America Abandons Poland
The front-page headline on the September 18 edition of Poland’s Fakt newspaper said it all: “Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back.”
“No Radar. Russia won,” cried Mlada Fronta Dnes, the largest Czech daily, on its front page.
This was how these American allies responded to the Obama administration’s announcement on September 17 that it would scrap plans to construct a Ballistic Missile Defense (bmd) system in their countries.
The bmd program was a measure of the strength and commitment of U.S. foreign policy, particularly America’s willingness to invest time and resources into amplifying its voice in European affairs, confronting Russian ambitions on its periphery, and checking Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Now that program is gone.
Whichever way one looks at this decision, it is bad. Either it reeks of plain geostrategic ineptness, or it is a deliberately radical effort to destroy America’s reputation as a nation prepared to use its power to contain imperialist moves by stronger nations against the weak.
Snub After Snub
For a start, the timing of the announcement was abysmal.
Anyone half conversant with history, with an understanding of the Polish character and heritage, let alone an ounce of consideration for diplomatic form, would surely have refrained from delivering such a geopolitical blow to Poland on the 70th anniversary of Poland’s invasion by Russia.
But no. It almost seems the Obama administration went out of its way to heighten the offense against one of the greatest of America’s allies by committing this egregious breach of protocol.
What is more, the manner in which the president conveyed the message of “no deal” to the Czech prime minister showed little thought for diplomatic niceties. With no consideration as to the five-hour time difference between Washington and Prague, President Obama awakened Prime Minister Jan Fischer at an unearthly hour to tersely inform him of his decision to welsh on the deal to situate radar facilities in the Czech Republic.
This all came within days of the Obama administration having snubbed the Poles at the 70th-anniversary commemoration of the Nazi invasion of Poland on September 1. On that occasion, the heads of state of the leading nations in Europe—Germany, France, Britain and Russia—all assembled in Krakow in memoriam of that historic occasion. To represent America, the Obama administration sent a retired four-star general.
The absence of Barack Obama—or his vice president, or even America’s secretary of state—from this important memorial service did not go unnoticed. “The lack of understanding of European history and sensitivities was not lost on the Polish chattering classes,” wrote Helle Dale in the Washington Times. “They have been in a justifiable uproar over this mother of all snubs, feeling a mixture of humiliation and neglect” (September 1).
But perhaps we ought to remember, this is the administration that sent very obvious negative signals to its brother nation and closest ally, Britain, by first returning a bust of Churchill that graced the Oval Office during the Bush Jr. years, then giving a trifling iPod as a “regal” gift to the Queen of England, and a pile of dvds as a gift to the British prime minister, the latter not even being compatible with the British playback system.
If we were to be naive in our evaluation of this series of seeming diplomatic gaffes, we could put them down to plain ignorance, if not absolute ineptness. However, having studied the background agendas of the cabal that runs America’s present government, it is hard not to draw the conclusion that these were all very cynically calculated initiatives of a radical core at the top of U.S. politics who are intent on destroying the heart and soul of all that America has historically stood for.
In the process, they are destroying any trust that America’s former allies may have in the nation’s willingness to oversee their security at a time of great global disorder.
For America, in a dangerous age, this amounts to plain geopolitical suicide.
As that wise old observer of international relations, Hans Morgenthau, observed, the key question a nation should ask when evaluating the foreign policy of another is, “Is the foreign policy of the other nation imperialistic or not? … The answer to that question has determined the fate of nations, and the wrong answer has often meant deadly peril or actual destruction …” (Politics Among Nations, emphasis mine throughout).
America will soon find that it has come up with the wrong answer to that question in relation to both Germany and Russia!
Abandoning Poland
No nation, other than tiny Israel and embattled Serbia, can feel the bitter effects of the radically new approach to its foreign policy by this U.S. administration more than Poland.
Historically the geopolitical fall guy between Germany and Russia in those nations’ separate drives for hegemony, all of a sudden Poland once again sits in midfield waiting to see which boot it will first feel as the tussle starts anew, with the referee in Washington having fled the scene.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States has been the primary guarantor of the independence of Central European nations. “Russian and German domination are familiar themes for Central Europe [including Poland],” Stratfor observed. “Since both Germany and Russia historically have had interests in the region, states often looked to outside protectors with no immediate designs for the territory …” (July 17).
Among those “outside protectors,” none has been as important to Poland as the United States. Geographically, Warsaw exists at the intersection point of Russian and German ambitions for territorial expansion. America is pivotal to Poland’s existence as a sovereign state.
Today, the message from the White House is that America plans to leave the Poles and Central Europeans to fend for themselves against the rising Russians and Germans. “By trading the loyalty of Poland and the Czech Republic to satisfy Russia’s security concerns, the United States is signaling that it no longer contests Moscow’s right to assert its interests in Eastern Europe,” wrote the Times Online (September 17).
