Tag Archive for: Poland

Poland’s path to remarkable prosperity

Browsing social media, I recently came across a map showing all the countries with GDP per capita higher than Poland’s back in 1990 and in 2018. The difference was striking. While 35 years ago there were quite a few such countries, not only in Europe but also in South America, Asia and Africa, in time their number has significantly decreased. In 2018 there were no longer any South American or African states highlighted on the map.

As of 2025, the group has shrunk even further. According to data from the International Monetary Fund, Poland’s GDP in 1990 was a mere US$6690 in current dollars. By 2024 it grew almost eight-fold to US$51,630 in terms of purchasing power parity. All that in just three decades, or one generation. And it goes on. According to the European Commission’s forecast, in 2024–25, the Polish economy will be the fastest growing large economy in the European Union.

How did it happen? Apart from the hard work of our citizens, two major factors—or, to be more precise, two institutions—contributed to our economic success: NATO and the EU.

The first, which Poland joined in 1999, provided security guarantees and helped overcome decades-old division between Eastern and Western Europe. The second, which we joined five years later, took the process of easing long-standing disparities one step further. It granted new member states access to ‘cohesion funds’ and most importantly to the common European market.

After the fall of communism in Poland in 1989 and the return of messy democratic politics, despite day-to-day political squabbles one thing remained constant no matter who was in power—Poland’s determination to join the two aforementioned organisations. Why?

We are a great nation but a medium-size country. We cherish our long history—this year marks a millennium since the coronation of our first king—but our population is much smaller than that of Beijing and Shanghai combined. Poland needs allies to boost its potential on the international stage.

What’s been true for Poland—in 1990 a poor country coming out of four decades of Russian domination and economic mismanagement—might well be true for many of the middle powers in Asia, Africa and South America looking for room to grow.

These countries often need what Poland desperately needed 35 years ago and still profits from: good governance, foreign investments with no strings attached, and above all political stability, rule of law and a predictable international environment with neighbours eager not to wage wars but work together for mutual benefit. In fact, these factors can benefit every country, no matter their GDP.

Today the international order is being challenged on multiple fronts, sometimes for good reason. Decades-old institutions—including the UN and its Security Council—are unrepresentative of the global community and incapable of dealing with the challenges we face. What they need, however, is to be thoroughly reformed, not entirely rejected.

To those desperate for change, force might look appealing. It would be a mistake. Abandoning forums for international dialogue and resorting to violence will not get us far.

Take Russia’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine. According to Kremlin propaganda, it is a justified reaction to western imperialism that allegedly threatens Russia’s security. In fact, it is a modern-day colonial war against the Ukrainian people who—just like us Poles 30 years ago—want a better life and realise they can never achieve this goal by going back to subjugation to Russia. That is what they are being punished for—an effort to free themselves from the control of a former metropolis. The Kremlin’s aggression is a desperate struggle of a failing empire to restore its sphere of influence.

A Russian victory—may it never come—would not create a more just global order. It wouldn’t benefit countries dissatisfied with where things stand now. It wouldn’t even bring about a more just and prosperous Russia. Suffice to say there are now more political prisoners in Russia than there were in the 1980s when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. There are many more casualties as well.

War is hardly ever a shortcut to prosperity. Over the past millennium, Poland experienced its share of invasions and uprisings against occupying forces. What finally brought us prosperity were three decades of peace, predictability, international cooperation and political stability.

That is why on assuming the presidency of the Council of the European Union, Poland made its priority clear: security in its many dimensions, including military, economic and digital. A Europe that is safe, prosperous and open for business can benefit not only Europeans but a greater global community. Just as it benefitted Poland over the past three decades.

It may sound dull, but it worked. Just look at the numbers.

Polish democracy’s winter of discontent

One year after a coalition led by Donald Tusk defeated Poland’s right-wing ruling party, Law and Justice, the mood in the country is subdued. While a victory by pro-democracy parties in a free, but decidedly unfair, election was necessary, it was not sufficient to eliminate the illiberal populist threat. Prying Law and Justice’s tentacles out of every nook and cranny of the state is proving to be a much longer process. In the meantime, Law and Justice is seeking political advantage from the opposition benches.

