Time To Review Poland’s Grand Strategy in the East Giedroyć – Mieroszewski Doctrine – Is Now. Part 1

Jerzy Giedroyć in his Institute at Avenue de Poissy 91, where he lived from 1954
(photo: PAP/CAF)

 

The very fact of the existence of these independent neighbours was to remove the danger of Poland’s clash with imperial Russia again. The concept was based on the assumption that Russia would not be able to pose a threat to Poland if both countries were divided by a belt of independent countries formed from former Soviet republics. In the implementation of this doctrine, Poland’s goal after the collapse of the Soviet empire was both to support the emergence of these states and to care for good neighborly relations so that they would not fall back into Russia’s orbit.

 

A side effect of this was that Poland would not implement elements of her own political pressure on the elites of the new states, taking care of their “subjectivity” understood precisely as getting rid of the “imperialist” behaviour of Poland’s past.

 

The key was therefore reconciliation and agreement between Poland and the “ULB” nations (Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus), obviously based on recognition of the irreversibility of the territorial changes that had occurred as a result of World War II. And the reconciliation of Poles with the loss of eastern buffer areas (and thus significant cities for Poles – Vilnius and Lvov), and the resignation from Polish economic and civilisational advantage (and a resignation from efforts to rebuild it) in the east. This was to be the foundation of a reconciliation with Poland’s eastern neighbors and, consequently, cooperation with them to consolidate independence by the peoples of the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium that had previously been subordinated to the Soviet Union.

 

We do not remember this now, but after the World War, in the 1950s and 1960s, this was a groundbreaking position against the background of the then-widespread opinion of the emigree political circles of Polish independence in Great Britain and the United States, which did not want to give up Polish political dominance in the eastern buffer areas of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, or at least part of it.

 

As a result, in 1974, the geopolitical doctrine of the future independent Poland was formulated for Polish political thought in “Kultura”.

 

The doctrine of Mieroszewski and Giedroyc was the closest thing to a grand Polish strategy in the East pursued by the governments in Warsaw after 1989 in terms of both unquestionably supporting the the independence of the buffer states and “exporting” Westernism to Russia, i.e. attempts to democratise Russia.

 

Mieroszewski believed that the imperial Russian problem would continue to be current and demanding for every independent Poland at all times. He therefore proposed the “democratisation” of the USSR, a kind of “European export”, which would neutralise the damaging effects of communism, both within the empire and in its satellite states. Poland was to undertake this task as the country closest to the West – both geographically and culturally.

 

A detailed look at the doctrine, however, allows you to see additional elements, probably often insufficiently considered in Polish political thought after 1989, but which are becoming drastically important today. Hence, there is a need to revise its common understanding and thereby designate Poland’s new grand strategy towards the East in the second and third decades of the 21st century.

 

According to Mieroszewski, the eastern buffer areas of the Polish Borderlands determine the history of the Polish state, condemning it either to the position of a satellite or to imperialism. It is worth quoting extensively from Mieroszewski’s essay ‘Russia’s “Polish complex” and the ULB area’ due to the importance of the statements herein, and even more so as the situation of tension on the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium, so acute in the second and probably the third decade of the 21st century: “A precondition for Poland’s satellite status is the incorporation of the ULB nations to Russia. It would be crazy to regard the problems of Ukraine, Lithuania and Belarus as an internal Russian matter, in order for Poland to straighten its relations with Russia. Competition in these areas between Poland and Russia has always been aimed at establishing an advantage, not at good neighbourly relations. For Russia, the incorporation of the ULB countries is a necessary precondition to reduce Poland to satellite status. From Moscow’s perspective, Poland must be a satellite in one form or another. History teaches the Russians that an independent Poland has always reached for Vilnius and Kiev and tried to establish its advantage in the ULB area. This equates to the liquidation of imperialist Russia’s position in Europe. This equates to the fact that Poland cannot be independent if Russia is to maintain its imperial status in Europe. From Warsaw’s perspective it is the same – only the other way around.

We were looking for an advantage in ULB, whether military or federal, because history teaches that Russia in these areas is an insurmountable opponent. And you can only expect captivity. Even without World War II, Poland’s independence would be threatened, because we won in 1920 near Warsaw, not Kiev. Even without Stalin, there would be an arms race and the reduction of Poland to the role of a protectorate by Russia alone or with Germany”.

 

Juliusz Mieroszewski (photo: wikipedia.org)

 

Mieroszewski continued: “It seems that while the Russians have always underestimated the Ukrainians and still underestimate them, they always overestimated and still overestimate the Poles. They always see us either as active or potential rivals – nevertheless always as rivals – Khrushchev admitted to taking the Racławicka Panorama from Lvov but categorically advised against showing it to the Polish audience, that it would be like fighting Russia. The famous episode with the performance of Mickiewicz’s Forefathers’ Eve was on the same background. Russians will always be afraid of a Polish action. The Polish nation has always played a major role in Russian history and it is necessary for us to know exactly the perspectives through which the Russians look at us.

