Strategy&Future

Jacek Bartosiak and Albert Świdziński of S&F – View From Poland: World in Turmoil, part 1 (January 2023).

Poland is the only country of the former Eastern bloc where no nuclear power plant was built. Although power units had been under construction in Żarnowiec since 1983, the decision of the government of Tadeusz Mazowiecki stopped work on them in 1990 and real actions aimed at building nuclear power stations will start only now. However, it is worth considering how it happened that for so many years in the People’s Republic Poland (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, or PRL), no government managed to create Polish nuclear power plants.

We have long proposed at Strategy&Future to increase Poland’s activity “in the eastern direction”, in particular in Ukraine. We’ve written about the importance of a policy aimed at keeping Russia outside the European system, which Poland would not be able to achieve on its own without Ukraine’s participation. We’ve emphasised the importance of supply chains and control over the flows of goods and commodities.

According to Forbes Ukraine, TDEK Energo, owned by the largest Ukrainian oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is currently worth around $580 million due to the war, while before 24th February it was valued at almost $2 billion.[1] The company lost one of its heat and power plants in Luhansk, but this is not the main reason for the “discount”.

Since the publication of my guide calculating how many battalion tactical groups (BTGs) the Russian Armed Forces could generate against Poland, a couple critiques have been levelled at whether this is the best way to understand how Russia would fight Poland and/or NATO at large. My guide was intended only to demonstrate how many of Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu’s declared 168 BTGs [1] were available to mass on the Polish border and has been taken somewhat out of context. Nevertheless, some of the critiques raise important points worth addressing.

The current crisis related to Russian political and military maneuvering, and the West’s reaction to it, forces us to reflect on several issues concerning Poland’s vital interests.

A revolution in the space domain of human activity is beginning before our eyes, caused by a technological breakthrough implemented by New Space entrepreneurs and the equally accelerating Sino-American hegemonic rivalry – with Russia also as a space power mainly due to the past achievements of the Soviet era. This is the moment for Poland to rise to the occasion and promptly adopt a strategy related to its own space capabilities. The New Model Army must take space capabilities into account.

It is very puzzling, the calmness with which public opinion received the statements of the most important politician in the country on the real possibility of a war with Russia (and Belarus) and the need to start major preparations for it.

Warsaw, 11th November 2021, Independence Day, 12:00 p.m., the long-announced speech of Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in the presence of Jarosław Kaczyński, Deputy Prime Minister for National Security and Defence Affairs, Mariusz Błaszczak, the Minister of National Defence and the Chief of General Staff, General Rajmund Andrzejczak. A typical November day in the capital city, the morning drizzle starts to clear from noon, during the speech the shy rays of the November sun appear. Despite the bad weather and the cold season, the square is crowded; from the Saski and Królewska gardens to the Europejski Hotel and the former Victoria Hotel, the crowd even undulates. For weeks, the Warsaw streets have been full of rumours that the government is working on the New Model Forces. People hope that the “new” proceeds.

Just as art arises from the meeting of culture with circumstances, and just as great art arises from an encounter with extraordinary circumstances, the way of waging war is a meeting of the strategic culture of a state with extreme circumstances, bringing death and destruction, sometimes even the end of that state.

In 2021, any thinking about reform or innovation in the Polish Armed Forces, or more broadly – in the immunity system of the entire Polish state, should begin with the correct shaping of the so-called decision loop and the integration of its elements with completely in-house control. A properly shaped and integrated decision-making loop is the backbone of the modern military and the state’s capabilities in the event of the escalation or outbreak of a conflict, including, to an equal extent, a hybrid warfare.

Mental maps for the Polish elite in 2021