“Real deterrence means real presence,” said Poland President Andrzej Duda this morning at an event in Washington co-hosted by the Atlantic Council and the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA). He was talking about the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the need to have around the clock NATO forces along Europe’s eastern flank, especially in Poland.
NATO was created in 1949 as a response to WWII. Its goals: to deter Soviet aggression and expansion, to prevent nationalistic militarism in Europe through North America’s presence in Europe, and to support European political integration. Over time, the first goal became the most salient.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, NATO’s prominence gradually decreased. The past two decades have been a period of relative calm in Europe, thanks to post-war efforts like NATO. But this peace has also been a danger. NATO fell asleep, says President Duda, and it must now wake up.
Duda does not advocate for Russian isolation and a return to Cold War politics, he says; in fact, quite the opposite. Duda wants to normalize relations with Russia but feels that Poland and the West need to be able to respond to Russian surprises. One such surprise was the annexation of Crimea in March 2014. “For the first time since WWII, Europe’s borders have been moved by force,” he stated. The West should consistently demand a reversion to the geopolitical world order that has been in place since after WWII and before the Crimea annexation, he continued. The Polish president views Russia’s recent actions as “aggressive and imperial,” and supports sanctions against Russia.
However, as an audience member at this morning’s event noted, Poland retains the only open border between Russia and the West: Kaliningrad. Poland and Russia have a small border traffic (SBT) agreement on Kaliningrad. This means that residents in Kaliningrad and those living in nearby Polish counties in Pomorskie and Warmińsko-Mazurskie can cross the border without a visa (they just need to apply for a special card), giving Russian citizens access to the West. This bodes well for the Russians using the SBT, who may end up spending a lot less on groceries than they would have if they had shopped in Kaliningrad. Inflation of food prices in Poland was only 0.1 percent, as of January 2016, and overall inflation was -0.8 percent, as of this February. In Russia, food inflation is at 6.0 percent, as of February 2016, and overall inflation is 8.1 percent, as of February.
Although Duda supports the current economic sanctions against Russia, he says visa-free travel between Poland and Kaliningrad will not change. Sanctions are very important, but one must not forget the human aspect. Normal people benefit substantially from the SBT agreement, both in terms of economics and culture. Duda went on to say he would like to see more social and cultural exchanges between Poland and Russia.
Here Duda’s main line is once again driven home: relations with Russia should be normalized, but not at the expense of supporting a 19th century-like return to European great power politics. To ensure the latter, Duda wants NATO to build out a system of ballistic missile defense (BMD). NATO members announced an Interim NATO BMD Capability in 2012. An Initial and Full Operational Capability may be on the agenda for the NATO summit in Warsaw this July.
Without commenting directly on U.S. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s comment that NATO is “obsolete” and that “we [the U.S.] pay a disproportionate share of the cost of NATO,” Duda pointed out that Poland was one of the few NATO members to meet the alliance’s two percent target for defense spending (as a percentage of GDP) in 2015 and Poland is committed to the two percent target for 2016.
The isolationist rhetoric coming from the current American presidential debates is not what worries Duda, however - he says it is understandable. What is troubling is that people can only do business when there is peace. Peace – in Syria, in Ukraine, on the entire European continent – can only come if there is a committed and combined effort, with the U.S. on board, to combat terrorism and other future threats.
Kaitlin Lavinder is an International Producer with The Cipher Brief.
