When in Rome…Donald Trump in Poland

When in Rome…Donald Trump in Poland

By: Erreh Svia

Caprine Dispersion

“NATO expansion and Russian expansion - one leads to the other, and one reflects the other.”

Jeremy Corbyn

Donald Trump or one of his advisors must have read George Friedman´s awesome book The Next 100 Years and his forecast about the prominent role countries like Poland or Turkey will play in the future, I also wrote a lot about it a couple of years ago, as both country's geographical situation and measured economies seemed destined for greatness, but while on the run, something went wrong, in Turkey, Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdogan used his geopolitical advantage on themes like Europe's misunderstanding on migration and the terrorist menace of radical Islam in order to create a state of emergency that helped him to concentrate more power, while in Poland, political party Law and Justice  used a similar, although less strident strategy in order to concentrate political power also, based on nationalism and fear of migration.

 

Somehow the worlds of Trump and Andrzej Duda, president of Poland have converged (most notably on the migration issue), as Donald Trump approbation in Europe (and within the USA) has severely decline, he is desperately in the need of finding new allies, some of them in really unusual places like Egypt, Arabia Saudi, Philippines and the aforementioned Turkeys, ironically enough places where freedom has been restricted, which might tell us the type of authoritarian rule Trump prefers, is Poland the same case? Yes and no, of course Poland is a fledgling democracy still (although the Polish media has been recently under attack by the government), but the political power keeps being concentrated behind the conservative PIS or Law and Justice party main man Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the true power behind Duda and prime minister Beata Szydlo, a power that recently has created some discomfort within the Polish civil society and specially women who have felt attacked by some of the PIS most right wing conservative issues.

Another important issue might be the protectionist side that Poland has taken under PIS rule, another obvious point of convergence with Trump, who might be playing a bit with the Polish historical distrust from either Germans and Russians, in a moment in which Trump could be seen as wise enough to play Poland against Germany (after German prime minister Angela Merkel expressed deception after her meetings with Trump) as a challenger against Germany and France prominent role as leaders of the European Union, with the Polish economy growing steady after almost 25 years of constant expansion, Trump role and visit to Poland might show us a new attempt to gain power and influence in Europe taking as levers countries like the United Kingdom, Poland, Hungary and even Turkey in order to exalt latent nationalism and xenophobia in order tear apart the EU cohesion and diminish the German and French role, something that might be useful and benefiting for Russia.

Trump seems to be changing at convenience his previous opinions about NATO (he also suggested the Russian intervention in order to destabilize USA politics, something he barely talks about in America), an alliance created in order to defend European allied countries against external menaces, NATO has proven quite beneficial for Poland after the fall off communism, while Trump as a candidate declared being in favor of dissolving NATO or charging a biggest rate to its members, now he is finding new ways of taking advantage of it (even claiming its useful for the West survival), some might call Trump a pragmatic individual, I guess, as a tycoon he always looks for his best convenience, and this time during his visit to Warsaw he played the NATO friendly guy, tried to appear as a trues statesman, but it might be a little too late, he might be more prejudicial in the long run to Poland and to Europe interests, Poland´s government might be playing its cards as best as it can, I can’t assure Polish people agree exactly with Trump´s opportunistic views, consider that he gave his speech unusually behind a thick glass wall, Poland government is just following the same strategy as Viktor Orbán is doing in Hungary, but weakening the European Union might not the best strategy in a continent under constant Russian bullying, and the fact that Ukraine could also reemerge as an important issue and a breaking point between Europe and Russia.