It’s Premature To Conclude That Poland Replaced Germany’s Role In Guiding EU Foreign Policy

Poland is unprecedentedly important nowadays, but Germany still remains in control of the EU’s foreign policy. What changed over the past year, however, is that Berlin has finally decided to jump on Warsaw’s Russophobic bandwagon in an attempt to lead this trend. Its policymakers decided to do so in order to most effectively advance their country’s national interests as they now understand them to be in this new environment. The Kremlin must urgently acknowledge this reality and formulate policy accordingly.

The Valdai Club’s Latest Analytical Series For RT

Valdai Club program director Andrey Sushentsov just published a piece at RT explaining “How the EU’s ‘new’ Eastern members have taken control of the bloc”. This is the third analysis about Germany from Valdai experts in two weeks after Fyodor Lukyanov’s and Timofey Bordachev’s, which were correspondingly about “How the Green Party has turned Germany Eastern European” and how “The US is humiliating Germany, and Russians are deeply disappointed at the spinelessness of Berlin’s elites”.

The common thread tying together their article series is that Germany lost its previously leading position in formulating the EU’s foreign policy since the start of Russia’s special operation. Lukyanov attributes this to the disproportionate policymaking influence exerted by the radical US-aligned Greens, Bordachev directly blames US meddling, while Sushentsov says that US-allied Poland’s rapid regional rise is responsible. As can be seen, all three explanations in one way or another also trace back to the US.

Constructive Critiques Of Russia’s Brightest Minds

For as insightful as these experts’ analyses are, each of them is nevertheless incomplete. Lukyanov didn’t address the role of Poland’s rapid regional rise, Bordachev downplays the long-term impact of Germany’s new regional approach to Russia (irrespective of what’s behind it), while Sushentsov prematurely concluded that Poland has already replaced Germany’s role in guiding EU foreign policy. The first two experts’ analyses were already constructively critiqued at length in the following responses:

* “Germany’s New Anti-Russian Role Is Partially Due To Its Regional Competition With Poland”

* “Russia Needs To Once Again Brace Itself For A Prolonged Rivalry With Germany”

The present piece will therefore constructively critique Sushentsov’s assessment in order to complement the abovementioned responses, the purpose of which is to comprehensively articulate a contrarian interpretation of Germany’s present role in formulating EU foreign policy. This particular response argues that his conclusion of Poland having replaced Germany’s role in this respect is premature while also pointing to some shortcomings in the explanation that he put forth in his piece.

The Western Elites’ Ideological Fallacy

To begin with, Sushentsov is correct in observing that “the conflict shows the emergence of a new balance of power in Europe” that’s driven by Poland’s rapid regional rise, but he’s respectfully off the mark in implying that this could have been prevented had the EU not expanded to the east. The German economic model wasn’t just built on affordable Russian fuel like he rightly noted, but also on access to the former Eastern Bloc’s emerging markets, of which Poland’s is by far the largest in this part of Europe.

That country and its Baltic partners’ historically driven securitization of ties with Russia pushed them to prioritize their integration into the German-led EU and US-led NATO, which are complementary Western hegemonic structures that expanded eastward in parallel with one another. Berlin accepted them for economic reasons while Washington was motivated by military factors, both of which served to advance their shared unipolar liberal-globalist worldview that’s described in the two preceding hyperlinks.

Central Europe & China Discredited The Liberal-Globalist Worldview

Of relevance to this piece is that ideology’s dogmatic belief in the inevitable erosion of ethno-national identities in favor of supranational ones like associating oneself with Europe or the West more broadly, but that assumption was discredited by domestic socio-cultural trends in Poland and the Baltic States. Those countries moved in the opposite direction by making ethno-national identity the pillar of their post-communist statehoods despite still integrating into those supranational political-military structures.

This is similar to what happened after the West integrated China into its supranational economic structures like the World Trade Organization. Their leaders thought that this would inevitably result in that country’s political integration into their envisaged liberal-globalist world order, yet China retained the economic pillar of its post-revolutionary statehood just like Poland and the Baltic States retained the ethno-national identity of their post-communist statehoods. Both nation-building projects thus failed.

The Influence Of Russophobic & Financial Multipolarity Trends

Accordingly, each of them sought to advance the interests aligned with the respective pillars of their statehoods within those structures that they successfully integrated into. Poland and the Baltic States pushed Russophobia within the EU-NATO, while China pushed financial multipolarity within the WTO. Each ultimately ended up being wildly successful, though largely due to circumstances beyond their direct control: the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine and the 2008 financial crisis.

