By Lutfi Dervishi
The Palace of Culture and Science, the high building in the center of the city of Warsaw- long time ago the only highest building nowadays surrounded by a number of skyscrapers- still remains the highest building. There was a joke during the communist regime that indicates the paradox:
- Do you know where the best place to view Warsaw is?
- It is the Palace, because once you are there it is the only place where you cannot see the Palace of Culture and Science.
Warsaw, the capital city, is known in Albania during the communist period also for the Treaty of Warsaw, the military organization established six decades earlier (1955), to countervail the political-military organization of NATO! All the eight previous members of the Warsaw Treaty are now NATO members, with the exception of Russia.
Officially, the Treaty of Warsaw was called- the treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual help. This help was manifested concretely with the movement of tanks, including Warsaw Pact members, with the exception of Albania and Rumania, in the occupation of Czechoslovakia. Since that moment, Albania left officially the Warsaw Treaty.
In Warsaw, everything is changing rapidly. The country is a member of NATO- the most powerful organization in the world, at least since the Roman Empire. Poland is also a member of the EU since 2004.
The future is better secured in the West. However, in Warsaw, a resurged city after the ruins of the Second World War, the past reemerges not only in museums and memorials but also in the daily rhetoric, from the taxi driver to the cabinet ministers!
The Polish capital is making the preparations for the NATO Warsaw Summit, which will take place on the 8-9th July. Every official that you meet talks about it as a historic event.
History has been unmerciful to Poland in the last century. History has shown that the promises and the guarantees given to the Poles by the West have not been maintained. During the Second World War, the country was occupied by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. 200 thousand Polish soldiers and officers died in alliance with the West. In the beginning of the Second World War, in April-May 1940, the Russian secret police executed without trial 22 thousand officers, soldiers and intellectuals – a crime which is known as the massacre of Katyn. The liberation of Poland at the end of the Second World War, besides the removal of the borders (territories in the east of the country taken by the Soviet Union) and the territories taken in the west of Poland, by Germany- brought about a new oppression. Until the year 1989, the country remained under the rule of the ‘empire of the evil’.
If the war had not been transmitted through literature, cinema and museums would have remained as distant and far away as our Moon planet.
The ex-mayor of Warsaw, later the late president of Poland, Lech Kachynski, initiated the foundation of the Uprising Museum, which reveals the largest military resistance in Europe during the Second World War. Sixteen thousand members of the resistance were sacrificed, and around 200 thousand civilians lost their lives, most of them due to mass executions. The resistance, having no support from outside, was quelled by the Nazis. However, the Poles obtained moral victory.
The majority of the visitors of the museum established close to the former industrial zone during the communist regime are youngsters and pupils. To have a better idea of the museum, you could refer to the profile at the social network on Facebook: www.facebook.com/1944pl
Warsaw, eighty five percent of which was destructed at the end of the Second World War, is nowadays a rejuvenated city, in which there are 67 public parks. One of the ‘Ferrari’ shops is placed in the ex-Central Committee building. Poland aims to detach quickly from its past and to recuperate the time lost. However, Warsaw is a city that is not at ease. Not only in a political sense such as the concern for democracy that are explicitly stated by Brussels.
Nowadays, in any capital of the West, the silence that has spread across the continent for more than seven decades shall remain undisturbed. In Warsaw, the situation is different.
The historical tradition in Poland and the fact of having Russia as a neighbor, whose president claims that Poland is a target, make the Poles not only sensitive but also on alert.
The central topic in Brussels and in other capitals is terrorism. War is not understood nowadays as an occupation of territories. The most cherished possession nowadays is not the natural resources, or the earth, but human capital- which is makes it rather difficult to be occupied through conventional means.
In Warsaw, the foreign minister, Witold Waszczykoski talks about a threat that was considered bygone: such as existential threats and after those come terrorism, cyber-terrorism and migration.
The mechanism that guaranteed peace for seventy two years has been violated by Russia. The annexation of Crimea, in 2014, and the maiming of Ukraine as well as the increased threats towards the Baltic countries and the NATO areal space, has brought about the counter-reaction f NATO, the political military alliance of 28 states which shall take in Warsaw on the 8th and 9th July historic decisions.
The Historic Warsaw Summit!
The decades that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, are overwhelmed with many important events and abrupt changes such that it is not inappropriate to use the qualifying adjective ‘historic’. Nonetheless, the political decision that is about to be taken in Warsaw is another argument in favor of the use of the adjective historic, because we live in different times.
The NATO alliance is about to take the decision to deploy military forces in the eastern part of it. Three Baltic States (Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia) as well as Poland shall not be safe any longer, but they will feel so.
The enlargement of NATO has always been a matter of concern and disquiet in Moscow. With the prospective decision of the Alliance, an ‘urban legend’ has been resuscitated which states that NATO had promised Moscow, after the unification of Germany- that the alliance shall not deploy military forces in the territory of the ex-members of the Warsaw Pact. Even those that think that indeed there was such a pledge made by NATO, consider that this is not a legal obligation. Moreover, the situation and the behavior of Russia has changed in a radical manner.
In his speech in the Russian parliament, in April 2014, the Russian President, Vladimir Putin justified the annexation of Crimea claiming that Russia is suffering from the unkept promises of the West that NATO would not enlarge beyond the borders of the unified Germany.
