This is why we have come up with a new product – the Intermarium Weekly, where we are going to monitor developments in the region that might have a bearing on geostrategic landscape of Europe and Eurasia in their entirety.
For centuries, this part of Europe has been a playground for the unfolding great power competition, witnessing devastating wars, excessive turmoil and revolutions. Just as importantly, in times of stability and power consolidation, it has produced its own strategic culture.
At Strategy&Future, we have sought to cultivate a lively tradition of strategic thought and mental mapping that is unique to the region and its inhabitants. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the former satellite states of the Soviet empire joined the international community, its system of free strategic flows underpinned by the power of the United States. Notably, it was a system characterised by a lack of systemic tensions and competition between major powers, which as a result allowed for the rapid onset of globalisation after 1991. Poland and other Central and Eastern European countries opened their markets to capital, commodity and technological flows, with all the consequences that came with it.
By doing so, Central and Eastern European nations were provided with US security guarantees. Everybody should remember that guarantees to all US allies in Eurasia depend entirely on US capability to effectively project power in Eurasia in places that are far away from the US mainland and across the vast expanses of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
While Halford Mackinder’s thesis is revered until this day by the nations of Central and Eastern Europe, the US in the aftermath of the Second World War did not heed Mackinder’s grand designs of supporting the independence of Intermarium nations situated between the Black and Baltic Seas in order to counter and undermine the Soviets’ Heartland-based continental power. A division of Europe into zones of influence sanctioned in the Yalta and Potsdam arrangements was the outcome.
There are few places as important within the entire Eurasia as that which Poland and her neighbours – Belarus and Ukraine – occupy. Hence it is of little surprise that the tale of Polish statehood is one of constant struggle for non-interference of neighbouring continental powers, which have inevitably tried to subordinate this crossroad between Western and Eastern Europe and harness its potential to best serve their own strategic flows.
Because of its pivotal geographic location, Poland’s strategic interests extend beyond its own borders, whatever they may be at a given moment in history. The fate of the country was always inextricably linked to thinking in terms of geopolitics, imposed upon by requirements of survival in the borderland between the sea-faring European peninsula and endless swathes of Eurasia – vastly different from the vibrant coastal regions of the Atlantic. Being located at the heart of Europe – on the Northern European Plain meant that whoever ruled the country faced pressure from not only powerful neighbors to its east and west, but virtually the heft of entire continents from both sides.
Nations of the Intermarium are trying to make a living between the Baltic and Black Seas. Between the perennial industrial powerhouse of Germanyand the Russians (or the Soviets) a land empire par excellence, locked in the merciless, relentless geography of northern Eurasia, eternally dreaming the dream of warm water ports somewhere at the coast of the World Ocean. Incidentally, this geopolitical constellation allowed the sea powers to play and use the Intermarium nations to drive a wedge between Russia and Germany.
In this context, it is easy to understand why Warsaw and other CEE capitals wanted to see the unipolar moment of post-1991 Pax Americana last forever. This desire also helps us better understand the motivation behind Polish investment in the LNG terminal in the coastal town of Świnoujście or the Baltic Pipe LNG pipeline, as well as the continuous efforts aimed at increasing the US military footprint in Poland. It is also the rationale for encouraging the independence of countries to Poland’s east, that make for buffer states, separating Poland from Russia.
We are now entering a chaotic period of reshaping and restructuring of the global order. The post-Cold War order has now ended, but the contours of the forthcoming one are vague at best. Will the rise of China mean the return to tried and tested arrangements we know from virtually the entirety of recorded history – a balancing game between Empires? Or will the new Pax Americana 2.0., reformed and reinforced reign victorious?
We will be monitoring developments in the region to find answers.
Morawiecki in Tokyo, Duda in Davos, connectivity on their minds
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and President Andrzej Duda have both been on a bit of a diplomatic offensive this past week. In both cases, the focal point of their efforts was attracting infrastructure investments and connectivity.
During his Tuesday speech in Tokyo, Morawiecki characterized Poland as a “one giant construction site”, fully primed for Japanese investors and construction companies. The Polish PM underscored two particular areas of interest for the Poles, namely connectivity and energy. Starting with the latter, Morawiecki stated that Poland looks to Japan for acquiring know-how and technical expertise in constructing the country’s first nuclear power plant and developing coal gasification technology. Both of these are very high on Poland’s agenda – especially with the EU’s carbon neutrality goal – and the resulting pressure from Brussels (Poland is the only EU country that has refused to adopt the goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 set in December last year). Moreover, the Polish energy sector is still dependent on black coal imports from Russia – not a very comfortable position for Warsaw to find itself in. In the past, Poland has looked to the US to secure technical assistance in developing its nuclear energy sector (a memorandum was even signed last June), but so far little progress has been made – and so the Poles have started looking elsewhere.
