Poland’s Nuclear Saber-Rattling Against Russia Is Preposterous

It’s patently obvious that the ruling party’s nuclear saber-rattling against Russia is mostly motivated by domestic political considerations. It does indeed send Russophobic signals to Washington and Moscow, both of which have their own purpose in terms of advancing PiS’ interests, but the true value to be derived from this proposal is electoral ahead of the fall 2023 vote.

Poland’s openly Russophobic government is open to hosting American nuclear weapons according to grey cardinal Jaroslaw Kaczynski, which is one of the country’s most preposterous proposals since the commencement of Russia’s ongoing special military operation in Ukraine. Warsaw is obsessed with virtue signaling to its overlords in Washington that it’s the most anti-Russian state on the continent. The ruling “Law & Justice” (PiS per its Polish abbreviation) party takes pride in this self-assumed position due to the ideological appeal of this role. Exactly as former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the National Security Council Dmitry Medvedev recently wrote, PiS clings to the “phantom pain” associated with its long-lost regional empire from centuries ago and insincerely blames Russia for everything since.

Its nuclear saber-rattling is likely just Russophobic bluster since Poland won’t be given the independent capability to launch such weapons even if the US decides to station some of them there. The Pentagon already deployed some to several Western European countries like Belgium as part of its so-called “nuclear-sharing agreement” with them that Russia rightly argues is in contradiction of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. PiS is therefore also driven by partial prestige-related motivations to participate in this program since it bruises the ruling party’s ego that they’re not considered important enough by their transatlantic patron to host these weapons too. America’s possible deployment of them there could be spun by PiS as supposedly proving that Poland is nowadays a Great Power.

The party panicked after narrowly winning re-election in summer 2020 because it realized that it could very easily lose out to the US- and German-backed liberal-globalist opposition during the next upcoming vote in fall 2023. Instead of doubling down on its self-professed conservative-nationalist credentials, PiS sacrificed its own values by absorbing literally millions of Ukrainian refugees despite provoking a crisis with its European partners late last year triggered by its muscular opposition to all those refugees who tried to enter its territory from Belarus. This placed it at odds with its base, which it hopes will be distracted by Poland’s possible hosting of US nuclear weapons. If they’re not, then PiS could lose the next elections if its supporters defect to bonafide conservative-nationalist parties in protest.

With this in mind, it becomes patently obvious that the ruling party’s nuclear saber-rattling against Russia is mostly motivated by domestic political considerations. It does indeed send Russophobic signals to Washington and Moscow, both of which have their own purpose in terms of advancing PiS’ interests, but the true value to be derived from this proposal is electoral ahead of the fall 2023 vote. PiS might have begun panicking if it finally realized that its supporters don’t stand in solidarity with its radical pro-refugee platform that openly contradicts its prior position towards this hot-button issue. If its nuclear weapons proposal doesn’t succeed, then it can’t be discounted that PiS will resort to other high-profile Russophobic provocations in a desperate gamble to reappeal to its ideologically disgruntled base.


By Andrew Korybko
Source: OneWorld

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