Were another election to be held today, an estimated 47 to 48 percent of eligible voters would go to the polls, which would be one of the lowest turnouts in the last 20 years, and far lower than the record 75 percent turnout last year. Such findings stand in stark contrast to those of a year ago, when young people voted in droves, particularly young women, and proved to be the decisive factor in Law and Justice’s defeat.

Almost nothing is left of this previous mobilisation. Half of those recently surveyed (51 percent) identify fairly or very little with the government’s program and message. Worse, Law and Justice has retained its support, and support for the far-right Confederation alliance has doubled over the past year.

Many Poles still remember that Law and Justice oversaw a wide range of financial transfers, including large child support and pension payments. A fresh election, according to current polls, would probably replace Tusk’s government (which has around 28 percent support) with a coalition of Law and Justice (30 percent) and the Confederation (15 percent). Around 31 percent of Poles who intend to vote in the next election would choose differently than they did last year.

Even more important than any snapshot are the broader trend lines, which increasingly favour the Confederation and disfavour two parties in Tusk’s coalition: the Left and Third Way. Although Tusk’s Civic Coalition has gained a strong base of voters, the Confederation’s gains have been bigger. While 61 percent of those voting for the Confederation in 2023 want to do so again (and 59 percent for Law and Justice), only half of Civic Coalition and Left voters are willing to double down on their choice.

Supporters of the Left and Third Way are the most disappointed in the results of their victory a year ago. For example, typical supporters of the Left are dismayed that the government has merely introduced administrative changes to decriminalise abortion, rather than legalising it. This issue matters, because it has become a key indicator of whether Poland is advancing as a modern country or returning to its benighted Catholic past. It doesn’t help that the co-ruling Left is dominated by men, despite relying on a predominantly female electoral base.

Other segments of the Civic Coalition’s electorate are disappointed by the lack of progress in restoring the rule of law and holding Law and Justice politicians accountable for abuse of power. Most of these efforts have been blocked by the Law and Justice-linked president, Andrzej Duda. Moreover, the state’s dwindling coffers make it difficult to offer any quick material benefits to Polish voters, as Law and Justice did.

Third Way, for its part, is experiencing a crisis of both engagement and leadership, and it comprises two parties that ultimately are incompatible: Sejm Speaker Szymon Holownia’s Poland 2050 party and Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz’s conservative Polish People’s Party. Each is threatened not only by demobilisation of their traditional voters, but also by Tusk’s party, Civic Platform, and the Confederation.

The Confederation’s leader, Krzysztof Bosak, is increasingly popular across many segments of the electorate, commanding the support of half of all men under 40. The party did, however, make a serious mistake by nominating Slawomir Mentzen as its candidate for the presidential election next year. As a party leader, he is popular with the rank and file, but not with the broader public.

Unlike Law and Justice, the Confederation has the potential to attract disillusioned voters from almost any party. It offers a more honest version of right-wing conservatism than Law and Justice does, and it is unencumbered by the former ruling party’s innumerable scandals. Some two-thirds of those recently surveyed, including one-third of Law and Justice voters, believe that at least some Law and Justice politicians or officials deserve to be in prison. Among the top names on the list are former Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki (who 34 percent think should be prosecuted); Law and Justice’s longtime leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski (30 percent); and former Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro (19 percent).

But Tusk is not blind to the threat that the Confederation poses. His new immigration policy—which temporarily prohibits asylum in Poland for applicants from Russia and Belarus—is meant to head off the far right.

Moreover, a happy ending to the story remains possible. The next presidential election must be held by 18 May 2025, and it could remove the biggest obstacle to the government’s progress. The clear frontrunner is Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski of Civic Platform, who is polling at around 33 percent, whereas no other candidate exceeds 8 percent. His election would be the breakthrough that Tusk and the rest of Poland’s pro-democracy coalition need.

Poland’s democratic rebirth pains

In October, Polish voters demonstrated that even extremely unequal elections against authoritarian incumbents can be won. The opposition’s victory, and the country’s subsequent re-democratisation, may hold useful lessons for likeminded forces in Hungary, Turkey, and elsewhere.