Connectivity was another key element of Morawiecki’s agenda – as evidenced by the fact that Morawiecki was accompanied by representatives of the Solidarity Transport Hub during his Japan trip. Morawiecki did not shy away from the fact that he has high hopes for the Japanese-Polish partnership in developing the STH, with representatives of the project scheduled to negotiate partnership agreements both with Tokyo’s Narita airport and Japanese high-speed rail companies.
Solidarity Transport Hub is a planned multimodal transport hub integrating a hub airport and a major railway station to be located in central Poland, between the Łódź and Warsaw metro areas. The STH project is one of – if not the main – flagship projects of the current government in Warsaw, as it promises not only to create a gateway channeling global investments into the region, but also – owing to the construction of well over 1600 kilometers of high-speed rail that is to extend radially from STH – help soak in and channel trade originating in CEE. In the case of massive infrastructure projects such as the STH or a nuclear plant, both foreign investment and know-how will be indispensable – and Morawiecki has set out to find them.
Evidently, the geopolitical realities Poland finds itself in are guiding Morawiecki’s efforts – to quote the Polish PM himself, “Poland [lies] in the heart of Europe, between Germany and Russia. Our geographic location was a burden in the past, but it has become a strong asset today”. Indeed, Poland occupies the narrowest point of the North European plain, potentially making it a prime location for the terminus of the land leg of the Belt and Road Initiative, and – in theory – allowing it to position itself as one of the main beneficiaries of the BRI. However, the constant threat emanating from Russia compels Warsaw to retain its close ties with the US – this, in turn, means it must tread softly when it comes to dealing with Chinese investments. In fact, with the signing of a US-Polish “Joint Declaration on 5G” last September, Warsaw has become one of very few European capitals that have taken steps towards excluding Huawei equipment from its networks. This also means Poland is less receptive towards the Belt and Road Initiative as it otherwise would be. That is a tough pill to swallow for the Poles, since being located along the Northern European plain and far from the World Ocean has meant that it has been a playground – and an occasional battleground – for powerful states located to its East and West for the better part of the last three centuries. Moreover, the inability to connect to the World Ocean meant that it has largely failed to participate (or suffered a major delay in participating) in a civilizational and economic shift that has occurred west of the river Elbe following the Age of Discovery, that entailed phenomena such as the explosion of maritime trade, the creation of modern capitalism and so forth (Poland historiography refers to this phenomenon as “the Dualism on the river Elbe”). Needless to say, this makes the creation of the BRI – a land-based trading system par excellence – an ever more alluring perspective for the Poles, by presenting it with an opportunity to “break the spell” of dualism, by nullifying the effects of a disadvantageous position that stems from an inability to “tap into the wealth that comes with the access to the World Ocean.
In addition to that, being unable to retain control over its territory following partitions in the lattermost part of 18th century, Poland’s transport infrastructure has been designed to feed into larger imperial systems, effectively becoming a tributary to Austro-Hungarian, Prussian and Russian core regions, rather than serving Poland itself. This is true not only of Poland, but other Central and Eastern European states located between the Baltic and the Black Sea, which throughout the nineteenth century existed only as parts of imperial constructs such as the likes of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Prussia, Russia, and the Ottoman Empire. This, in turn, meant that transport corridors traversing the CEE have done so along the East-West axis. Today Poland seeks to position itself as a center of gravity amongst these former states, temporarily free from overt external control – and views transport infrastructure as an adhesive that could help bring these states together, hence the projects the likes of the Via Baltica (an express road from Tallinn to Warsaw) and Via Carpathia (a road from Klaipeda in Lithuania to Thessaloniki in Greece – over 700-kilometers long – connecting the transport systems of Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria and Greece).
STH is therefore an effort to put right all of those mistakes by embedding Poland in a global trading system, helping it transform it’s transport infrastructure and provide a new economic center of gravity for the entire region.
Increasing connectivity along the North-South corridor and fostering economic exchange between these states is seen by Warsaw as the first step towards creating a cohesive bloc of states known as the Three Seas Initiative – a project mentioned during the World Economic Forum in Davos by President Duda.
