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The relations between the United States and Poland

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Giancarlo Elia Valori

The United States have quickly “returned” to Europe after the Russian annexation of Crimea and East Ukraine, the lawfulness of which is still to be assessed. Previously the U.S. interpretation of NATO within the EU was optimistic and such as to predict a slow decommissioning, but today it is certainly not.

Nevertheless, in a context of partial return to the “Cold War”, such as the one which is emerging at the moment in which Russia is beginning its “hybrid warfare” in Ukraine and in Crimea, also the configuration of the Western strategic response to Russia’s new actions changes.

In the first phase of the “Cold War”, which ended in 1989, the centre of gravity of the NATO response to a possible attack by the Warsaw Pact or, anyway, by the USSR alone, was inevitably Germany.

Russia launched its strike, while the Warsaw Pact Member States covered the strike and the flanks of the operation.

Therefore, now that the Warsaw Pact is annihilated and much of it has even entered the West, the centre of gravity of a Western countermove against the Russian Federation – now isolated from the context of the old Warsaw Pact – can only be Poland.

The large base of U.S. material in Poland, created in Powidz in March 2019, marked this new condition.

Nevertheless, it is important to note that while West Germany was the axis of German reunification, as well as the tip of West’s possible attack-response against a conventional or non-conventional aggression from the East, now Germany’s role is inevitably more nuanced. Germany has become a rearguard, not the tip of the Western counterattack.

There is currently no German national interest that could support a possible Western reaction against Russia.

Quite the reverse. Germany has obviously every interest in establishing a special relationship with the Russian Federation, even on its own, as seen with the issue of the Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines.

On the other hand, we can currently perceive Poland’s considerable coldness towards the EU, to which it had enthusiastically adhered on May 1, 2004.

Poland is the sixth largest economy in the EU.

Moreover, during the first years of European unification, Poland was the great operational “source” for the geopolitical changes in the Russian Federation and in the rest of the old “Warsaw Pact”.

It should be noted that only Poland was not directly affected by the economic crisis following the Wall Street collapse in 2008 – a crisis that, as usual, spread throughout Europe.

It should also be noted that the EU is still regarded as an inevitable point of reference for most Polish citizens, regardless of their party preferences – not to mention the 16.3 billion Euros allocated by the various European funds to Poland (2018 data).

The greater the coldness between the EU and Poland – not so much politically but strategically – the greater the link between the United States and Poland.

It is almost a law of the pendulum which, due to the lack of a European strategy, cannot but keep on applying.

President Trump visited Poland in July 2017 and one of his goals was the U.S. participation in the Three Seas Initiative.

This initiative is an extraordinary strategic asset: it entails a correlation between the countries on the Baltic, the Black Sea and the Adriatic, which creates a stable dialogue of Intermarium – especially at energy, but also at strategic levels – between Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

The strategic link between these countries was officially established in 2016, but the geopolitical significance is clear: the Three Seas network largely replaces the terrestrial limesof the old “Cold War”. It strengthens it and then excludes the old countries that, in the first version of the “Cold Car”, were the real limes, i.e Italy, inter alia.

If all these countries were to redefine a NATO first defence line, as in the times of the first “Cold War”, they would develop it well before the Italian “threshold of Gorizia”, or also the old line of defence in Austria – which, indeed, was not designed to resist – or even the internal defence threshold between the two Germanies.

In other words, Poland is the new global coverage against the Russian Federation which was previously focused on West Germany.

We saw it also with the agreement reached in September 2019 between Poland and the United States on 5G, an essential issue for the latter, not to mention the bilateral Summit on nuclear safety in 2018. However, many significant agreements were reached between the United States and Poland: the “Declaration on the new U.S. posture in the Republic of Poland” in June 2019 or the agreement on the prevention of severe crimes, again in 2019, and some other agremments.

Again in June 2019, a new really essential agreement was reached between the United States and Poland, a bilateral treaty on the civilian use of nuclear energy, as well as a treaty for the supply of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).

The U.S. exports are worth 5.96 billion U.S. dollars, while Polish imports have risen by 4.3% on a yearly basis.