In Poland, the defeated populist leader, Jarosław Kaczyński of Law and Justice (PiS), is relearning the rules of democracy the hard way in the newly elected parliament. For the past eight years, he did not entertain questions in the Sejm (the lower house of parliament) or elsewhere, nor did he engage with any media outlet that PiS did not control. The speaker of the Sejm, Elżbieta Witek, politely followed his instructions and even reversed votes that PiS had lost. The opposition was allowed only 30 seconds of questions, and Witek frequently fined opposition deputies and turned off their microphones.

Kaczyński would take the rostrum whenever he wanted, using it as a perch from which to insult opposition politicians, whom he smeared as ‘treacherous murderers.’ He surrounded himself with security details, and had the Sejm fenced off with barriers and police—an absurd display in a nominally democratic country. Press passes for journalists covering parliament were strictly limited, and Kaczyński always entered through the speaker’s private entrance.

In the recent election campaign, Kaczyński was so sure of himself that he relied solely on aggressive anti-EU rhetoric to mobilize the PiS base. He has long taken a page from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s playbook. As Orbán said at a recent rally, ‘Today, things pop up that remind us of Soviet times. … Fortunately, Brussels is not Moscow. Moscow was a tragedy. Brussels is just a bad contemporary parody … We had to dance to the tune that Moscow whistled, Brussels whistles, too, but we dance as we want to, and if we don’t want to, then we don’t dance.’

Earlier this year, Kaczyński deployed the Orbánian tactic of announcing a referendum designed to scare Poles with the prospect that the country would soon be flooded with refugees.

But it didn’t work, and since the new Sejm convened on November 13, Kaczyński has appeared completely lost. For the first time, he had to enter through the main entrance with everyone else. When reporters pressed him with questions, he lashed out, screaming: ‘How much arrogance, such incredible rudeness, such German rudeness on the part of the Civic Platform.’ He then described Donald Tusk, the likely next prime minister, as a ‘lout.’

A half-hour later, he had to stand by and watch as the new parliamentary majority elected Szymon Hołownia, of the Poland 2050 party, to replace Witek as speaker. She then lost a vote to serve as a deputy speaker owing to all her previous violations of parliamentary rules. Kaczyński and his PiS colleagues were completely unprepared for this. But they could hardly blame anyone: they had voted against all the other parties’ candidates (each party is granted one deputy in the Sejm presidium, though the PiS government did not adhere to this rule).

As of this writing, the seat for PiS’s deputy speaker remains vacant. The party has decided not to field any other candidates, thus ceding any influence over the Sejm’s deliberations. Moreover, something similar occurred in the Senate, where PiS’s deputy speaker candidate was also rejected.

During these proceedings, there was a symbolically poignant moment when Kaczyński tried to take the rostrum but was denied by the new speaker—not out of spite but because Hołownia actually follows the parliamentary rules of procedure. Meanwhile, out on the street, ordinary Polish citizens dismantled the barriers around parliament and the Constitutional Court. Police officers who had hitherto been subservient to PiS did not stop them.

Some might conclude that Kaczyński, who increasingly appears old and ailing, has simply become confused. But it is more likely that he has intentionally adopted a strategy of behaving outrageously to see which PiS members break ranks. Either way, the menacing strongman, now impotent, has become desperate and ridiculous.

Adding insult to injury, Kaczyński now must seek support from President Andrzej Duda, a former PiS member whom he brushed aside for years. Although Duda has shown no independence or ability to build a political base, he also knows that there will be no cushy sinecure awaiting him in the West after he leaves office. He therefore is launching his own bid for leadership on the Polish right, where his main competitor is Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

Thus, when Duda gave PiS the first attempt to form a new government, he saddled Morawiecki with the impossible task of creating a majority coalition where none exists. When his time is up after 28 days, the coalition agreement between Tusk’s Civic Platform, Hołownia’s Poland 2050, the Polish People’s Party, and The Left will take effect. If there was any remaining doubt about who had truly won the election in October, it was put to rest when Hołownia soundly defeated Witek in the speaker race.

Kaczyński and his party have not only been lying to the Polish people. They also apparently have been lying to themselves. While they have been left reeling from the return of democracy, the rest of us can take inspiration from their defeat.

