The young Polish think tank, „Nowy Ład“, deals with long-term issues and problems that Poland will face in the near future from the perspective of „Nowy Ład“. Both its geographical location and Poland’s historical entanglements present Germany’s neighbor with particular challenges if it wants to protect its interests. The extensive discussion with MetaPol focused on domestic and foreign policy issues, with Poland’s eastern policy naturally coming under increased scrutiny in light of the war in Ukraine. But relations with Germany and the United States were also the subject of the conversation.
Dear Mr. Adamus, you are an editor and author of the platform “Nowy Lad”.Could you kindly introduce this platform and its goals to our German readers?
Nowy Ład is a think tank operating for over two years, founded by a group of young Polish nationalists. We write about the key problems facing Poland and Europe in the coming years and decades from the perspective of Polish national interest. We are also interested in metapolitics and long-term social and cultural processes, not just current events, although we also do not avoid commentary on everyday life. We cooperate with leading Polish commentators, professors and experts in their fields. Our goal is to maintain a high intellectual level while at the same time avoiding rotten ideological compromises. We want a strong Polish national community, sovereign politically and culturally.
On your webpage there is a manifest published in which you are describing that Poland is facing turbulent times for which you do not feel the country well prepared. Could you please describe the main challenges your country and society are conflicted with now and why you do not see your government in a good condition to manage these challenges?
We are facing the need for a major mental change among the Polish elites. From the beginning of the 1990s, the aspiration of the Polish elites was to join the West – practically speaking, accessing NATO and the European Union. In Poland, there was a cross-party consensus on this direction of foreign policy. We wanted to become „part of the West“, which was supposed to solve all our main problems. I believe that many members of our elites have internalized this view to a degree than made them unable to set further political directions and ambitious goals for Poland for many years. One of the most popular authors of the Polish right, Rafał Ziemkiewicz, in his new book „Great Poland“, quotes this anecdote – „in the 1990s, Germans from a party foundation gave a lecture about their vision and interests from the German viewpoint. When they asked the Poles for their perspective, the Poles could not say what’s the interest of Poland, only that they want everything to be as in „Europe“. This anecdote reflects well the level of Polish complexes and boundless fascination with the West.
So we need an independence of thought – this is the basis for solving many other problems. One of them is that Poland has low demographic indicators. After Poland’s accession to the EU, over 2 million people migrated from the country – mostly young people who saw better prospects for themselves in the richer West. Over the last few years, the Polish state has significantly increased financial support for families or, for example, the number of places in nurseries, and over the last 30 years, Polish economic growth has been the second largest in the world after China, thanks to which the gap between Poland and Western Europe has significantly narrowed. GDP per capita, including purchasing power, in Poland is now higher than in Portugal and is approaching the level of Spain.
According to the data of the International Monetary Fund, in 1990 our GDP per capita, including purchasing power, was only 8% of Germany’s. Today it is already 66%. Unfortunately, all this material success did not translate into an improvement of demography. This also poses a fundamental question – will Poles be a wealthy and proud nation, or just a collection of wealthy individuals gradually adopting Western ideologies? Economic success sometimes paradoxically translates into social degeneration. The maximum limitation of this phenomenon in Poland is the goal we set ourselves.
Many German right-wing actors look gladly abroad into the old “Soviet” states, like Poland, Hungary or even Russia, stating that the societies still obtain immortal values like faith, family, and nation as constituent factors of a prosper future. However, when we look closer at the birth rate the figures in Poland are frightening and do not differ from those in Germany or other Western European countries. What is your assay on that?
Certainly post-Soviet societies display more healthy social instincts in many respects. This is due to the so called „communist social freezer“. When Western societies changed because of the globalizing pop culture, the sexual revolution and the departure from the teachings of the Catholic Church and Christian morality in general, our societies were cut off from the Western infosphere and the influence of trends disintegrating the national community. Social changes here had different vectors than in the West. What’s more, in opposition to the despised communism, many people sought refuge in the Church, patriotism and traditional values. On the other hand, the Soviet reality should not be idealized either – the communists actively fought against the Church, religion, family, traditional values, they falsified history, killed and persecuted patriots.