Poland is the ninth most important partner and the fourth economic partner of the United States among the non-EU countries, after China, Russia and Great Britain.

Here again we can easily see the U.S. very strong interest in the “Three Seas Initiative”: a project that is carried out through all reliable and friendly countries for the United States, unlike in the phases of the first “Cold War”. It is a project that makes the major EU countries alien to it – countries which now have autonomous strategic interests (except for Italy, of course). It is a project that strictly contains the EU relations with Russia and creates a belt of pro-USA countries in a new context of U.S. relative abandonment of Western Europe which, however, can no longer be fully supported in its entirety.

President Trump participated in the Three Seas Initiative Summit held in Warsaw in 2017.

It is not the alternative option to NATO-Europe, but it much looks like it.

The first U.S. availability was shown for the energy projects in Trimarium, as the authors of Limes currently call it.

The Polish bank BGK is the main instrument of the Three Seas Investment Fund, with the relationship – with the United States – between Trimarium and P-TEC, Transatlantic Energy Cooperation.

In essence, the United States is selling its shale LNG to particularly friendly countries, such as Poland, to isolate the E.U. countries that, instead, buy gas and oil from the East.

This adds to a stable relationship between the United States and Poland for civilian nuclear power.

In the military field, bilateral treaties are even more significant: Poznan is the new HQ of the U.S. forces’ Advanced Division; in Dravsko Pomorske there will be a centre for military training used by both U.S. and Polish Armed Forces; the central base of the U.S. Air Force will be established in Wroclaw-Strachowice; Lask will be the base of the squadron for drones and Powidtz will be the base of a series of U.S. special forces.

The U.S. soldiers currently in Poland amount to 4,500 and the armed units to 2,000.

The Operation Defender Europe 2020 – involving 37,000 Alliance soldiers, albeit with the limitations resulting from Covid-19 – was an extremely significant operation, capable of sending a clear message to the Russian Federation and to Germany.

A message from “Trimarium“, not from the old border of the “Cold War”, but above all a message from the U.S. new reliable allies, which also buy its LNG, to Old Europe’s unruly and quarrelsome allies, now possibly very untrustworthy, treacherous and unreliable.

Poland has also bought 32 F-35 missiles. The air system is largely interoperable with the Patriot framework, bought by it in 2018, but we must not neglect Poland’s role in diplomacy.

Since February 2019, in fact, there has been the “Warsaw Process” for the Middle East with 60 participating countries. An operation that serves to divert the great policy line of Middle East peace negotiation from the increasingly evident and, in any case, ambiguous E.U. pressures on Israel.

A series of Closure Options by the United States, which can use Poland and Trimarium as a form of pressure on the old EU allies of the equally old “Cold War”.

As is easy to predict, all this results from President Trump’s choice to reduce U.S. Forces in Germany from 52,000 to 25,000 units.

A very strong signal sent to Russia, but also a still weak signal of maximum coldness towards the relationship between the United States and Germany, which is not reliable for gas relations with Russia, but above all not reliable for United States’ international trade: Germany has a current account surplus of 261.1 billion Euros, with 7.6% more GDP exported than imported.

The other issues that the United States wants to harshly discuss with Germany include its particular policy of economic relations with China.

Volskwagen accounts for 40% of the Chinese car market, but German companies also operate under a quasi-monopoly regime. What is the German strategy? Simply making huge profit in China and then play the card of this global primacy in the EU.

The United States does not like it very much, as can be easily imagined.

In Hong Kong there are still 2,200 European companies, with their branches and subsidiaries. The Euro area is Hong Kong’s second largest trading partner, but it is Germany that dominates trade with its 14 billion Euros.

Hence, hit the EU to hit Germany, Trump’s first objective, as well as support the Trimariumnetwork to avoid the old Atlantic relationship with old friends that are now untrustworthy and unreliable. And also hit the Russian Federation hard, defuse and weaken the NATO network in Europe without harming the U.S. interests in the region.

All these are the reasons for a new relationship between the United States and Poland.

 

GIANCARLO ELIA VALORI

Honorable de l’Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France

President of International World Group