The end of the road for Poland’s populists?

This wasn’t supposed to happen. With sweeping control over state financial resources and public and local media, Poland’s populist ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), had a massive structural advantage in this month’s parliamentary election. It should have won handily and continued consolidating its illiberal, anti-democratic rule.

Instead, PiS confronted a national uprising, winning just over 35% of the vote, while opposition parties won more than 54%. Poland’s democratic institutions may have been weakened during the years of PiS misrule, but its people have proven more than capable of mobilising against the threat of an entrenched authoritarianism.

Reaching almost 75%, voter turnout was the highest it has been in Poland since communism’s fall. As in 1989, there was a widespread sentiment that this election would be historic. Still, the opposition’s sweeping victory seems to have surprised its own leaders as much as PiS, whose leader, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, should now be considered politically armed and dangerous. PiS retains control of the instruments of power, including the body that certifies election results.

This, too, is reminiscent of 1989. The authorities have the state apparatus at their disposal, but no democratic mandate, whereas the opposition has a mandate, but no real power. Given PiS’s past behaviour, it remains to be seen if Poland will need its own Ukrainian-style mass protests to bring down the government—its own Maidan. After all, many PiS elites are credibly suspected of corruption and other crimes, and opposition leaders are under immense public pressure to ensure that they are held accountable.

That said, other scenarios are also possible. Kaczynski has reportedly taken the blame for PiS’s loss and is now busy trying to convince smaller parties to join PiS in forming a government. All of them immediately refused. Polish President Andrzej Duda, a PiS member, has 30 days from election day before he must convene the Sejm (the parliament’s lower house), and he is likely to use them all. He will then give PiS 14 days to try to form a government.

Only if it fails to do so will the opposition have the chance to take power. Meanwhile, files in PiS-staffed offices will be burned, hard drives will be wiped cleaned and any other evidence will be destroyed.

Knowing that Duda is loyal to him, and that the country could be heading for an economic crisis, Kaczynski may be hoping that opposition parties will succumb to internal disputes. PiS remains Poland’s strongest party, and Duda will wield a veto that requires a three-fifths parliamentary majority to overrule. Moreover, Poland will have local elections in seven months, followed by the European Parliament election next June, and then a presidential election in 2025. That gives a new coalition government plenty of opportunities to flounder, fracture or fail.

Kaczynski’s takeover of Poland’s judicial machinery during PiS’s eight years in power has left the country with two legal orders: one that is still committed to upholding the constitution, treaties and international court rulings, and another that is committed only to Kaczynski. For example, around 2,000 ‘defectively appointed’ judges loyal to PiS have been issuing rulings for years. What can be done about them and their several million judgements?

Similar questions apply to the Constitutional Court, which is currently packed with PiS cronies who were installed in an unconstitutional manner. Even if a new government finds a way to remove all these judges, new ones will have to be appointed by the president.

While this presidential duty is supposed to be merely ceremonial, Duda has abused it in the past and will surely do so again. In fact, on the day after the election results were announced, he hastily appointed 72 more judges in a show of loyalty to Kaczynski.

For now, the opposition parties are committed to addressing these thorny issues together, and some have already called for an independent ‘commission of law and justice’ to oversee investigations into wrongdoing. Unlike in 1989, Polish civil society today is strong. Organisations that have been defending ousted judges and promoting the rule of law for the past eight years are ready to spearhead the process.

Restoration of the rule of law is eagerly awaited not just by the Polish public, but also by the European Union, which has yet to decide whether to release the EU recovery funds that were allocated to Poland during the pandemic. If a new government can introduce credible reforms and restore purged judges to the bench, that may be enough to satisfy the European Commission for now. But enacting these reforms requires overcoming a presidential veto, and it remains to be seen how the new government will manage that, not to mention the challenge of fulfilling the rest of its campaign promises.

Since PiS has locked in large mandatory spending increases, future governments will have only a limited fiscal scope. Poland’s budget deficit already may be subject to enforcement of EU fiscal rules in 2024. If that happens, it will be virtually impossible to increase spending or pursue any measure that may reduce revenue.