After the fall of communism, this Western cultural influence transformed post-Soviet societies very quickly. I mentioned earlier about a certain Western complex prevailing among Poles – this is one of the important reasons why our society so quickly and thoughtlessly absorbed cultural trends coming from the West. In 1989, many Polish patriots had an idealized image of the anti-communist West and politicians such as Ronald Reagan, unaware of the profound changes that took place in the West after the symbolic year of 1968.
Of course, these changes were rarely results of sovereign decisions of our nation, but were in many ways inspired and financed by the West. After 1989, Western capital took over most of the Polish media, bringing up a large part of Polish society in the belief that they must renounce Polish patriotism and Christian morality in order to become part of the desired West. German foundations financed by Bundestag parties or various Western grant programs aimed at “strengthening the civil society” or “fighting for human rights” – under these slogans the public debate in Poland was directed in the “right” direction.
In a way, PiS winning the elections in 2015 was a reaction to this. However, for every mistake of the current government – and there were many – the liberal-left media put the blame on Poland being ruled by “backward” people who „lead us out of Europe“. The same goes with, for example, high energy prices that are affecting our entire continent at the moment. Polish society today is strongly polarized. A large part of Poles has been uprooted and adopted a „western“, liberal-leftist mentality over the last 30 years.
Certainly, today we are still in a much better situation than Western European societies. Polish patriots managed to survive, and the average Pole is more conservative than the average German or French. PiS has been in power for 7 years, and in the parliament, apart from the liberal-leftist opposition, there is the nationalist-liberal Konfederacja. Various patriotic, nationalist, Catholic etc. circles have their own media, institutions and events. However, we are fighting for the future and identity of our nation. We have against us the enormous power of Western media, pop culture, international organizations, foundations and big capital.
Despite these problems, we are optimistic. We can see that a large part of the Polish nation is still healthy and interested not only in defending its identity, but also in an active counteroffensive. This is also the goal of our project. We are also pleased with the growing popularity of patriotic movements in Western countries. The year 2022 brought many reasons for optimism – Brothers of Italy and the Swedish Democrats took power in their countries, and a large increase in support was recorded by the national camp in France. We wrote a lot about Meloni, Salvini, Le Pen, Zemmour, Akesson.
We have just launched a new section on our website called The New Springtime of Peoples. We believe that European nations – just like in 1848 – will defend their sovereignty more and more courageously against the international, cosmopolitan elite realising their narrow interests in the name of an undemocratic ideology. We also believe that today the vast majority of European patriots, despite the struggles between our nations in the past, understand that we should jointly oppose the same threat. We’re gearing up for a long-term fight. You know it from your own history – German patriots in the 19th century needed dozens of years to bring about the unification of your country. The uprisings of 1848 initially lost, but ultimately the national idea won. It may be the same now.
Throughout the last months there were more press reports being published in Germany that “wokeness” is also rising in Poland. Demonstrations where especially young-academic people were protesting for new century human rights like LGBTQ+ were shown. Which relevance do these protests and movements really have in today’s daily life in Poland?
The LGBTQ+ agenda is very aggressively promoted by the liberal-left media and foreign-funded NGOs. They managed to breed a minoritarian, but very committed group of young ideological activists. Just a few years ago it was a complete margin in Poland. The majority of Polish society – especially middle-aged and older people – are unaware of the seriousness of the situation, thinking that it is a temporary eccentricity or that LGBTQ+ demands can be reduced to a social acceptance of homosexual couples living together.
Every time you ask the public what they think is the most important problem that politicians should deal with, almost everyone will point to the economic situation or the war in Ukraine, and „sexual minority rights“ etc. are considered a priority by 1-2%. On the other hand, however, a group of committed activists is putting more and more pressure on the entire liberal-left opposition to the current government, which is becoming radicalized in order to be sufficiently „Western“.
The media also repeat that all young people are left-wing, which is supposed to be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy – because young people are naturally rebellious against adults, but conformist within their own group. Since 1989, the same circles have been repeating that the next generations will be more liberal-left, so right-wingers will „die out like dinosaurs.“ The reality is more complicated – sometimes successive generations were more left-wing, sometimes more right-wing. During the last elections, among the youngest (18-29) there were more votes for left-wing and liberal candidates than in the whole society, but still over 20% each of the current president Andrzej Duda from PiS and nationalist candidate Krzysztof Bosak – over 40% together.