It's beyond the scope of this piece to explain their origins, but this analysis here addresses the first-mentioned while the second was mostly due to the rampant financialization of the global economy. The NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine created the narrative context within which Poland and the Baltic States could successfully push Russophobia across the West, while the 2008 financial crisis created the conditions within which China could successfully push financial multipolarity across the Global South.  

Russophobia and financial multipolarity were then embraced by many across the West and Global South correspondingly, which set into motion fast-moving series of events that reshaped the policies of countries other those that were responsible for these trends in the first place. This led to economically pragmatic and Russian-friendly Germany formulating a Russophobic grand strategy just like dollar-beholden and US-allied Saudi Arabia appears poised to formulate one based on financial multipolarity.

Germany & Saudi Arabia’s Roles In The Emerging World Order

In each of these two examples, those who were previously far behind these trends have attempted to make up for lost time and play a leading role in them since they both realized that there’s no going back to the status quo prior to the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine and 2008 financial crisis respectively. The Russophobic trend that Poland and the Baltic States are responsible for can’t be sustained without Germany just like China’s financial multipolarity trend can’t succeed without Saudi Arabia.

Both would have preferred to keep everything as it was regarding German-Russian economic ties and Saudi-US financial ones, but each also acknowledges that circumstances beyond their control are responsible for changing these ties. As such, Berlin moved much closer to the US while Riyadh is moving much closer to China since each of those superpowers is correspondingly responsible for setting into motion those Russophobic and financial multipolarity trends that reshaped these aforementioned axes.

Strategic Symbiosis Between Germany-Poland & Saudi Arabia-China

The US is responsible for the NATO-Russian proxy war that led to Poland and the Baltic States’ Russophobia becoming the norm across the West while China is responsible for de-dollarization taking root across the Global South in the decade and a half following the 2008 financial crisis. Poland is still the largest benefactor of the German-led EU’s economic programs by far, while the petroyuan upon which China’s financial multipolarity plans are ultimately dependent can’t succeed without Saudi support.

Instead of leveraging these relationships to curtail those trends, Germany and Saudi Arabia have decided to play leading roles in each since they concluded that there’s no going back to the prior status quo so it’s in their national interest to not be left behind. Germany therefore decided to lead Europe’s containment of Russia, whose spiritual origins on the continent most recently trace back to US-allied Poland and the Baltic States, while Saudi Arabia is poised to accelerate Chinese-driven de-dollarization.

Analytical Takeaways

There are several analytical takeaways from these observations with respect to the subject of Germany’s role in guiding the EU’s foreign policy that three Valdai Club experts have already opined on for RT in the span of just half a month. First, the so-called “end of history” that the liberal-globalist elite in the EU’s German leader and NATO’s American one expected after 1991 failed to unfold even within the West itself as proven by Poland and the Baltic States’ prioritization of ethno-national policies.

Second, these aforesaid policies’ status as the pillar of those countries’ post-communist statehoods influenced them to push related political interests within those Western hegemonic structures that they successfully integrated into. Third, the NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine that broke out for reasons beyond their control created the narrative context within which Poland and the Baltic States could successfully push Russophobia across the West like they’ve already been trying to do for decades.  

Fourth, the resultant sequence of events led to other countries like Germany eventually concluding that it’s impossible to restore the prior status quo and thus seeking to jump on the bandwagon in pursuit of their national interests as policymakers now understand them to be in this new environment. And fifth, far from ceding control of the EU’s foreign policy to Poland, Germany is actively competing with it over which of those two can most effectively contain Russia in Europe.

Concluding Thoughts

Applying the insight above to the Valdai Club’s latest analytical series for RT, three of Russia’s brightest minds can be constructively critiqued for the following: Lukyanov ignores Poland’s role, Bordachev downplays the domestic policymaking one, and Sushentsov exaggerates Poland’s role. They’re all correct in tracing this trend back to the US, but they struggle to accurately assess Poland’s role and the influence that it’s had on German policymakers.

Poland is unprecedentedly important nowadays, but Germany still remains in control of the EU’s foreign policy. What changed over the past year, however, is that Berlin has finally decided to jump on Warsaw’s Russophobic bandwagon in an attempt to lead this trend. Its policymakers decided to do so in order to most effectively advance their country’s national interests as they now understand them to be in this new environment. The Kremlin must urgently acknowledge this reality and formulate policy accordingly.