Foreign policy should be more straightforward. Former European Council president Donald Tusk, the obvious choice to serve as prime minister, should travel first to Kyiv and Brussels, since the immediate task is to strengthen relations with Ukraine and rebuild relations with the EU. Poland’s strategic location, economic potential and demographic heft suggest that it is well equipped to help lead Europe, and with Italy under populist control and Spain preoccupied with itself, Poland can complete a power triangle with Germany and France. This arrangement could also come in handy when the French and the Germans are at odds.

First, though, the opposition must defend its election victory. That means efficiently appointing a new government, defending against foul play from PiS and offering a plan to address the immediate legal and economic issues. All Europeans have an interest in the new government’s success.

Poland’s ruling party lost the election, but will it leave?

The extraordinary victory of the democratic opposition in Poland’s election raises the spectre of a looming constitutional crisis. Like Donald Trump in the United States or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, the right-wing populist Law and Justice (PiS) party may refuse to concede.

This isn’t just doom-and-gloom speculation. After the polls closed and the result was clear, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski greeted his supporters on Sunday night by declaring, ‘We have won the parliamentary election! The third in a row!’ What followed was even more ominous: Poland, Kaczynski warned, faced ‘days of fighting, or tensions of various sort’.

A series of recent developments in Warsaw increases the risk of a seemingly unthinkable escalation in the coming days and weeks. Five days before the election, Poland’s armed forces chief of staff and his operational commander resigned for undisclosed reasons. Staunch PiS loyalists of questionable competence swiftly replaced both.

General Piotr Pytel, a respected former head of military counterintelligence, openly admits that senior military officers ‘reckon with the prospect of PiS launching a coercive scenario in the event of the lost or inconclusive election’. And sources close to PiS have reportedly discussed the idea of another election in case of a defeat, using a Polish football term that translates as both ‘overtime’ and ‘do-over’.

This has become a common gambit among today’s right-wing populists. In December 2020, Trump and his former national security adviser, retired General Michael Flynn, discussed plans to deploy the military to re-run the 2020 US presidential election. The year before, Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered a do-over of the mayoral contest in Istanbul when the opposition candidate, Ekrem Imamoglu, prevailed by a mere 15,000 votes over Erdogan’s ally. Incredibly, Imamoglu triumphed again, more decisively, as Istanbul’s angry citizens returned to the polls.

After eight years of ruthlessly concentrating power, PiS has numerous tools to trigger a similar scenario, and the singularly brutal campaign can also give PiS hope for a different outcome than in Istanbul. Kaczynski, Poland’s de facto ruler, may conclude that the opposition is exhausted after a grotesquely unequal race in which the government had almost unlimited resources at its disposal. If so, he has almost certainly miscalculated, but his misjudgement may turn out to have grave consequences for the country.

In particular, PiS’s control of subservient courts and the presidency could tempt it to try nullifying the voters’ will. The election can formally be declared invalid by a PiS-created special chamber of the Supreme Court, staffed entirely by PiS-appointed judges. In addition, the Polish constitution gives President Andrzej Duda a significant role in nominating the new prime minister and the cabinet.

Although the constitution clearly requires the president to appoint the premier favoured by a parliamentary majority, Duda has repeatedly disregarded constitutional mandates. Specifically, at the outset of his first term in 2015, Duda famously refused to receive the oath of three judges of the Constitutional Court duly elected by the parliament, thereby preventing them from taking their seats on the bench.

Duda may try to repeat this manoeuvre and illegally decline to appoint opposition leader Donald Tusk of Civic Platform as prime minister. He could then claim that the lack of a duly appointed prime minister forces him to call for a new election.

Any attempt to thwart the transfer of power will surely provoke intense social unrest. And with the armed forces now seemingly controlled by PiS loyalists, widespread protests may provide a convenient justification for declaring a national emergency. In this case, the Polish constitution mandates rescheduling an election—potentially as far as six months later. In the meantime, a caretaker government appointed by Duda would govern without any parliamentary oversight.

For the European Union, as well as NATO, such an anti-democratic turn in Warsaw is a nightmare scenario. The notion that they represent a community of values would be deeply discredited.

