Russia is preparing its quadrennial Zapad 2021 military exercises along NATO’s eastern borders. The exercise is focused on potential armed conflicts with Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
This extensive military drill in September will also involve troops from Belarus, one of Russia’s few remaining partners. Zapad 2021 is intended to demonstrate Russia’s military readiness and to simulate a clash with a neighboring state in which Moscow prevails. But with this year’s exercises being conducted in the midst of the Russo-Ukrainian war and the social turmoil in Belarus, tensions are increased. Especially notable is the impact on the historic rivalry between Poland and Russia over the states that lie between them.
Kremlin propaganda depicts Poland, the largest and militarily strongest state on NATO’s eastern flank, as promoting pro-Western coups in Ukraine and Belarus that are intended to tear these countries away from “Mother Russia.” In reality, the region is not witnessing a contest between two imperial projects but a struggle between two strategic concepts. That is to say the concept of a centralized Russian dominion that subordinates neighbors and that of a voluntary, multinational confederation embodied in the trans-Atlantic alliance and the European Union.
For Poland, NATO and EU membership and a strategic partnership with the United States are the cornerstones for defending national independence.
Warsaw has also endeavored to secure and stabilize its eastern borders by helping neighbors move closer toward Euro-Atlantic institutions. It promotes several multinational efforts, including the Three Seas Initiative to enhance economic and infrastructural connections among the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black seas and to include Ukraine and Belarus in a belt of independent states across Central Europe. Unlike Vladimir Putin’s regime, no post-communist Polish government has harbored any aspirations to absorb, partition, or control neighboring states. On the contrary, Warsaw has campaigned for sovereign countries to enter the multinational institutions of their choice and to diversify their trade and energy connections.
The Kremlin has tried to restrict Poland’s influence among former Soviet republics that Moscow does not recognize as fully independent. Because of poor domestic leadership and persistent Russian subversion, both Belarus and Ukraine have failed to develop stable democratic systems and resilient sovereignty. In Ukraine, two popular revolutions (2008 and 2014) endeavored to break the stranglehold of corrupt officialdom and Russia’s dominance. Yet the country still faces an uphill struggle to ensure economic development while enduring a protracted Russian military siege to divide its territories. In Belarus, an authoritarian system under President
Alexander Lukashenko has disqualified the country from qualifying for Western institutions even while shielding it from absorption by Moscow.
Poland has also been active in drawing both of its eastern neighbors closer to the EU through a number of initiatives, including the Eastern Partnership Program. But the impact has been limited as the EU has not offered any prospects for membership.
In Belarus, Warsaw’s influence has been restricted because Lukashenko’s regime fears that democratization would dislodge it from power. Paradoxically, while public unrest in Belarus may present a promise of democratic reform, it could also weaken the country’s sovereignty if Lukashenko is replaced by a more pliant pro-Moscow figure. Putin’s regime fears political pluralism in Belarus because it would steer the country out of the Russian orbit and serve as a model for public uprisings in Russia itself. The Kremlin is weighing the costs and benefits of tighter institutional integration between the two states but is wary of importing a restless Belorussian public into the misnamed Russian “federation.”
Declaring its interventions in Ukraine and Belarus as defensive necessities, the Kremlin depicts Poland as a growing imperial threat and a conduit for nefarious American influences. In reality, no government in Warsaw can allow Ukraine or Belarus to be carved up or merged with a belligerent Russia. An expanded Russian military attack on Ukraine or the construction of Russian bases in Belarus would challenge the security of Poland’s eastern borders. It could also draw NATO into a direct military confrontation with Russia.
Although State Department criticisms of Poland’s democratic shortcomings are warranted, these cannot be allowed to weaken U.S.-Polish relations or to embolden Putin’s empire-building. President Joe Biden’s astute decision to appoint Mark Brzezinski as the new U.S. ambassador to Warsaw signals that the White House is well aware of Poland’s pivotal position even while it underestimates Moscow’s intense imperial impulses. Washington’s current expectations of a “stable and predictable” relationship with Putin’s Russia are viewed with enormous skepticism in Poland and among its NATO neighbors. They just wonder what Kremlin offensives will debunk these lingering illusions.
Janusz Bugajski is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C. His recent book, Eurasian Disunion: Russia’s Vulnerable Flanks, is co-authored with Margarita Assenova. His upcoming book is Failed State: Planning for Russia’s Rupture.