Indeed, in recent years in Poland we have witnessed major social changes, especially in the young generation. Consumerism and hedonism are progressing, many people do not plan to have families. Fewer and fewer young people go to church. The number of people who are simply hostile to Christianity is also growing. Young people know English, and English-language social media and Western pop culture often shape them more than their own parents. One of our tasks as Nowy Ład is to show that you can be young, promote a well-understood modernisation and stand against these „Western“ pseudo-values.
Why do you think that especially the younger generation within your country seems to be more open to this “western ideals”? Why have the formerly stated values lost attraction in the younger age groups?
This is a very hard question, especially if we look at the last 10-15 years. Not so long ago, in the years 2010-2015, there was a „fashion for patriotism“ among young people in Poland. Conservative and nationalist organizations developed rapidly. The phenomenon of the „Independence March“ began – I’m talking about celebrations of Poland regaining independence organized from the grassroots, which attract over 100,000 people to Warsaw every year. On this wave I myself got involved in social activities. Then this social emotion begun to weaken. In my opinion, this was caused, firstly, by the takeover of power by the currently ruling Law and Justice party. This party refers to patriotic values, often using patriotic emotions for its own party interests.
This resulted in a certain reversal from these values. Similarly, the Polish Church, too closely linked to the authorities in many places, has lost much of its authenticity and social authority. Patriotism has become „mainstream“ in a way. Under the previous government of the Civic Platform (ruling in 2007-2015), there was an element of a certain youthful rebellion and opposition to the elites, which often despised patriotism. Today, young people are „rebelling“ in a „pro-Western“ way, while under the previous government they rebelled „patriotically“. However, people often change their views when they grow up, graduate, go to work, start a family. Then they often depart from ideological phantasmagorias. To what degree will this current rebellion be a permanent choice? It also depends on us.
What needs to be taken to regain them and how is your platform contributing to it?
First of all, we should present our values as attractive. Patriotism, work for the national community must be presented as an adventure – something that can be valuable, objectively good and at the same time giving satisfaction. We also need to be able to reach young people and use new forms of communication. It is necessary to deny lies, to take concepts such as modernity and progress from the hands of the left. We need to show that it is the nation and Christianity that can be and were in previous centuries sources of modernisation and progress. We need to strive not only for political power, but above all for cultural hegemony as defined by Antonio Gramsci. We must learn from the left and repeat the march through the institutions, create structures that will constantly transmit our vision of the world in society.
In Nowy Ład we have been recently developing the concept of neoprogressivism – a new modernity as an attempt to respond to the challenges of postmodernism. We must be the vanguard of progress, we must also explain that the current progressive left is outdated, its solutions shallow and do not understand the complexity of man. As one of our authors wrote: “What is gender studies compared to the creation of universities by the Church? How vain is individualism, which tries to satisfy the lowest instincts, compared to personalism, which tries to embrace man in his whole being? How striking is the contrast between relativism, which accepts the impossibility of knowing the truth, and traditional humility, which requires man to constantly seek and confront the existing knowledge?”.
I have already spoken about our concept of a „new springtime of the peoples“. We want to show young people that „rebellion“ in the name of LGBTQ+ is actually pathetic conformism, following the message of the largest media, the richest billionaires and the most influential politicians. A real, authentic rebellion today means standing on the side of the nation and tradition, taking responsibility for one’s family or community, and not being a thoughtless consumer. We believe that in the coming years there will be more and more space for such an authentic movement both in Poland and in Europe.
Widening the scope a bit – how do you evaluate Poland’s current geopolitical situation and do you think that the PiS is managing them appropriately given the current conditions? Has Poland’s situation changed since the significant increase in the intensity of the Russian-Ukrainian war this year and if yes, to which extent?
Poland’s geopolitical situation has deteriorated significantly in the last decade, which is primarily related to Russia’s expansionist policy. For centuries, Poland has been a victim of Russian imperialism and we are well aware of the threat coming from the East. In fact, Putin himself presented his demands in December, which amounted to making us a second-class NATO member. Our region would be a geopolitical „no man’s zone“, which was supposed to open the way for Russia to expand its influence in Central and Eastern Europe. The renaissance of Russian imperialism is considered in Poland to be the main military threat to our independence.
