Polish-US Missile Defense Co-Op Is a Strategic Smokescreen

The prevailing uncertainty about the future of Polish-US relations following Biden’s publicly expressed desire to improve relations with Russia won’t affect their military cooperation as proven by the latest progress made in deploying elements of America’s “missile defense shield” in this aspiring Central & Eastern European hegemon, but this development will likely also be exploited as a smokescreen to obscure the ongoing joint US-German Hybrid War against Poland’s conservative-nationalist government.

The US’ Missile Defense Agency announced earlier this week that it’s begun deploying elements of its “missile defense shield” (MDS) in Poland, the aspiring hegemon of the Central & Eastern European (CEE) space. This decision predated Biden’s publicly expressed desire last week during his Geneva Summit with President Putin to repair relations with Russia, a move that unexpectedly threw the future of Polish-American relations into uncertainty. I elaborated on the emerging differences of grand strategic vision between these allied nations in an analysis last week that also explored their possible consequences. This latest development shows that their ties will remain stable at the military level despite very serious political disagreements.

While the present liberal-globalist American administration doesn’t like the Polish conservative-nationalist one all that much, the US’ permanent military, intelligence, and diplomatic bureaucracies (“deep state”) are in agreement that the CEE country’s geostrategic locations means that their MDS cooperation mustn’t be sacrificed because of it, let alone as part of an incipient rapprochement with Russia. A few clarifying points must be mentioned at this time in order for the reader to better understand the US’ strategic calculus. Improving relations with Russia will enable the US to redeploy some of its CEE forces to the Asia-Pacific in an attempt to more aggressively “contain” China there as well as spark an Asian arms race to assist with that.

Upon the MDS’ complete deployment in Poland, the US will be able to militarily “contain” Russia a lot more effectively without having to rely on the same number of troops as before. Furthermore, this system will help to partially reassure the Poles that their paranoid fears of being “sold out” to Moscow aren’t justified, which might in turn prevent or at the very least decelerate Poland’s possible pivot to China in response that I proposed in the analysis cited in the first paragraph of this present piece. To be clear, however, Russia doesn’t even need to be “contained” since it harbors no aggressive intentions against its neighbors, but this false notion has been weaponized in order to exploit the CEE countries’ “negative nationalism” against it for pro-American purposes.

In fact, the very concept of a MDS is deceitful since it doesn’t aim to “protect” the US and its allies, but to undercut Russia’s nuclear second-strike capabilities and therefore advance America’s devious plans to possibly one day place the Eurasian Great Power in a position of nuclear blackmail. The two-decade-long unofficial arms race between these two that was sparked by Bush Jr.’s decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty prompted Russia to double down on its hypersonic missile research and development, thus recently resulting in Moscow achieving global dominance in this field. It didn’t aspire to this envious position for aggressive purposes, but solely to defend itself from the above-mentioned scenario of nuclear blackmail.

Nevertheless, the Poles don’t see it that way at all because the US (and also Germany to a large extent) have masterfully manipulated their “negative nationalism” in such a way that many of these people and especially their present leadership are almost pathologically obsessed at this point with “containing” Russia. They take the MDS’ officially stated purpose at face value and might even delight in provoking Russia despite how dangerous this could be for them in the worst-case scenario of a US/NATO-Russia war. This latest MDS development will therefore likely succeed in reassuring them of the US’ military support in the event that Poland’s extremely improbable fear of a so-called “Russian invasion” ever comes to pass.

At the same time, however, the US and Germany will probably continue to undermine the present Polish government for ideological reasons related to their liberal-globalist vision. This schizophrenic policy of militarily supporting it while politically subverting it should be obvious to all objective observers but is regrettably lost on most Poles due to their intense “negative nationalism” against Russia. Their leadership also appears to naively believe that the MDS’ deployment on their territory might also politically shield them from the ongoing US-German Hybrid War, though this is nothing but a groundless wishful thinking fallacy. The reality is that Poland is being played by its so-called “allies” much worse than it could have ever imagined that Russia would play it.

The MDS therefore serves several purposes: it enables the US to more effectively “contain” Russia; thus freeing it up to redeploy some of its CEE forces to the Asia-Pacific to more aggressively “contain” China; and it functions as a smokescreen to obscure Washington and Berlin’s ongoing Hybrid War against Poland’s conservative-nationalist government by superficially reassuring them of the US’ supposedly “positive” strategic intentions. Regardless of the government in power, US-Polish military relations will remain strong even if solely as a result of their MDS cooperation, though this won’t stop the joint Washington-German Hybrid War on Warsaw. Naively believing otherwise will only result in getting Poland to put its strategic guard down even more.


By Andrew Korybko
Source: OneWorld

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