Why Joe Biden Is Taking The New Polish Government To Task
By Dr. Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon
Monday, 11 March 2024 11:37 AM EDT
U.S. President Joe Biden has invited to the White House, both the president of Poland Andrzej Duda and (new) Prime Minister Donald Tusk, to discuss security cooperation and aid to Ukraine.
The meeting is scheduled to take place tomorrow, on March 12.
Photo: The president of Poland Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk. (Wikimedia)
Usually, the U.S. president is supposed to meet only with his diplomatic counterpart, so inviting the prime minister to the same meeting is not only a departure from diplomatic protocol but is also indicative of an emergency situation.
It seems that President Biden is concerned that even though the newly elected, progressive Tusk government is more ideologically compatible with the Biden administration than the previous conservative government of the Law and Justice (PiS) party, it’s also regarded as anti-American.
To begin with, its new Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski recently accused the United States of blowing up the Nordstream 2 pipeline. He flirts with China and is a leading proponent of the European Army, which would compete with NATO and undermine it. In his previous appointment, he wanted to see Russia in NATO, characterized Polish-US ties as “worthless,” and was the most ardent proponent of the reset policy with Russia, going so far as to invite the Russian Minister Lavrov to lecture the worldwide gathering of Polish ambassadors on what kinds of policies should Poland pursue. Further, Tusk’s coalition appointed a 29 year old first time parliamentarian with self-described experience as a humanitarian worker in Iran, Ukraine and Yemen to be the chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on US-Poland relations, suggesting a lowest possible priority.
As far as the Prime Minister Tusk is concerned, his destruction “with iron broom” of all institutions, policies and personnel of the previous PiS government is beginning to threaten the United States’ interests.
In the area of defense, Law and Justice raised the defense budget to 3.7% of the GDP, the most in NATO, and made extensive purchases of American military equipment, Abrams tanks, Apache helicopters, F-35 jets, Patriot Missile Defense, and numerous others.
To increase Poland’s energy security, the former government purchased the Westinghouse nuclear power plant.
The Intel Corporation chose Poland as a site for a semiconductor plant.
All of these projects are inconvenient for Germany, which regards them as threatening its own competitive position. And Donald Tusk, a protégé of Angela Merkel, a former German chancellor, who won the Oct. 15 parliamentary election on a slogan of a closer integration with the European Union and removal of conflicts with Germany is ready to accommodate a powerful neighbor and cancel, delay, or diminish them.
Possibly the most important project of the former conservative government – the Central Communications Port – is already suspended.
This involves the construction of a large regional airport near Warsaw with a connecting web of high-speed trains and highways that is already advanced with one billion dollars sunk costs but constitutes competition to Berlin.
The Law and Justice government envisioned this central airport as a major development impulse, as the finished project would be the largest communications hub in Europe.
Cancellation of this project would lay waste to considerable planning and environmental studies and deprive Poland of infrastructure that it badly needs now and even more in the future.
Of more significance, a large airport in the middle of Poland with high-speed trains and roads connecting it throughout Europe could serve as a military logistics hub in an hour of need.
It’s noted that as a result of war in Ukraine, the small regional Rzeszow airport near the Ukraine border, became a key transfer point for Western military and humanitarian supplies, without which Ukraine would have been defeated long ago.
By contrast, a large capacity airport in case of potential conflict in Poland or the Baltics could also serve as a lifeline for the NATO military effort.
Military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine is going through southern Poland as usual.
But the border is picketed by striking Polish farmers who object to large imports of low-price Ukrainian grains and corn to the Polish market that are driving them out of business.
This unilateral unrestricted European Union opening of borders to Ukrainian goods is having its greatest impact on Poland as the closest neighbor. Farmer protests line border crossings, highways and streets of Warsaw, straining good will on both sides.
The Tusk government is making promises but taking a leisurely approach to find a compromise.
The longer it lasts, the more opportunities are given to hostile forces to make trouble and could result in a powerful conflict inside Poland as farmers have widespread public support.
President Biden should urge the prime minister to give it his highest priority.
Thus, President Biden has a diplomatic task to straighten out the new Polish government to respect American interests and be mindful of promotion of conflict in this key neighbor of wartime Ukraine.
The cancellation of the Central Communications Port under German pressure would significantly impact the defense of Poland and the Baltics and eastern flank in general in case of potential conflict.
President Biden’s task is not only to secure Poland’s purchases of American equipment and technological investments but also the construction of the central port, which will be a vital link between the United States and Poland for communications both in peace and war.
Dr. Lucja Swiatkowski Cannon is a senior research fellow at the Institute of World Politics in Washington, D.C.