The situation got even worse after Russia’s aggression against Ukraine. If Kyiv had fallen and Russia had created a new puppet government in Ukraine, now we could have Russian troops on over 1200 km of the Polish border – starting from the Kaliningrad Oblast, through Belarus including the entire border with Ukraine. In such a situation, our security would be much more at risk than it is today.
At the same time, we must remember that the threat from Russia cannot be reduced to a possible full-scale war, which is certainly unlikely. For example, last year Belarus and Russia caused a completely artificial crisis on our border, bringing thousands of immigrants from completely foreign culturally countries in the Middle East. Subsequently, these mainly Muslim immigrants stormed the Polish border. Fortunately, the government did not succumb to the pressure of the media and international organizations – the police and the army consistently defended our border, and after a few months a wall was built on the border with Belarus. Now a wall is also to be built on the border with Russia. Lukashenko and Putin went hand in hand here with the radical pro-immigrant left in Poland and Europe. During the crisis, the left-wing media in Poland wrote incessantly about “dramatic violations of human rights”, compared our soldiers to Nazis etc. Some still write about it.
Therefore, supporting Ukraine and moving Russia as far east as possible is a key Polish interest. I believe that our government is handling the current crisis quite well. We are an important partner of Ukraine, we are making diplomatic efforts to build a broad coalition supporting Ukraine, and we are accelerating the program of modernization of our armed forces – in this matter we see huge backwardness, which is the fault of both PiS and previous governments. Currently, we buy a lot, but not everything in a thoughtful and rational way, judging from the perspective of the development of the potential of the Polish defense industry.
When you see the Western European reactions towards this conflict, especially in Germany, what is your opinion about them? Is there a public perception about German geopolitics within Poland?
For me, as well as for many people who want to see the reality as it is, the attitude of Germany was not a big surprise. Over the years, Germany has been developing cooperation with Russia at the expense of the interests of our region – many people in Poland have tried to curse reality and whitewash German policy, which has been damaging Polish interests for years. The flagship examples of that are the Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II gas pipelines. My opinion on the attitude of Germany or, more broadly, Western Europe towards the war in Ukraine is unequivocally negative, I say this as a Pole.
However, looking from a more objective, geopolitical perspective, I am not at all surprised by Germany’s attitude. Russia is still relatively far away, you are protected from potential aggression even in the possibility of the collapse of Ukraine by a buffer – Poland. At the same time, you have become heavily dependent on Russian hydrocarbons. It is in your economic interest that cheap Russian raw materials continue to flow to your companies, strengthening the competitiveness of the economy. I think that your attitude towards supporting Ukraine would be far more distant if it hadn’t been for the strong US pressure on the government in Berlin. I am aware of the differences in interests and perspectives between Poland and Germany in this regard. This is normal and we can talk honestly and freely about it.
Germany’s attitude in this conflict made a large part of Polish public opinion aware of how hypocritical were the statements that Germans are not guided by their own selfish interest, but the “interest of Europe”. Everyone is guided by their own interest – that’s normal, we won’t change that. The German government has also begun to be criticized in liberal Pparties and circles that have been fond of Angela Merkel etc. for years. The war also made the Polish public aware of how different the perception of threats is between East and West Europe and showed that we simply cannot count on Western Europe.
One initiative which has attracted public interest throughout the last couple of years is the “Intermarium / Międzymorze” initiative. During the times between the wars and among anti-communist expatriates there were several geopolitical concepts for this initiative which were in some parts even complementary which each other. There were federal and confederative approaches as well as concepts which were striving for military or economic alliances. How does the spectrum of ideas look like today and is there a model which you are favouring?
Enthusiastic ideas for a federal or confederal Intermarium failed for a simple reason – other, smaller nations of our region perceived them as forms of Polish imperialism and attempt at domination. Some also feared that Intermarium would be an alternative project to the EU, confronting it. As Nowy Ład, we are also skeptical in principle of any dilution of the sovereignty of nation states within international organizations. Therefore, it seems wise to shift from thinking about a political alliance to thinking about economic cooperation, which will gradually strengthen ties between the nations of our region. As one of our editors wrote: „Today, the slogan of Intermarium should not be associated with the creation of a compact block of states, but with a whole range of infrastructural projects and multilateral formats in which Poland plays an important role, sometimes the most important.“
The Three Seas Initiative (3SI) launched in 2015 is also moving in this direction – it is no coincidence that a new name was introduced here, and membership in the organization was limited to EU countries. It was joined by 12 countries – apart from Poland, also Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, Slovenia, Romania, Bulgaria and Austria. 3SI has, in principle, three areas of cooperation – energy, infrastructure and digital transformation. Within its framework, for example, several energy connections were created, enabling countries to reduce their dependence on Russian gas (Poland opened a gas pipeline from Norway and an interconnector allowing Slovaks to use this gas). It is also planned to create a network of high-speed railways and highways. We judge this direction positively, while emphasizing the primacy of the sovereignty of the nation state. We maintain a healthy skepticism about the possibility of easily and quickly involving other nations in our Polish projects. We also remember that individual countries may have different views on many important issues.