But that doesn’t need to happen. The shock of an EU member’s government openly refusing to cede power may, at last, force Western capitals to act. And NATO’s military leaders, who know the Polish officer corps well, can quietly remind their counterparts how dangerous a PiS nullification of the election would be for Poland’s security.

For the EU, everything should be on the table, including a long-overdue reassessment of whether harsh bilateral measures akin to the 2000 sanctions against Austria are always counterproductive. Another option, which legal scholars have started to discuss, would be for the EU Council simply to refuse to seat undemocratically appointed ministers. This would not be based on the unworkable suspension process prescribed in Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, but on a political decision rooted in Article 10, which requires all council members to be ‘democratically accountable either to their national Parliaments, or citizens’.

The best scenario for Poland and the EU would be for PiS leaders to resist their worst instincts and proceed with the orderly transfer of power. By signalling that any attempt to undermine the will of the people will cross all European and NATO red lines, Poland’s Western partners can help Duda, Poland’s military leaders and other more level-headed officials avoid a tragic mistake.

What’s behind Poland’s reparation debate?

Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February, Poland has received daily threats from Russian propagandists that it will be next. Yet despite these high stakes, Poland’s Law and Justice (PiS) party government has decided to start a fight with Germany—one of its closest allies—by demanding huge war reparations for the destruction caused by Hitler’s Third Reich.

On 1 September, the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II, PiS Chairman Jaroslaw Kaczynski presented a report that puts the sum of Poland’s wartime losses at US$1.3 trillion. While PiS has been talking about reparations since it came to power seven years ago, this is the first time that it has broached the topic with Germany. In fact, the issue is both formally and morally unambiguous—and the correct policy lies in the opposite direction.

After World War II, the Allies decided that injured parties would receive material, rather than financial, reparations. German factories would be dismantled and relocated, or work done by the Germans would benefit the aggrieved states, which were divided into an 18-country ‘western mass’ and an ‘eastern mass’ comprising the Soviet Union and Poland. The eastern mass took its share mainly from the Soviet occupation zone in eastern Germany.

Poland was to receive 15% of the eastern share, and on 16 August, 1945, the governments in Warsaw and Moscow signed an agreement to regulate the transfer of reparations. The USSR was to receive up to US$10 billion (at 1938 prices), but historians estimate that it eventually took US$3–4 billion—about a third of East Germany’s potential production. By this time, the USSR was also already dismantling and looting assets that had been set aside for Poland under the Potsdam Agreement.

The Kremlin then imposed a harsh condition on Poland: to receive its due share of German reparations, Poland would have to produce and export its coal to the Soviet Union at an extremely low price. In the event, this arrangement proved to be more costly than the reparations that were coming in. In 1957, Poland agreed to forgo collecting any additional reparations in exchange for ending the ruinous export condition. The allocation of German reparations for Poland had been a sham. Of the US$3 billion that the Soviets had collected (in the form of factories, ships, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and rolling stock), Poland received only US$225 million (7.5%).

Then, in December 1970, Poland reaffirmed its renunciation of reparations claims under a new agreement with West Germany, which recognised the Polish border on the Oder and Neisse Rivers—in what had been pre-war Germany. Without this acknowledgement of post-war borders, the very existence of the Polish state would have been called into question.

Formally speaking, then, the question of reparations is closed. And, as the Polish constitution makes clear in Article 241, ‘international agreements concluded in accordance with the previous constitutional order (including under the 1952 Constitution of the People’s Republic of Poland) are treated as ratified international agreements with prior consent expressed by law’. Citing the same documents, the German government also considers the subject closed.

To be sure, Germany does indeed owe a large historic debt to Poland. German aggression in World War II caused unprecedented destruction, including the total destruction of the capital, the erasure of innumerable Polish cultural artifacts and the deaths of six million Polish citizens (including three million who were Jewish—a fact that Kaczynski does not bother to mention). Making matters worse, the conclusion of the war forced Poland under the Soviet boot, depriving it of independence and development for the next half-century.

Anyone who visited Poland in 1989 will recall how poor, grey and ugly the country was after four decades of communism. Traces of this dismal legacy are still ubiquitous today.

