The Impending Revival Of The Historic Russian-Polish Rivalry
Poland and Russia are centuries-long rivals who waged many wars against one each over their borderlands, which comprise today’s Belarus and Ukraine. The three partitions of Poland froze this rivalry for 123 years, only for it to resume after the restoration of Polish independence. The Polish-Bolshevik War ended with them dividing those two modern-day countries. The USSR later took control of Western Belarus and Ukraine after World War II, and then those republics became independent in 1991.
Poland immediately recognized their borders, thus putting an end to speculation that it might try to reclaim the land that it used to control during the time of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Instead of territorial revanchism, Poland sought to expand its influence through political means by guiding its two eastern neighbors along their Euro-Atlantic integration paths. Belarus abruptly abandoned this policy after Alexander Lukashenko’s rise to the presidency in the mid-1990s while Ukraine maintained it.
Despite having just brokered a deal along with Germany and France to end Ukraine’s “EuroMaidan” crisis in early 2014, Poland stood by as fascist stormtroopers deposed President Viktor Yanukovich, something that Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly brings up when explaining the roots of the current crisis. Segueing into the present, it’s important to point out that Poland has since provided a whopping 4.9% of its GDP to Ukraine since the special operation began, most of which went to supporting its refugees.
The government also boasts about how “Poland was the first to supply Ukraine with heavy weaponry on a massive scale. In total, we have so far provided Ukraine with military assistance equivalent to 3.23 billion EUR (over 14 billion PLN), including tanks, infantry fighting vehicles, and armored transport vehicles. Moreover, Poland provided the Ukrainian Air Force with a total of 14 Polish MiG-29 fighter jets and 12 Mi-24 helicopters.” Rzeszow Airport is also NATO’s logistics hub for Ukraine.
Poland shares the Global West’s vision of using Ukraine as a proxy for inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. Had it not been for Poland’s large-scale military-logistical assistance to Ukraine, then former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s sabotage of spring 2022’s Russian-Ukrainian peace talks wouldn’t have succeeded in massively escalating the conflict to the largest one in Europe since World War II. Most observers aren’t aware of this pivotal role that Poland played in shaping the course of events.
Poland believes that Ukraine provides “strategic depth” for countering the Russian-Belarusian alliance and “deterring” the unlikely scenario of a Russian attack from Kaliningrad. For context, Poland supported summer 2020’s failed Color Revolution in Belarus, and NATO’s buildup in the Baltic Sea, Lithuania, and Poland far outmatches Russia’s own buildup in Kaliningrad. As of last year, Poland also commands NATO’s third-largest army, and its officials regularly dispel doubts about the US’ commitment to Article 5.
Accordingly, Poland’s strategic calculations vis-à-vis Russia can objectively be described as paranoid, but that doesn’t make the emerging threat that it poses to Russia any less real. What drives Polish policy isn’t just fear of Russia, but the desire to revive their country’s long-lost status as a Great Power in a modern-day format. Ukraine plays a crucial role in these plans for the abovementioned military-strategic reasons but also economic ones due to its agricultural wealth and location astride the Black Sea.
Former Polish Deputy Prime Minister of Agriculture Michal Kolodziejczak proposed earlier in spring that Poland lease farmland and ports from Ukraine. The new chief of the Industrial Development Agency then disclosed in mid-September that Poland might build a railroad to Odessa and possibly even lease a port there. Although neither suggested as much, Poland might continue its policy of donating arms to Ukraine as a quid pro quo for these benefits instead of selling them on credit like it proposed doing last fall.
Poland’s preferential access to Ukrainian markets, agriculture (imported into the country through Polish companies in coordination with the state in order to avoid a repeat of 2023’s grain dispute), and ports is integral to the revival of its long-lost Great Power status. There are more to these plans, however, since the Ukrainian component is only part of the broader vision that Poland has in mind as regards its instrumentalization of the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI) to this end.