Which role do countries like the Ukraine, Belarus or the Russian Federation play here according to your opinion?
The future of Ukraine depends on the outcome of the current war. However, it seems clear that Ukraine has defended the possibility to exist as a separate state. From Poland’s point of view, this is important because Ukraine acts as a buffer separating us from Russia. The question, however, is to what extent Ukraine will be able to regain its entire territory and full sovereignty in concluding alliances. As a rule, it is in Poland’s interest to continue including Ukraine in selected regional infrastructural or energy projects. Theoretically, it is similar with Belarus, but the prospect of improving relations with Minsk or changing the government there is slim today. Neutral Belarus between us and Russia is a solution that sounds nice in theory, but is very difficult to implement in practice. Therefore at the moment our focus should be on cooperation with the countries of the region belonging to EU and NATO.
Has the escalation of the Russian-Ukraine conflict changed your position towards your ideas of a Polish-Russian relationship? If yes, how?
I never thought that serious cooperation between Russia and Poland would be possible in the foreseeable future. For it to be possible, Russia would have to give up its pretensions to rebuild its own sphere of influence in the immediate vicinity of Poland and to reduce Poland to the role of a buffer, a geopolitical no-man’s zone between Russia’s sphere of influence and the zone of the West. The wording of the latter demand explicitly by Vladimir Putin was a clear confirmation that Poland also has an important place in Russia’s expansionist plans. Moscow still does not want to accept a sovereign Poland.
Putin could have stuck to the status quo of February 23 – Ukraine with occupied Donbass and Crimea would not have joined NATO or the EU anyway, and Poland would be far from the conflict. Western Europe was interested in intensive economic cooperation with Russia, putting pressure on our region as well. The US also approved Nord Stream 2, both Trump and Biden met with Putin and recognized him an important world leader. Poland had one „reset with Russia“ in 2007-14 – it ended with the seizure of Crimea and Donbass. As time goes by, room for another normalization of Polish-Russian relations could have arisen if Russia chose to stabilize the status quo. Instead they chose an attempt at further expansion and further destabilization of Central and Eastern Europe. For example, on February 15, a few days before the conflict, the Polish foreign minister was in Moscow, met with Sergey Lavrov and spoke, among other things, on that „in this difficult political situation, it remains our duty to nurture contacts at all levels.“
Vladimir Putin was visited, called and appealed by all important Western politicians, including those really close to him and vitally interested in weakening American influence in Europe. However, Putin decided that the complete takeover of Ukraine, and preferably also NATO’s withdrawal from Central Europe, are so important to him that he is ready to start a full-scale war. He decided that force would achieve more than negotiation. It is in Poland’s interest that Russia lose this war and that its possibilities of starting further aggressions are weakened as much as possible and for as long as possible. What will happen after the war is difficult to say today. However, it is highly unlikely that Putin or any other Russian leader will give up on Russia’s current goals.
What do you expect from Germany and how should a German-Polish cooperation should look like? Is there a strong interest in a German-Polish coalition?
We are neighbors and natural partners, we are stuck with each other whether one likes it or not. Germany is Poland’s largest trading partner. Poland is Germany’s fifth largest partner – after China, the Netherlands, the USA and France. We must strive to build bridges and cooperation, although this cooperation should be based on a partnership. As I have already mentioned, over the last 30 years Poland has significantly caught up with you in terms of wealth and standard of living. Poland today has ambitions to play a more important role in Europe and Germany should understand this.
