Russophobic base would appreciate Warsaw’s saber-rattling against Moscow in Ukraine. The second-mentioned dimension of this dangerous gamble is connected to infamous Polish-American National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s theory that Russia supposedly ceases to be an “empire” without Ukraine, ergo Poland can cripple its Great Power rival and possibly replace it by “poaching” that country from Russia’s alleged “sphere of influence”.
For these politically self-interested compromises to happen, however, PiS first had to provoke a worsening of Russian-NATO tensions by sabotaging their prior attempts to reach a series of compromises aimed at respecting Moscow’s regional security red lines and thus facilitating Washington’s grand strategic reorientation to the Indo-Pacific in order to more aggressively “contain” China. This explains the immense influence that Poland exerted over Ukraine in spring 2021 and then from fall 2021 onward to worsen tensions with Russia in order to prompt their mutual US ally to rush to Kiev’s defense so as to “save face” amidst claims that it was supposedly “going soft on Russia”.
That in turn helped the anti-Russian faction of the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) flip the strategic tables on their anti-Chinese rivals who’d become predominant in these policymaking positions as the most enduring legacy of former US President Donald Trump. From there, this anti-Russian faction swiftly imposed their plans upon the rest of their policymaking peers after Poland helped create the regional military-strategic pretext for doing so by exploiting its envisioned vassals in Kiev to sabotage their anti-Chinese rivals’ attempts to reach a so-called “New Détente” with Russia for the purpose explained in the preceding paragraph.
While the US’ anti-Russian “deep state” faction would have still been able to exert some nefarious influence over Kiev even without Poland’s support, their Ukrainian proxies might not have felt confident enough to provoke further tensions with Russia without knowing that they could rely on Warsaw to back them up as much as was realistically possible in the event that everything went wrong and they found themselves abandoned just like Washington’s Afghan allies were. Considering this, it can be concluded that PiS played a pivotal role in facilitating its anti-Russian US “deep state” allies’ return to predominant policymaking influence, which was responsible for bringing the crisis to the point of no return.
There was no way that Russia’s security guarantee requests from December would have ever been respected by the US in hindsight since the latter’s anti-Russian “deep state” faction had just completed its reconquest of America’s permanent policymaking structures with Poland’s indirect support through Warsaw’s encouragement of Kiev to trust that it’ll be backed up after provoking tensions with Moscow. Had PiS’ desperate meddling not succeeded, then the anti-Chinese “deep state” faction would possibly have retained power, a “New Détente” with Russia might have been reached, and Moscow wouldn’t have had to commence its special operation in Ukraine to defend its red lines in that scenario.
PiS is now in a much better domestic political position than before even though the whole world is on edge worrying about whether World War III might be sparked by miscalculation. The ruling Polish party has successfully reached its own series of mutual compromises with its American and German “allies” who were earlier actively trying to overthrow it. In exchange for halting their Hybrid War against it, PiS turned Poland into NATO’s top anti-Russian vanguard state and also sacrificed on its own domestic conservative-nationalist principles by agreeing to become a multicultural state through the massive absorption of over two million Ukrainian refugees and counting into its previously homogenous society.
Furthermore, with America’s newfound full support, Poland is now exerting powerful influence all across the EU by having its de facto “de-Russification” ideology and associated unofficial declaration of Hybrid War against Russia become the paradigms through which the rest of the bloc is now pressured by Washington to begin operating under despite this being counterproductive to many of its members’ objective national interests. From being an ideological obstacle in the eyes of America’s liberal-globalist elite, Poland has since successfully transformed itself into greatest anti-Russian Hybrid War asset that the US has anywhere in Europe after provoking tensions with Russia and compromising on its values.
PiS receives political security for the time being and the promising chance of supposedly reviving Poland’s long-lost regional imperial glory while the US obtains a reliable anti-Russian vassal state and the EU gets yet another country to radically change its socio-cultural nature through the absorption of millions of WMMs. This outcome is beneficial for Poland’s ruling elite and its American-German “frenemies” while being extremely dangerous for everyone else in Europe, not to mention average Poles themselves, due to its irresponsible flirting with World War III and the unprecedented economic crisis that continued tensions with Russia threaten to unleash across the West.
To sum it up, while the “Golden Billion” blames Russia for provoking the worst security crisis since World War II and the “Global South” blames NATO, a large part of the blame should actually be attributed to Poland’s ruling party which helped return the US’ anti-Russian “deep state” faction to policymaking power and thus ensured that the sequence of events that followed would be irreversible. None of this might have happened had it not been for PiS’ dangerous gamble that it decided to take for purely self-serving domestic political reasons. The irrationality behind this choice is why nobody expected it and the entire world was caught by surprise, which only proves how desperate PiS had become before it did this.
