U.S. Troop Deployments to Poland Shine Light on New Cold War Strategy
By Jeremy Kuzmarov - September 2, 2020
President Duda with Polish and American soldiers participating in military
exercises called DEFENDER-Europe 20 Plus. [Source: prezydent.pl]
On August 15, 2020, the Trump administration announced that it was sending
1,000 troops to Poland as part of the new defense cooperation agreement
signed on the anniversary of the victory of Poland in the Polish-Soviet war
of 1920.
The new troops added to the 4,500 that were previously deployed by President
Barack Obama following the 2014 Western-backed coups détat in Ukraine and
the Russian takeover of Crimea.
As part of the defense cooperation agreement, Poland agreed to host forward
elements of the U.S. Armys V Corps headquarters, which the Polish foreign
minister called the most important U.S. command center on NATOs eastern
flank.[1]
Recent events follow on the strategic shift of U.S. administrations moving
the core of NATO from Paris and Bonnwhat Donald Rumsfeld famously termed
old Europeto the East, as part of an aggressive drive to control former
parts of the Soviet Union and Central Asia.
The Obama and Trump administrations have been pouring weapons into Eastern
Europe, backed by a coordinated program of military training and military
exercises, in an attempt to resurrect the Intermariuma geopolitical concept
originating in the post-World War I era that envisages an alliance of
countries reaching from the Baltic Sea over the Black Sea to the Aegean Sea
that would serve as an alternative power bloc between Germany and Russia.[2]
DEFENDER-Europe 20 is part of deployment exercises to further new U.S. and
NATO strategic objectives: move the core of NATO from Paris and Bonn to the
East. [Source: https://www.eur.army.mil/DefenderEurope/]
As CAM reported, the term Intermarium was deployed by former United States
Army Europe (USAREUR) commander General Ben Hodges to describe the U.S.
strategy for Central and Eastern Europe, before being revived on a much
broader scale by the ruling Polish Party of Law and Justice as well as by
Ukrainian far-right movements in the wake of the 2014 coup in Ukraine.[3]
In 2019, the U.S. Army began rotational deployment of an armored brigade
combat team to Poland while the Pentagon prepositioned equipment for an MQ-9
Reaper drone squadron there.[4]
In March 2018, Poland signed a $4.75 billion deal to purchase U.S. Patriot
missile defense systems from Raytheon, the largest arms procurement deal in
Polish history.
At the signing ceremony, Polish President Andrzej Duda stated that the
historic moment was Polands introduction into a whole new world of
state-of-the art technology, modern weaponry and defensive means.
However, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Vladimir Titov told Sputnik News
that the Patriot deployments were part of a U.S. plot to surround Russia
with missile defense systems under the pretext of mythical threats to
security.[5]
Russia responded to the Patriot deal by revamping its own nuclear arsenal,
and deploying Iskander short-range nuclear capable missiles in Kaliningrad,
a 5,800-square-mile Russian exclave wedged between Poland and Lithuania.[6]
One of the features of the first Cold War was the U.S. alliance with
conservative and extreme right-wing factions, including those with Nazi
collaborationist ties. The new Cold War, unfortunately, is shaping up to be
little different, as the U.S. is again allying with the far right against
the Russian bogeyman.
Polish President Duda is a leader of the right-wing Law and Justice Party,
which legalized government control over the media and has promoted the
repression of critical intellectuals.[7]
Duda has also promoted a right-wing revisionism surrounding World War II. In
2018, Duda signed a law that banned people from accusing Poland of Holocaust
atrocities committed by the Nazis and from referring to concentration camps
as Polish death camps.
The Duda regime has made a point of emphasizing Polish resistance to the
Nazis, but has underplayed Polish crimes like at Jedwabne in July 1941,
where Poles rounded up and killed their Jewish neighbors. [8]
The Jedwabne pogrom was an atrocity committed on July 10, 1941, during the
German occupation of Poland in World War II. Described as a massacre or a
pogrom by postwar historians, it resulted in the death of at least 340
Polish Jews of all ages, locked in a barn later set on fire. A group of 23
Polish males was involved, after being summoned in Jedwabne by a German
paramilitary group known as the Ordnungspolizei. [Source:
alchetron.com/Jedwabne-pogrom]
Dudas stringent anticommunism has further resulted in the demolition of
numerous Soviet era monuments dedicated to the heroic Red Army, while Nazi
collaborators are presented as patriots and heroes. Duda in fact signed
a law banning all references to communism.[9]
Given this position, it is no surprise that Poland has been active in the
movement to oust Alexander Lukashenkoone of the last remaining Socialists
in Eastern Europefollowing contested elections in Belarus. Nexta Live, an
online television station presenting minute-by-minute updates on the
protests in Belarus, operates out of Poland.
A Polish Special Forces unit that specialized in psychological operations
was coordinating what some analysts are referring to as the Belomaidan
protests in Bydgoszez, whose supporters endorsed the Intermarium, or
alliance of Eastern European countries against Russia.[10]
Polish President Andrzej Duda has earned praise from President Trump despite
passing a law underplaying the Polish role in the Nazi Holocaust. [Source:
forward.com]
When the BBC interviewed a photo-journalist who had been arrested by
Lukashenkos police, he happened to be a Pole with a neo-Nazi background,
which may not have been entirely coincidental.[11]
The bottom line is that the American military alliance with Poland is
helping to beef up a repressive right-wing regime which is ramping up
hostilities against Russia.
As a consequence of these events, the peace movement should be out in force
denouncing Trumps policies and calling for the removal of U.S. troops from
Poland.
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of Covert Action Magazine and author of
four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obamas Unending Wars (Clarity
Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly
Review Press, 2018).