LOT purchases Condor Air
Polish authorities have repeatedly stated that the STH project will only be feasible if it is complemented by the development of a major flagship airline. By default, this role will have to be played by LOT Polish Airlines, Poland’s national carrier.
This is where it gets interesting – a week ago, on Thursday, news surfaced that the owner of LOT, Polish Aviation Group, has placed its bid for the German Condor airlines, which previously belonged to the now defunct Thomas Cook group. With the deadline for applications set on January 17th, LOT was one of three potential buyers. A week later, on Friday the 24thit has been announced that LOT has indeed acquired Condor
This is quite the development; while LOT has been looking to expand its operations for a while now, the acquisition of Condor airlines will be a massive undertaking for the company; suffice to say, that in 2019 LOT served a record-breaking 10 million passengers, while Condor itself carried nearly seven million. In other words, LOT has just taken over an airline nearly its own size, which has been operating out of Germany – home to airports which STH will be bound to compete over (Berlin Brandenburg and Frankfurt).
Belarus buys oil from Norway, prepares for Pompeo visit
Pompeo was initially scheduled to arrive in Belarus on January 4th, but his visit was postponed due to growing tensions in the Middle East. That was bad luck for Lukashenko who would certainly welcome a chance for a photo-op with the US Secretary of State, especially with the oil dispute with Russia still ongoing. Now Pompeo’s visit has been rescheduled, and he is scheduled to arrive in Minsk on February 1st.
The oil dispute still continues, with negotiations held on January 21stand 23rdyet again producing no tangible results. This has prompted Minsk to come through on its threat to start buying oil elsewhere, with an initial purchase of 80,000 tons coming from Norway to be shipped to the Klaipeda port, and later transported to the Novopolotsk refinery by the Lithuanian rail. Moscow has reportedly responded by decreasing the amount of oil to be shipped to Belarus in January from the agreed 750,000 to 500,000 tons.
Things did not end there however; Lukashenko has stated that Belarus should diversify its oil supply, with only 40% coming from Russia, and the rest being transported via Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States. On Friday Lukashenko stated that he is tired of repeated conflicts with Russia over the price of oil and “was not bluffing when he warned Putin that Minsk will seek to import oil from abroad via ports in Gdańsk, Odessa and Klaipeda”. According to the Belarussian strongman, the current market price of oil is low enough to permit Minsk some leeway and his refusal to accept the conditions set forth by Moscow should not be construed as a negotiation strategy, but rather an objective attempt to permanently diversify oil supplies.
Amid a demographic crisis in Ukraine, Kiev invites foreign investors by the use of contradictory “Glory to Ukraine” as its password for success…
On January 22, 2020, Ukraine celebrated its 101st anniversary of the proclamation of the Act of Reunification of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the Western Ukrainian People’s Republic. On this day, the independence of the Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed. During his speech, President V. Zelensky stated that after the defeat of patriotic forces “…most of the territory of Galicia was seized by Polish troops. Northern Bukovina was taken by Romanians, and Czechoslovakia took the Trans-Carpathian region.” These comments didn’t go unnoticed in Romania. Moreover, the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded official explanations from Kyiv . Bucharest summoned the Ukrainian Ambassador. The Romanian side provided its vision and their disagreement with the Ukrainian understanding of Eastern European history; the adaptation of a highly controversial law on secondary education affecting national minorities in Ukraine has resulted in demands to ensure the rights of the local Romanian minority in Ukraine. The reaction of the Hungarian minority to the law (adopted on 16 January) was drastically negative, as they demanded a return to the situation, as it was in 2017, when the national minorities of Ukraine had full opportunities to study in their own languages. We can therefore anticipate that the Hungarian policy of blocking Ukrainian-NATO cooperation will be continued.
In Davos, the Ukrainian delegation was represented by a massive delegation headed by President Zelensky and its Prime Minister Aleksei Goncharuk. They had many constructive propositions, for instance, Ukrainian and Polish Prime Ministers agreed that a Polish official delegation would travel to Kyiv and invited Poland to participate in investment projects in Ukraine. The Ukrainian PM stated that constructive relations between Ukraine and Poland are an EU security factor. Moreover, Polish Ambassador to Ukraine Bartosz Cichocki recently suggested that the meeting between Presidents Zelensky and Andrzej Duda may occur even before the presidential elections take place in Poland in May 2020. Goncharuk in Davos promised that Ukraine was planning to integrate its energy sector with the EU in 2023.