Litvinov spoke about the reconstruction of the Polish empire from the 16th and 17th centuries, which seems comical to us, but for Litvinov – unlike us – the 20th century was chained to the 16th and 17th centuries, with the same traditional issues, including Polish issues.

 

Like the tsars, Stalin, Litvinov and Brezhnev believed (and believe) that either the Poles or the Russians could rule the ULB.

 

There is no historical third solution: there is only a choice between Polish and Russian imperialism. The Russians overestimate us because they look from a historical perspective. Poles, on the other hand, are proud and often sentimental, but we consider our imperial history to have nothing to do with today’s reality. We had an advantage in the East for 300 years. Then, after Grzymułtowski’s Peace, Russia had the advantage. Either us or they, so there is no normalisation. Poles, like the Russians, do not believe in a lasting solution.”

 

In my opinion, this is the most important part of Mieroszewski’s thought, and its relevance is now visible to the naked eye, it even beats us, especially when we evaluate the last 30 years of our policy in the east.

 

It is worth coming back to the 1990s for a moment. At the peak of the possibility of fulfilling Poland’s aspirations to join the West with the rest of the Baltic-Black Sea nations, i.e. just 25 years ago, at the deepest moment of Russia’s collapse and a very real sense of sadness under the rule of Boris Yeltsin, the population of this part of Europe on the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium was greater than the population of Russia. The combined GDP of the Intermarium countries was 16.5% more than the Russian GDP of that time of rock bottom, before the bounce back began under Putin’s rule.

 

From our perspective today, looking back to 30 years ago, we can see that Warsaw placed too much strategic emphasis on the export of “Western-ness” as a result of its reluctance to engage in any behaviour that could be considered “imperial”, so too little care was taken to obtain real influence on the vital buffer area for Poland, in the first place in Belarus towards the Smolensk Gate, but also in Ukraine.

 

Such an approach should be regarded as neglecting the duty of care for Poland’s direct field of security, and thus for the building of what we instinctively associate with it – i.e. Polish hard power.

Poland consequently became dependent on the changing nature of the West’s policy goals, its possible internal divisions (independent of Poland), and, above all, on the West’s geopolitical power which – as it has turned out – is not guaranteed forever. It was Western forces that led our policy of “Westernism” and democratisation, or perhaps better to say: we forced through broadly understood Western institutions.

Foreign policy consisted of striving to join the world of free strategic flows, whose keys were held by the West, and thus adopting Western solutions, meeting the criteria for joining NATO and the EU. In its most ambitious dimension to the East, it manifested itself in an attempt to “use” the material and institutional power of the West to promote the expansion of Western influence in countries east of Poland. In particular, of course, on the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium and in the former Soviet Union. This included elements of the post-war concept of Mieroszewski and Giedroyc, as well as some pre-war elements – e.g. the ABC concept (i.e. Adriatic-Baltic-Black Seas)] and activities related to the Promethean movement, aimed at maximally weakening the hostile Russian (Soviet) land empire in the East by supporting the independence of many of its nations imprisoned in the empire.

 

Unlike the past, however, Poland did not rely on its own strength, but attempts were made to harness the strength of individual states, organisations or institutions in the West, which had positive results (Poland and the Baltic States joined NATO and the EU), and sometimes disappointing results (the integration of Georgia and Ukraine).

 

In retrospect, it is debatable whether its implementation and, above all, a proper understanding of the importance of Belarus for the security of Poland were sufficiently pushed. The question is whether Polish politics was not just an extension of the liberal, Western led concept with the slogans of the necessity of introducing liberal democracy in Belarus and calling for political reforms in this direction.

Would it have been more necessary to focus more on understanding the buffer significance of the area of Belarus as the space closing the Smolensk Gate on the former Polish theatre of war, on which the existence and the proper functioning of an independent Poland depends? This alone in itself is enough to make Belarus’s statehood (and not specific systemic solutions) the object of Polish policy’s efforts after 1991, regardless of political reforms and internal order prevailing in that country.

 

Either way, the supposedly democratic authorities of the newly formed Belarus, immediately after the break-up of the Soviets in the Bialowieża, proposed to the authorities of the independent Poland a joint customs and economic union with Minsk. This would build one economic space between the Oder and the Dnieper and the Daugava, and who knows what else this could bring.