Unfortunately, the reality is that for the last 32 years, since the turn of 1990, Germany has always been ruled by groups more or less striving for the political centralization of Europe at the expense of the sovereignty of nation states and for the promotion of an ideological left-liberal agenda. Party foundations funded from the German federal budget generously sponsor Polish woke activists and the Polish far left. The Boll Foundation openly wrote in one of its reports that the only way to permanently „restore the rule of law“ in Poland would be to bring about the collapse of the current Polish government elected in the elections and replace it with a liberal-leftist one. Many Polish media strongly promoting the LGBTQ+ agenda, the centralization of the EU, culturally alien immigration or the sexual revolution are controlled by German capital. For the average Polish patriot today, Germany has the face of Angela Merkel and it is definitely not a positive association. Of course if the internal situation in Germany evolved this could change.
Today, relations between the Polish and German governments are poor. The German authorities still treat us as a state that should politely nod to ideas coming from Berlin and Brussels, even if they threaten the elementary interests of Poland. We know perfectly well that the current government is not in the interests of the German establishment, but serious partners should strive for dialogue with everyone who rules in Poland. Today we have a situation where your political class does not want to talk to the Polish authorities. Of course, I think similarly that Polish politicians should talk to every German government, even if it is ideologically distant. This is basic political realism.
German liberal-left circles have raised – often literally raised, sponsoring their studies and then work – a large group of Polish politicians, journalists and „experts“ who always tell them what they want to hear – for example, that the PiS government will surely lose the next elections (they say that about every subsequent one), so there is no point in building a relationship with them. The same people in Poland promote Germany as a model country that „civilizes“ and „Europeanizes“ us, backward Eastern homophobes, xenophobes, fascists, etc.
However, nothing makes it possible for Poland and Germany to have very good relations in the future. Germany is and will be the largest and strongest country in Europe, and Poland in Central and Eastern Europe. As you can see, despite many political disputes, economic cooperation is still going great. At Nowy Ład, we follow and analyze German policy, both domestic and foreign. We’ll see how things play out in both countries in the coming years and decades. Internal politics often determines foreign policy.
You have high expertise in the field of Chinese Economics. How does Chinas Politics influence us here in Europe and what would be your ideal positioning towards China from a Polish and a European perspective?
China is a very important country and a powerful economy. Certainly, Europe should not be held hostage by the US and its policy to contain China. At the same time, we must be aware that China wants to squeeze Europe like a lemon, extracting as much technology from it and as many markets for export as possible. We can see the uneven opening of markets between China and Europe (and more broadly, the whole world). China guards its market, while at the same time having wide access to global markets. We should strive to change this and create as symmetrical economic conditions as possible. Certainly, the Chinese market and, more broadly, large Asian markets are an enormous opportunity for Europe.
I think that China’s influence in Poland is not large compared to the influence of the United States or the European Union. From Poland’s perspective, China may ultimately be an important partner in trade technology. We see that Chinese companies are strong in the new wave of technological innovation. This is certainly an opportunity for countries such as Poland that seek a transfer of technology and a modernization of the economy. Of course, the last 10 years have been a time of great hopes for intensifying contacts between Poland and China. Unfortunately, in many aspects it failed. Despite many visits and announcements, cooperation remained at a relatively low level – also due to the inadequacy of the Chinese offer to Polish circumstances. I hope this will change. A number of trends indicate growing isolationism in China, and European societies look at China with increasing distrust and suspicion. This does not create a good climate for developing cooperation.
In my opinion, we need to look more broadly, at the entirety of Asia, which is growing in strength. Asia means more and more in global politics. Apart from China, we also have other large countries such as India and Indonesia. We have technologically advanced countries like South Korea and Japan. Asia is an opportunity for us that we cannot afford to miss.
And what about the United States? Should Europe entirely cut off from the West or do you see any chance for a partnership of equals?
The geographical position between Germany and Russia has been a curse for Poland for centuries. During the time of the partitions (1795-1918) as well as before World War II, Poland, faced with the disproportion of potentials compared to Germany and Russia, was looking for an external partner which would help us maintain our independence and sovereignty. Back then we focused on France and Great Britain. Currently, we are betting on the United States. I see a number of negative effects of such a policy, including the fact that Americans sometimes treat us as their own, non-subjective colony. It is also clear that most American elites think in terms of cultural liberal imperialism. On the other hand, today the German and French elites think in the same categories. They all eagerly lecture Poland, support the liberal-left opposition, „persecuted sexual minorities“ or „civil society“. American pop culture intoxicating our civilization is the strongest, but the political involvement of Berlin and Paris is no different from that of Washington.
