The Polish Premier Is Fearmongering About World War III For Self-Interested Political Reasons

What he’s dishonestly omitting is that there’s no chance of World War III breaking out so long as the West doesn’t conventionally intervene in Ukraine, not to mention invade Russia’s CSTO mutual defense ally Belarus or its own region of Kaliningrad that’s sandwiched between NATO states, all of which border Poland.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told European media last week that “I don’t want to scare anyone, but war is no longer a thing of the past. It is real and in fact it started over two years ago. I understand that it will sound devastating, especially to the younger generation, but we have to mentally prepare for the arrival of a new era. We are in a pre-war era. I am not exaggerating.” He then compared the present period to the pre-World War II one and predicted that “the next two years will decide everything.”

This fearmongering about World War III is driven by self-interested political motives. On the home front, the totalitarian means through which he’s imposed his liberal-globalist vision onto Poland’s traditionally conservative-nationalist society provoked his country’s worst crisis since the 1980s. He’s also struggling to deal with the nationwide farmers’ protests that could morph into a modern-day Solidarity movement. These two interconnected trends could threaten his rule if they continue.  

As for the international front, Tusk comprehensively subordinated Poland to German hegemony out of solidarity with its liberal-globalist ideology. This has deeply offended patriotic Poles and is fueling the abovementioned unrest. Additionally, he’s also seemingly contemplating a conventional military intervention in neighboring Ukraine either ahead of Russia breaking through the front lines sometime later this year or as an immediate response to that happening.

The latest surveys reveal that the overwhelming majority of Poles support the farmers’ protests and are against direct military involvement in the NATO-Russian proxy war so he would be ill-advised for him to mislead President Andrzej Duda into approving that campaign as a distraction from domestic events. Having become aware of this, Tusk is now fearmongering about World War III instead, which carries with it none of the costs that a conventional intervention in Ukraine would but serves the same purpose.

By presenting himself as a so-called “wartime leader”, he’s hoping to pressure the protesters into curtailing their demonstrations on faux patriotic pretexts as well as justify the totalitarian means through which he’s imposing his ideological agenda onto society. The innuendo is that tough times call for tough measures, which sometimes aren’t in line with democratic norms, and everyone should rally behind his coalition for the supposed greater good just like the British rallied around Churchill.

What he’s dishonestly omitting is that there’s no chance of World War III breaking out so long as the West doesn’t conventionally intervene in Ukraine, not to mention invade Russia’s CSTO mutual defense ally Belarus or its own region of Kaliningrad that’s sandwiched between NATO states. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov’s unprecedented description of the special operation as a war in late March was meant to signal that Russia will react to any of these provocations in line with the laws of war.

In other words, its opponents should expect missile strikes against their forces in Ukraine at the very least, with the potential existing for Russia to widen the area of operations if it so chooses per its right to self-defense if Belarus and/or Kaliningrad are attacked. Tusk and the rest of the Western elite are keenly aware of this, hence why only the most ideologically radical among them would flirt with a nuclear apocalypse by seriously considering the last two scenarios, though the first might still be in the cards.

The planned Polish-Ukrainian security pact could precede Warsaw’s involvement in a so-called “coalition of the willing” that would likely be led by France in that event, which could try to capture the Black Sea coast up to the Dnieper while Poland secures its traditional “sphere of influence” in Western Ukraine. Even though a German parliamentary expert group concluded that NATO-Russian clashes in Ukraine wouldn’t be sufficient for calling in Article 5, the interpretation thereof varies depending on the country.

This is relevant to Tusk’s fearmongering since it means that any move that he might make in that direction runs the risk of turning his words into a self-fulfilling prophecy in the worst-case scenario, though as was earlier mentioned, he might be reluctant to cross the proverbial Rubicon. In any case, the point is that Poland is the perfect launching pad for all three conventional intervention scenarios (Ukraine, Belarus, and Kaliningrad) that could lead to World War III.

France and others could of course cross into Ukraine from Romania, but without NATO’s Polish logistical hub at the very least allowing their forces to transit across its territory as well, such an operation would probably be limited in scale and thus not lead to brinksmanship with Russia even if there are clashes or strikes. Those calculations could change if Poland lets them roll into Ukraine en masse across its border, in which case the aforementioned risk would spike due to the much larger scale of the intervening force.

Simply put, Poland has the power to determine the likelihood of World War III depending on its approach towards those three conventional intervention scenarios, but Tusk doesn’t want Poles and the international public to know this since it nullifies the whole purpose of his fearmongering. He has to continue pushing the so-called “Russian threat” no matter how counterfactual it is for the self-interested political reasons that were explained, which is why he’s not expected to stop, but rather to double down.