 

The fallen Soviet Union and the weak Russia which emerged after its collapse, struggling with irredenta internal republics/provinces and economic collapse, did not have the geopolitical resources to counter this idea, and the level of development of Poland and Belarus did not differ significantly, making the idea of a union on the Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium realistic and realisable. To this day, other proposals of the falling Soviet elites are mentioned in Warsaw regarding arrangements for the joint regulation of Warsaw of the Ukrainian case and the stabilisation of the buffer areas between Poland and Russia, the stability of which the decision makers of the still crumbling empire were afraid of in 1991-1992.

 

30 years ago, the Polish elite did not have the courage, or rather simply the imagination, to build a real Baltic-Black Sea Intermarium with the fall of the Soviet version of the Russian imperial project. Apparently, there was real fear in Warsaw that the Soviet Union would, however, rebuild and crush Poland’s fledgling independence, which we had been dreaming of since September 1939.

 

This attitude can be humanly understood – after all, decades of captivity under the boot of the Soviet continental empire are not sufficiently preparation for geopolitical breakthroughs. For moments when many things are suddenly “on the table”, which you have never dreamed of before.

In the Polish debate this is a novelty, but in the event of a further fracturing of the global order and a settlement of the issues of the Intermarium nations in breach of the aspiration to seek unity and the consolidation of the Intermarium, this may lead to a disintegration of the common goals of European policy, because this issue concerns the vital interest of Poland. The country will immediately feel that its interests are not addressed and will react changing its “strategic restraint” that Poland exercised for the last 30 years for the sake of cohesion of the West.

Therefore, a lack of unity may push Warsaw on a path towards confrontation with German or French policy as a decision-making centre of the European Union in the event of a German reluctance to address the interests of the Intermarium countries, or worse, a move towards closer with Russia and some sphere of influence designation in this part of Europe.

At the same time, such developments will probably encourage external powers certainly the US, maybe China and Turkey in the future) to intervene in the region’s matters in order to counter Russia’s and Germany’s increasingly active policy, where increasing strategic flows in Eurasia are accumulating. The price of this tension between superpowers is most often paid by frontline nations and peripheral countries located far from the decision-making centres in Berlin, Moscow, Beijing or Washington.

One can only add that the above becomes even more relevant today than it was after World War II, when the victorious Soviet power existed up to the Elbe, and the government in Warsaw was an accepted satellite. Here, too, it could be argued that Mieroszewski did not foresee that Poles entering NATO and the EU would believe in the “sweet” time of strategic adoption of the West, that the “forever” solution to the dilemma outlined by Mieroszewski determining the life of the Polish state would be NATO and the European Union. While they have turned out to be helpful for creating space for economic consolidation and for the general development of Poland, they will not, however, relieve the Polish government of its grand strategy towards the East, based on Polish.

 

Mieroszewski further wrote: “The advantage of the Russians was confirmed by HISTORY, which assisted our fights and uprisings. But most Poles do not believe that we can ever gain an advantage over Russia, and the child of this unbelief is the satellite mentality and servilism. We can add, unfortunately, that (such a mindset) is firmly rooted amongst the Poles”.

 

Given the circumstances and the times in which Mieroszewski wrote these words, the concept of a buffer area east of Poland could have been considered an anachronism. Mieroszewski’s statement that it was possible to push Russia back from Przemyśl to the Smolensk Gate was even more fanciful.

And yet after 1991 it happened de-facto. What if Belarus, which was falling away from the Soviet Union, had orientated westwardly towards Poland in early 1992 and forced the creation of an economic union in Poland in the area from the Oder to the Daugava River, the Smolensk Gate and the muds of Polesie on the Pripyat river? Such an issue would not be a pure abstraction for the collapse of the post-Soviet and Russian Yeltsin space at that time, a pure abstraction with the economic potential of Poland and Belarus at the time, and would have fundamentally changed the geopolitical dynamics of the Intermarium.

A simple example of the effects of the 1991-1992 decision. The lack of neutralisation of the buffer space of Belarus, and the existence of the Kaliningrad enclave, pulls Poland as the main NATO ground force on the eastern flank away both from possible assistance to the Baltics, and forces Warsaw to focus on the most important problem of the Smolensk Gate approach. It also probably forces you to divide Polish ground forces into three parts: north, north-east and east. The Russians will be afraid that Poles will precisely for the same reasons seek to eliminate the Kaliningrad Oblast and push the Russians out of it, which would truly improve the military situation of Poland.

This creates the potential for a lack of trust and excessive undermining of the security situation in this part of Europe, especially in the event of further collapse of the current international order. The Russians may think that Poland, having eliminated the Kaliningrad enclave, after the peace concluded after a victorious war would significantly improve its entire strategic situation without having a border with Russia.

Points of contact with Russian policy would only take place through the former buffer zones of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, constituting separate states between the Baltic and the Black Seas, which was the dream of Giedroyc and Mieroszewski in the 20th century.

 

Autor

Jacek Bartosiak

CEO and Founder of Strategy&Future, author of bestselling books.

 

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