The question is, what alternatives do we have as Poles? There are not many of them, especially in the face of German flirtations with Russia. That is why I believe that Poland should continue to cooperate with the United States, while at the same time looking for pragmatic partners in large Western European countries and building contacts with emerging Asian countries, led by China and India. You have to talk to everyone. Americans also need to see that Poland is a sovereign entity.
At the same time, in Germany and France there is a desire to limit the influence of the USA and to build a sovereign Europe as a separate geopolitical entity. It is understandable – Germany and France are nations with a much longer history and a richer culture than the USA, and they do not feel well in the role of a weaker partner. However, this cannot be done without sufficiently strong armed forces, which no European country has. The war in Ukraine demonstrated that the US is still able to impose its will on Western Europe. If Europe were to try to create a partnership on equal terms with the United States, it would have to have a common foreign policy agenda, to be a geopolitical entity. We follow the German and French debate, we keep up to date with concepts such as strategic autonomy.
Although we see steps being taken in this direction, I believe that it will not succeed. There is no European nation, only several dozen nations, each with slightly different identities and interests. How would the interests of our region be represented if the foreign policy of the European Union countries was centralized, as Chancellor Scholz wants? For example, in the context of the war in Ukraine – in my opinion, stronger Western European countries shaping this policy would sacrifice the interests of our region for their own benefit. Therefore, in our region, we can expect a lot of resistance to such centralization.
I also see no chance of cutting off from the United States in the near future – both sides of the Atlantic are connected by so many ties, including military ones, that this option seems wishful thinking in the foreseeable future. Also in the USA, of course, there are isolationist tendencies, but this is easier said than done, as the Trump presidency demonstrated. Summing up, I am in favor of a reasonable dialogue with every possible partner, without cutting off from anyone.
One last question which is a bit off-topic, but interesting for our German readers: Surprisingly the PiS has enforced reparations by the Germans for WWII. What is your opinion about that and why do you think the PiS has put this topic on the agenda in these inconstant times?
I think that PiS politicians are well aware that winning reparations is very unlikely. I also think so. PiS simply wants to use it as a political instrument that will be useful in various negotiations with the government in Berlin. We see increasing pressure on Poland by EU institutions, the desire to interfere in Poland’s internal affairs and the undisguised hostility of the EU establishment towards the current Polish authorities. Therefore PiS wants to expand the range of tools for negotiating with German elites that have a key impact on the course of various processes in the European Union. Again, referring to World War II and Nazi crimes is a response to the fight against the Polish government in the name of „rule of law“, „LGBTQ+ rights“ etc. on the same moralistic plane. Since the German government and the German elite (media, lobbies and institutions associated with it) accuse the Polish government of authoritarianism, persecution of minorities, etc., trying to cause shame and guilt in Poles, PiS responds in a similar way – no, it’s you who are the heirs a totalitarian criminal regime and you should be ashamed, feel guilty and apologize to us, not the other way round.
Where do you think Europe is headed? Where will Europe be in 2035 and what role will Poland play in this?
Europe’s role in the global system is declining. Europe’s share in global GDP, the declining share of the largest global companies, the shrinking number of democratic-liberal states worldwide – these are signs of Europe’s declining importance and global attractiveness. In addition, there will probably be re-evaluations in the global management system, because the power of Europe’s voice in these institutions is greater than the level of Europe’s power suggests. For centuries, Europe meant more politically than the size of its population indicated. Today India and China combined have about four times the population of Europe. Europe or, more broadly, the West is no longer the most important place on the globe and we have to get used to it. Apart from material and political matters, the European state of mind, the state of our civilization and national cultures are also important. They are all under the destructive influence of people who believe that history and tradition should be destroyed while Europeans should feel disgust and shame when thinking about their past. The circles that want to cut off the European tree from its roots are a huge threat.
Do we have enough energy, enough will to fight and survive to stop these activities? To renew national cultures and identities based on the heritage of European civilization? I do not know, but certainly the long-term activities of the postmodern left have done a lot of damage to the state of mind of the average European. I hope that by 2035 we will see more successes of European patriots as part of the „New Springtime of Peoples“, and Poland will be one of the few big players on our continent.