On the other hand, one also must acknowledge that Poland’s economic success over the past three decades would not have been possible without Germany, which was also the most enthusiastic advocate for Poland’s accession to the European Union and NATO. Yes, many Polish banks and companies are owned by entities in Germany, which is thus where the profits go. But such arrangements gave Poles access to the capital they needed to lift their country out of ruin. These mutually beneficial exchanges have fostered a spirit of reconciliation and benevolence between the two countries.

Against this backdrop, Kaczynski’s demands for reparations have evoked withering criticism everywhere except in the PiS-controlled media. Many see yet another example of the exceptional backwardness of a man who is famous for dwelling in the past. But Kaczynski apparently believes that issuing such demands will improve PiS’s position ahead of next year’s general election. And, of course, raising the issue now is a helpful distraction from the government’s struggle against rampant inflation (now more than 16%) and sky-high energy prices.

Still, Kaczynski has let the genie out of the bottle. On 14 September, the Sejm (parliament) adopted a resolution, signed even by most opposition MPs, calling on Germany to pay compensation. There are two fundamental differences. First, there is no talk of reparations, which are formally unobtainable, but of compensation for losses. Second, the resolution was supported by the opposition, including Donald Tusk’s liberal Civic Platform and the Left, led by Adrian Zandberg, who said that ‘only a teaspoon was left of his family’s property’ after the war. As a Civic Platform MP explained, ‘A new Polish government will be formed next year to handle these matters properly.’

Kaczynski doubtless was hoping that the opposition would renounce all Polish claims to reparations. By apparently joining the bandwagon, Civic Platform can undercut his electoral strategy. But this also means that the issue has begun a life separate from and beyond what Kaczynski intended. The outcome is uncertain, but, paradoxically, the best safeguard for Germany may be Kaczynski himself, whose outrageous and legally dubious proposals for resolving such issues cannot be taken seriously.

Poland’s refugee crisis in waiting

When US President Joe Biden comes to Poland later this week, he may decide to visit the main hall of the Warsaw Central Railway Station, which is just across the street from the Marriott where American leaders usually stay. Although the hall is full of mothers with children—refugees from Ukraine, part of the largest migration crisis in post-war European history—it is surprisingly quiet. Exhausted, traumatised and frightened, few cry.

Within three weeks of Russia’s invasion, more than three million people—half of them children—had fled Ukraine, some two million of whom arrived in Poland. Almost overnight, Poland has gone from being one of Europe’s most homogeneous societies to hosting the world’s fourth-largest refugee population (after Turkey, Colombia and the United States, respectively).

The war in Ukraine has forced Poland to abandon its anti-refugee stance of recent years. In 2015, when Germany took in more than a million refugees from the Middle East, Poland refused the European Union’s request for it to accept a mere 7,000. Last year, when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko tried to funnel migrants from the Middle East over Poland’s border, the Polish government declared a state of emergency and bunkered down. A dozen people—including children—died of starvation and cold. According to opinion polls, the public sided with the government.

But the Polish government has now opened its borders to all refugees from Ukraine, including as many as 157,000 non-Ukrainians, many of them from the Middle East. Polish society has rushed to help, organising accommodation, transportation, food and psychological care on an unprecedented scale. Whereas the first wave of refugees saw danger coming and fled early, the second wave is made up of people who have experienced bombings, seen dead bodies, sustained injuries or lost loved ones. They are totally disoriented, with no resources or acquaintances in Poland.

All refugees have been permitted to stay and work in Poland for 18 months, with the possibility of receiving an extension (the EU has done the same). The government has opened the healthcare system to refugees, provided them with small start-up grants and a children’s allowance of €120 per month (the same as Poles receive), exempted them from paying for public transportation and furnished them with work IDs. More than 50,000 refugee children have already been enrolled in Polish schools.

This outpouring of aid may create the impression that Poland is fully equipped to manage the crisis. It isn’t, and the assumption that it is could prove dangerous for Poland and Europe alike. If Western governments don’t find a way to help Poland financially and logistically, they could end up confronting another nationalist backlash.

