Why Poland wants to host weapons of mass destruction
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced on June 30 that his country wants to join NATO’s Nuclear Sharing program, which allows the sharing of nuclear warheads with alliance members who do not possess weapons of mass destruction
Source photo: presizer.imgsmail.ru
Morawiecki justified this decision by the fact that Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus and Poland is set for a symmetrical response. However, the US does not see military sense in placing such serious weapons in Poland, and it is not a secret for Poles, as the issue has already been raised in 2015.
The nuclear ambitions declared by the Polish leadership are primarily for propaganda purposes, not military ones. In the autumn parliamentary elections to be held in Poland, the ruling Law and Justice party is staking on inflaming anti-Russian sentiments and making its opponents from the Civic Platform party look like Moscow’s agents in the election campaign, which has already started. The main target of Polish state propaganda has been the current opposition leader Donald Tusk, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2014.
A documentary Reset was recently shown on Polish television’s Channel 1. It claims that in 2007 the US missile defence (BMD) project in Poland was ready to be realised, but that the situation changed in October that year after the Civic Platform party led by Donald Tusk won parliamentary elections. The authors of the film point out that the new prime minister paid his first official visit to Moscow in February 2008, and a meeting between Tusk and Vladimir Putin seemed to be the beginning of the reset policy in Polish-Russian relations.
A month after meeting with the Russian leader, Tusk held talks with US President George W. Bush in Washington. The film features declassified material from the archive of the former US president, which reveals that the US leader wanted to follow up on the construction of the US base in Poland but the Polish government kept hampering the process by imposing new conditions. Most piquant of all, Tusk admitted in a conversation with Bush that Putin had threatened him with targeting Russian missiles at Poland if the US missile defense project went ahead.
As a result, pro-government Polish journalists concluded that Tusk, under pressure from Russia, buried the US missile defense project in Poland and thus endangered security of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
However, Warsaw and Washington have nevertheless returned to the plans to build a missile defence system in Poland. Last year, the US Department of Defense completed all the construction work on the Aegis Ashore missile defence base near Redzikowo in Poland, after which the installation and adjustment of equipment began. However, the military characteristics of this missile defense system are much more modest than in the project discussed by Bush the Younger and Tusk.
The official request of the present Polish authorities to deploy NATO nuclear weapons on their territory is the second act of this electoral play. Saying that Tusk was afraid of Russia and did not protect Poles from potential Russian aggression, but we are not afraid, we will protect. The Polish voter, pumped full of Russophobia, must fall for this, according to the Law and Justice Party.
Another addressee of both the film about Tusk defying the Kremlin and Moravetsky’s demonstrative request for nuclear missiles was the American establishment. Despite its professed Polish-American alliance, the Democrat government in Washington looks on with displeasure at the conservative policies of the ruling Polish party. Abortion is banned in Poland, except in cases of rape and threat to a woman’s life, with Law and Justice attempting to tighten the ban even further.
In addition, Warsaw recently vetoed the European Union’s migration pact, which would have obliged Poland to accept migrants from Africa and Asia. Polish officials often make negative remarks about LGBT people. Former US ambassador to Poland Georgette Mosbacher explicitly stated in 2020 that Poland’s reputation leads to unfavorable decisions regarding US investment and has an impact on military cooperation with America.
Joseph Biden’s administration would be much more comfortable dealing with the liberal Civic Platform than with their conservative opponents. It is noteworthy that in the last US presidential election, Right and Justice cheered on Trump, while the Citizen Platform cheered on Biden. Tusk was unsparing in his praise of the Democratic candidate and predicted problems in the new US president’s relations with the incumbent Polish leadership.
“Joe Biden is known not only for his sympathy for Poland, but also for our entire region. Therefore, the assumption that his victory will mean problems for Poland is absurd. Problems will not be for Poland, but for the Polish leadership,” the Civic Platform leader assured.
The ruling Polish elite have every reason to believe that the Americans can interfere in the elections in Poland, especially since they have a powerful information resource for this – the opposition TVN television channel owned by Discovery. In 2021, the Polish parliament, where the majority of seats still belong to the representatives of Law and Justice, even passed a special law to deprive TVN of its license, but President Andrzej Duda was forced to veto it under pressure from the Americans.
Apparently, the ruling party reasoned that if it was impossible to boast of liberal values before overseas partners, it might be possible to entice them with a willingness to deepen military cooperation, which Donald Tusk could not guarantee. Consequently, the deployment of Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus is only an excuse to turn to NATO, but not the real reason.
Most likely, the deployment of nuclear missiles in Poland will not come to that, but in Washington they note that Duda and Morawiecki are ready to cooperate if the Americans have any military targets in Eastern Europe. But Tusk is not so sure, although members of the Civic Platform took part in the recent Gay Pride parade in Warsaw. Thus, we will soon find out whether liberal values or geopolitics are more important to the Americans.
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