That decade-old forum is informally led by Poland and aims to more closely integrate Central & Eastern Europe through economic means that nonetheless arguably have a military logistics dimension due to how increased connectivity could facilitate the rapid flow of troops and equipment eastward. Poland is the most populous and prosperous EU member east of the Iron Curtain, whose economy just reached $1 trillion last month, so it follows that it’ll use the 3SI to expand its influence across this region.
For example, paragraph 13 of their joint declaration from the 10th 3SI Summit in late April stipulates six priority projects that involve energy and transport, both of which have military-strategic implications vis-à-vis Russia. Energy projects like the BRUA (Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria gas pipeline) and expanding Croatia’s Krk LNG terminal help further diversify from Russian gas imports while Rail Baltica and Rail-2-Sea will expand Polish influence in the Baltic States and the Balkans (Romania) respectively.
Accordingly, the complex energy interdependence that Russia and the EU built over the decades will be shattered once and for all exactly as the US always wanted for dividing-and-ruling those two while the abovementioned rail projects will strengthen Poland’s role as NATO’s top eastern military-logistics hub. Neither of these outcomes is in Russia’s objective interests nor arguably in the EU’s as a whole either yet progress continues to be made on them due to Poland’s insistence as the de facto regional leader.
The US supports these plans since it wants to share more of the so-called “burden” for containing Russia with its NATO allies, which Poland is more than happy to lead once the Ukrainian Conflict finally ends for freeing up some American troops in Europe to redeploy to Asia for containing China. Not only will Poland’s militarization likely remain on pace, possibly subsidized by Germany if Berlin agrees to Warsaw’s new proposal as a form of reparations, but it’ll also build more robust eastern border defenses too.
The European Parliament approved a white paper on the future of European defense earlier in the spring whose 15th article stresses the importance of the “Baltic Defense Line” and Poland’s “East Shield”, which have since been described simply as the “EU Defense Line”. While these fortifications are officially defensive and will also be bolstered by landmines after these four countries withdrew from the Ottawa Convention over the summer, they could still embolden hybrid aggression against Russia and Belarus.
After all, if Poland and its Baltic partners over whose security its new president recently said that his country is responsible feel that they’ve “deterred” an invasion by Russia through these means, then they might try destabilizing those two through “plausibly deniable” drone and mercenary attacks. Seeing as how Russia and Belarus have no comparable defenses on their side of the border, at least not yet, this can’t be ruled out. It’s much less “paranoid”, in any case, than Poland’s fears of a Russian invasion.
Belarus has repeatedly warned about Polish-emanating threats to its security, which Russia took seriously enough to transfer tactical nukes to its mutual defense ally along with the authority to use them as needed in self-defense. It also plans to transfer some hypersonic Oreshnik missiles there too. These should suffice for deterring conventional aggression from Poland and its likely future junior partners among the Baltic States, but they might still attempt some hybrid aggression all the same.
The chances of this happening would spike if France allows Poland to host some of its nukes like the latter has repeatedly requested, most recently during its new president’s trip to Paris last month. He even suggested that Poland might one day try to develop its own nukes too. France has been Poland’s ally since the Napoleonic era, and given that President Emmanuel Macron has been criticized for having a Napoleon complex, it’s possible that he might eventually accede to Warsaw’s request.
With this in mind, Poland’s envisaged revival of its long-lost Great Power status could therefore be described as a partially joint American-French plan since the first wants Poland to contain Russia on its behalf while the second wants to replace Germany’s leadership of Europe, each through these means. Observers shouldn’t forget that interwar France tried to assemble a so-called “Little Entente” in Central Europe and promised to protect Poland from Germany in 1939 so this policy isn’t unprecedented.
Looking forward, Russian policymakers are expected to take Polish threats to their own country’s and Belarus’ security very seriously, which could result in a revival of the historical Russian-Polish rivalry if the latter first revives some of its Great Power status. If history is any indication, Russia should be able to manage, but Poland’s erasure from the map once more isn’t likely due to the US’ nuclear umbrella. Nevertheless, if Poland miscalculates, then it might find itself at the center of another world war.