With the accession of Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic in NATO in 1999, there was an impression that the West would continue keeping the promise that no foreign NATO troops shall be placed in the ex-East German territory.
The head of the press office of the President of the Republic of Poland has two main reasons to give to the Russian narrative: First of all, NATO has not been enlarging in the way the Russians think, but the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have demanded the accession themselves and secondly, even if there was a political pledge this does not imply a legal obligation.
The Polish Defense Minister, Antoni Macierewicz, says that the main message of the NATO summit is the strengthening of the defense system of the alliance through the deployment of troops in the east.
Macierewicz when asked how he understands the threat coming from Russia, he responds that “the threats in the Baltic countries, the increase of the military presence in the region of Kà¶nigsberg. Not to mention the military aggression in Ukraine. A part of the territory of Ukraine is under the Russian possession. Peace, humanitarian order and legal order in Europe is endangered seriously since 1944 and here we are not talking about things that are happing somewhere far away, but in the center of Europe” – reiterates the Polish Defense Minister. On the other hand, Poland has taken its own precautionary measures. The military budget has reached 2 percent of the GDP. The modernization of the military forces has taken place. NATO itself is moving forward to adapt to the new environment.
Poland, one of the contributors to the security of the world through NATO, is relocating its means and military forces. The Polish defense minister said that in September they will establish a Unit of Territorial Defense comprised of 35 thousand persons. This military unit shall include civilians which will be trained by military officers and will be on alert to respond to provocations and similar situations that brought about the conflict in Ukraine.
We encounter a number of American pilots that have arrived from the NATO military base in Aviano in Italy to one of the air bases in Lask, in Poland where the museum of aviation is constructed. Based on the sense of humor, and the easiness of communication one could confound them in other situations, with the aviators of the famous movie, called ‘Top Gun’. A Polish pilot of 31 years old, says that one of his best moments are when he flies with F16.
NATO Corpus, responsible for the East side
The multinational northeast corpus of NATO is situated in Szczecin, led by general lieutenant Manfred Hofman. The code name of the following military training (30 May- 3rd June) is significant: “Brilliant Capability 2016” .
The Wales Summit of 2014 demanded the NATO Corpus to increase the level of alertness from the low level to the highest one, to give a swift response for any eventuality in the north-east Europe. The specificity of this NATO unit is that it is responsible for a specific territory that covers the east side of the Alliance, especially Poland and the three Baltic countries (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania).
General Salvatore Farina, who directs the NATO command in Brunssum in the Netherlands (one of the three operational commands of NATO) at the end of the training, says that the message that we intend to get through is: the presence, willingness, and the our capabilities to respond and the Alliance is manifesting rejuvenated capabilities.
After the Warsaw Summit, 4 military battalions of NATO will be placed respectively in Poland and the three Baltic states. The total number of military troops, based on the rotation mode, shall be 4000. The Alliance is increasing its military presence in the border with Russia to send the message that the security of member states of NATO is a priority and the main function of NATO.
Asked about the number of troops which would make Poland feel safer, the Polish defense minister does not give a precise number but adds that : “the military presence shall be appropriate” .
Whereas, regarding the military competition on the side of Russia, in the ‘east front’ the Polish Defense Minister says that the Russia has already increased its military presence with three divisions on the border with Alliance member states. The intention of the Alliance is to protect and not to increase the military presence to attack.
“The military threats from the East are real” – says Marek Magierowski head of the Information Office of the Polish Presidency. “Russia has invested more in the military forces and it is modernizing its army as well as it has increased military maneuvers” .
“We have entered in NATO in 1999, and we now want NATO to enter in Poland” – says Magierowski.
This kind of rhetoric can sound as Russophobic, yet in Warsaw the concern is real. A Czech colleague, which has been covering for years the events in Warsaw, cites the ‘long telegram’ of 8000 words written by George Kennan to understand the differences towards Russia. The telegram of George Kennan, US plenipotentiary after the Second World War in the Soviet Union, starts by saying that “Soviet Union cannot foresee a peaceful co-existence for a long time with the West” and that “this neurotic view of the international issues” , stems from the “insecurity instinct of Russia” . Kennan concluded that they are “quite sensitive to the logic of force” , so “The United States and the allies should be prepared to resist” . It is “the imperial mentality” that does not put Russia at ease-says during a dinner, one of the officials of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
High Polish officials explain the aggressive behavior of Russia as a result of domestic politics and the need for having and identified enemy as well as the need to be considered alongside the United States an important actor in the global scene, although the economic power of Russia does not allow this status. Despite the analysis and prognosis the only predictable thing in the current situation is the difficulty to make predictions.
In hazy times, the first thing that comes to mind is security.
The presence of NATO in Warsaw is seen as a return to identity. Contrary to the missions of 1990s, concerned with peace building and peace-keeping, NATO should get back to its roots- which is the security of any of its 28 member states. Without any doubt, the presence of American troops in Warsaw creates this sense of security.
The Warsaw summit, can be called a historic event also because for the first time after the establishment of NATO, 67 years ago, there will be military troops in an area that used to be a Soviet Union’s zone of influence.
“The real peace is not the absence of war, but the inability to wage war” – says a Polish officer about the military training ‘Brilliant capabilities 2016’.
Golden times that accompanied the early 1990s are gone already. Probably, the best description of the nowadays are the words of Charles Dickens: “the best of times, the worst of times” .
