Poland Moves Closer to US and NATO

Besides Georgia, other areas threatened by Russian invasion--Ukraine, Poland, etc--people are moving closer to the US and NATO for protection. To these new democracies, Russia represent an oppressive, stifling past that they want no further part of.

On newsstands, the cover of the mainstream, right-leaning weekly magazine Wprost features an illustration of Vladimir V. Putin, Russia’s prime minister, with an instantly recognizable little mustache and sweep of hair across the forehead that make the headline, “Adolf Putin,” redundant. The Polish edition of Newsweek shows the outspoken and at times impolitic Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, in the pilot’s seat of an airplane cockpit under the headline, “You have to be tough with Russia.”

Radek Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and the government’s point man on missile defense, said in an interview this week, “Parchments and treaties are all very well, but we have a history in Poland of fighting alone and being left to our own devices by our allies.”

It is not a cold war mindset that drives Poland, Mr. Sikorski said, but one that harks all the way back to World War II, when, despite alliances with Britain and France, Poland fought Nazi Germany alone, and lost.

It was “the defining moment for us in the 20th century,” Mr. Sikorski said. “Then we were stabbed in the back by the Soviet Union, and that determined our fate for 50 years.”

As a result, Poland’s foreign policy is stamped by mistrust not only for Russia’s ambitions but also for hollow assurances from its own allies. Georgia’s lonely fight against an overwhelming Russian military served as an object lesson — a refresher that people here said no one needed — on the limits of waiting for help from friends.

“We’re determined this time around to have alliances backed by realities, backed by capabilities,” said Mr. Sikorski, pointing out that all Poland has now in terms of NATO infrastructure is one unfinished conference center. _NYT

Russia has no friends. No wonder. If Putin has command of the US military, what he could do! It is not likely that President Obama would be nearly as weak an appeaser as he seems to be. Is it?