“Poland is under pressure at the moment—fearing abandonment by the United States,” noted Stratfor, “while Russia is resurging and commanding influence in Central Europe, and the relationship between Berlin and Moscow is growing closer” (September 1). Will Poland (and other Central European states) find itself becoming a point of negotiation between Moscow and Berlin—as it was in the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact—as they attempt to strike some sort of geographic equilibrium between what are ultimately conflicting ambitions?
Whatever happens, America is leaving Poland stranded on what Stratfor termed “Europe’s superhighway of conquest” (August 14).
The message to both Russia and Germany could hardly be clearer. This U.S. administration is walking away from the grand post-Cold War geopolitical game that is entering its final quarter on the old battlefields of Europe.
No wonder both Russia’s Prime Minister Putin and Germany’s Chancellor Merkel smilingly acknowledged their satisfaction at the Obama administration’s capitulation on the Bush policy of seeking to constrain Russian hegemony. They are now free to divide the spoils in Europe between themselves without any interference from that pesky United States.
A Repeat of History
There’s a sense of déjà vu here.
Seventy years ago, Poland was subject to the tussle for territory on the European continent between an expansionist Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, suffering invasion by both just after they concluded their infamous non-aggression pact. The Czech Republic was overrun by the Nazis.
Today, Poland and the Czech Republic remain the only two European Union member nations withholding ratification of the Lisbon Treaty/EU constitution, pending the outcome of the Irish referendum on whether that nation should sign up to it. But with the U.S. now walking away from the fight, Poland and the Czech Republic are stuck. They would hardly choose to return to Russian oppression, from which they escaped less than 20 years ago. They appear destined now to be reabsorbed by the enemy that seized them in 1934.
Given the Obama administration’s disloyal European foreign policy, the stage is set for Poland and the Czech Republic to capitulate and sign on to the Lisbon Treaty.
A few realists comprehend the enormity of this disastrous move by Washington. Think tank Stratfor commented, “Much of Europe—especially the central and eastern regions—will now view the United States as unable to fulfill its promises to its allies in the face of a strengthening Russia” (September 17). We might well add, “and in the opposing face of a strengthening Germany”!
The abandonment of the bmd program in Poland represents “a huge turnaround in American strategic thinking on a global missile defense system, and a massive betrayal of two key U.S. allies in Eastern and Central Europe,” Nile Gardiner wrote in the Telegraph (August 29). “This is a terrible decision that reduces nato’s security, encourages Iran to proceed full speed ahead with its nuclear program, kowtows to Russian pressure, and stabs our Polish and Czech allies in the back, after they made the difficult decision to support us,” wrote Theodore Bromund (The Heritage Foundation, August 28).
America’s absence in Eastern and Central Europe will create a power vacuum. Geopolitics abhors a vacuum.
The upshot is that Europe’s immediate future will now be decided between the same two powers that signed a deal to seal its fate back in 1939.
“The Kremlin can barely believe its good fortune,” wrote Tony Halpin from Moscow in the Times Online. “Mr. Obama has pressed the ‘reset’ button to improve relations without obtaining anything more than permission for U.S. aircraft to cross Russian airspace on resupply operations for troops in Afghanistan.
“For Mr. Putin, the lesson of today’s decision is clear. Intransigence pays dividends because the U.S. and the European Union lack the patience or determination to face Moscow down. That is a lesson that send[s] alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power of Russia’s former Soviet dominions” (op. cit.).
In future meetings, a geopolitically weakened U.S. president will face a geostrategically strengthened Russian-German duo. Watch for Germany and Russia to become increasingly strident in their demands on an American administration facing significant decline in its international clout well before finishing its first 12 months in office.
In Over Its Head
This administration is simply in over its head, especially when it comes to foreign policy and the conduct of its relations with other nations and their leaders.
It was through the Prophet Isaiah that Almighty God declared of these times that our peoples would be led by those with the minds of infants, possessing a feminized, inept and ignorant approach to both domestic and international affairs (Isaiah 3:4). If ever in the entire history of America there was an administration that reflected the reality of this prophecy, surely it has to be that which the nation has currently inherited.
To place the observably rapid decline of the U.S. and Britain in true perspective, you need to study our book The United States and Britain in Prophecy. It will demonstrate to you that this trend was forecast millennia ago by the one who declares that “the most high ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of men” (Daniel 4:17).
But, more than explaining the reason for the Anglo-Saxons’ demise, that book will show you the tremendous future that awaits all nations in the not-too-distant future when all selfish motivation for the imposition of the power of the strong over the weak will be negated, and an unbelievable era of peace extended around the world.
Yet, before that great era of peace descends on this world, global conditions are set to rapidly become chaotic. This book will show you how to prepare to endure through and even escape the effects of the developing global crisis. You owe it to yourself to at least read it and consider its prophetic logic.