Kyiv announced its readiness to sign the agreement for a Free-Trade-Zone with Turkey. The draft of the agreement is 90% ready. However, we would predict that the terms will not be equal because the shape and capacities of the two economies are incomparable. Turkey overwhelms Ukraine in every domain. In this context, Ukraine is thus marking its return as an area – stretching from the Danube to the Don – that was always treated as a chessboard of two longstanding geopolitical rivals in Turkey and Russia.
According to recent estimations, the Ukrainian population has decreased significantly. Ukraine’s population fell behind that of Poland’s for the first time as an electronic census revealed the number of citizens has dropped by some 5mn people to 37.289mn since the last census in 2000. One of the main reasons why Ukraine has not yet organized the necessary census is that the results might scare the entire nation. Poland has become a regional leader in terms of demography.
Latvia planning to boost its economic cooperation with Belarus, but it faces increasing regional competition…
It should be noted that Latvia has not retreated from Iraq and their troops (6 soldiers) are still there. They are going to be there till February 2022. Prime Minister Arturs Krišjānis Kariņš of Latvia in his speech during the annual foreign policy debate in the Sejm expressed that in world politics, there are four centers of power and economy – the USA, China, the EU and Russia – and that Latvia’s place in this world remains together with the EU and its strategic allies in NATO and other organizations. Only cooperation with the Western Allies can ensure the independence of Latvia. Moreover, Kariņš after a visit to Minsk stated that they had agreed with the leader of Belarus to increase cooperation with Latvian ports. This might be an indication of Lukashenko’s struggle for alternative sources of energy and as an alternative he is considering Latvian ports. However, Norwegian oil arrived in Klaipėda just recently, suggesting that there will be competition at a regional level.
Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis discussed bilateral relations and opportunities for strengthening economic cooperation with the recently appointed Belarusian ambassador to Lithuania Valery Baranovsky. In the official statement, it was emphasized that Lithuania is ready to continue to cooperate with Belarus in the transit of goods through the territory of Lithuania and the Klaipeda seaport, and if possible, increase its volumes. As we can see regional competition for Belarus already has started. China also has a role to play in this regional competition(see below).
Moldova and Romania are facing a rift over the level of democracy in Moldova
Recently the President of Romania stressed that “Romania will resume full cooperation with the Republic of Moldova when it sees that action is being taken at the government level to continue the European path.” We are not sure that the current government of Moldova eagerly pursues this goal – he stated. During a ceremony in Israel, Moldovian President Igor Dodon had a meeting with his Romanian counterpart Klaus Johannis. Dodon stated that Romania is our strategic partner and the Romanians are our brothers. Nevertheless, it should be noted that since the dismissal of previous pro-European government Maia Sandu in November 2019, relations have deteriorated – not only with Romania but with many other capitals of Europe. Romania is ready to offer direct help to Moldavians whom it considers as part of its own nation. Moldova receives almost 70% of the entire amount of Romanian aid to foreign countries.
Bulgaria charges 3 Russian Agents in Poisoning Case
The trio, members of a secretive group within Russian military intelligence agency, are accused of trying to kill an arms dealer, his son and one of his top executives in 2015. Prosecutors in Bulgaria announced criminal charges on Thursday against three Russian spies from a secretive assassination unit for the 2015 poisoning of a prominent Bulgarian arms manufacturer. The three men slipped into the country using fake passports and, according to prosecutors, used an organophosphate poison in an attempt “to deliberately kill” the arms manufacturer, Emilian Gebrev, along with his son and a top executive in his company.
Turkey wants an extension of NATO to the Southern Caucasus
An unexpected statement was made by Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, who called on NATO to expand, in particular, by joining Georgia to the Alliance. He stated that Turkey is “…criticized for the relatively better relations with Russia as a neighbor, but our Western friends do not agree to invite Georgia because they do not want to provoke Russia. But Georgia needs us, and we need an ally like Georgia. Therefore, we need expansion, Georgia must become a member.” Çavuşoğlu is not bluffing, actually Turkey is not against the idea of extension of NATO to the Caucasus because she will be the only power that will gain unprecedented geopolitical influence in the Southern Caucasus. Turkish capital in Georgia is very visible.
Autor
Albert Świdziński
Director of Analysis at Strategy&Future.
Strategy&Future
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