The situation is unsustainable for several reasons. The expectation that Ukrainians would fan out across wealthier Western countries was wrong. Owing to family ties, linguistic similarities and proximity to the Ukrainian border, most refugees will want to remain in Poland. Before the war, Poland was already home to approximately 1.5 million Ukrainians, most of them economic immigrants who began arriving after 2014. While these earlier arrivals were young men and women looking for work, the war refugees are 80% women and children. They will be far more difficult to integrate into the economy, and if the men who stayed behind to fight join them later, Poland’s new 10% Ukrainian minority could become permanent.

After Romania, which is also packed with Ukrainian refugees, Poland has the lowest ratio of housing space per capita in Europe (29 square metres, compared with the EU average of 40). And, due to already high inflation and the knock-on effects of sanctions (and Belarusian and Russian countersanctions), the Polish economy is heading into a period of slower growth and higher unemployment. Poles may start to attribute these problems to the refugees, even though refugees take jobs that ageing societies like Poland’s often struggle to fill.

Likewise, the welcome given to the refugees is motivated as much by Poles’ fear of Russia as by their compassion for Ukrainians. Their willingness to help could quickly turn into resentment when the costs of supporting refugees become more apparent. In countries with violent, bitter histories, constituencies that feel harmed or neglected often direct their rage at even weaker and more marginalised groups. Refugees dilute these native Poles’ own claims on Polish society’s compassion and support.

This political dynamic may be why Poland’s government has proposed a kind of ‘refugee contract’ with Polish society. In addition to disbursing 300 zloty (US$70) per person to refugees directly, the authorities will also pay caregivers who take in refugees—resulting in a system that risks objectifying the victims and inviting fraud, abuse and exploitation.

Finally, the West should remember that Poland’s leadership has campaigned on an extreme anti-refugee platform. As the country’s de facto ruler, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, said in 2015, refugees may carry diseases that are ‘not dangerous in the bodies of these people, [but] may be dangerous here’.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s government is probably quietly hoping that Russia’s invasion and Poland’s humanitarian mobilisation will lead to a reset in his country’s relations with the EU and the US. Perhaps the European Commission will drop its long-running dispute with Poland over the rule of law and unfreeze the EU funds that it has been withholding. Perhaps the ‘reforms’ that turned Poland’s courts into an arm of the ruling Law and Justice party won’t have to be repealed after all.

There are already signs that the EU and the US will come to terms with semi-authoritarian rule in Poland, accepting it as the price that must be paid for solidarity against Russia. In that case, Polish democracy will become yet another victim of the war.

Can Ukraine be saved without triggering a nuclear response?

Nations in and near Eastern Europe have long feared the sort of brutal onslaught Russia’s Vladimir Putin is visiting upon Ukraine.

That fear is heightened by the horrifying prospect that if, against the odds, they manage to bring the Russians to the point of defeat, Putin will launch a ‘battlefield’ or ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon to destroy them or their NATO allies.

That will be exercising the minds of Polish leaders conscious that their nation is a vital supply route to its beleaguered neighbour which is using weapons supplied by allies to inflict undreamed-of damage on the Russian invaders.

In 2016, I attended a military exercise in Poland involving 31,000 troops from the United States and other NATO countries along with nations that were once members of the Warsaw Pact. On a vast stretch of rolling meadow scattered with trees in northern Poland, a combined team of US Apache attack helicopters and Soviet-era Hind gunships blasted a ‘Red’ army force trapped in a valley below.

No one on the ‘Blue’ army side, or among the watching politicians and NATO officials, acknow­ledged that the ‘Red’ force that had been cut off after invading from the north represented the Russians—but that’s clearly who it was.

The exercise was driven by rising fears of Putin’s Russia and its willingness to use force to threaten, weaken and ultimately invade weaker nations on its borders. This included regular reminders from Moscow that it had a nuclear arsenal.

By 2016, Russia wasn’t ‘red’ anymore, but a succession of events in Europe had breathed new life into a Cold War most of the world thought was long dead.

In 2014, Russia’s neighbours were appalled by its forced annexation of the Crimean peninsula which had been part of Ukraine. After that success, Russia infiltrated thousands of its regular troops, the so-called ‘little green men’, into Ukraine’s Donbas region until the war there reached a stalemate.

By then, Putin’s bullyboy tactics, his threats and his unpredictability had his country’s former allies, and the rest of Europe, badly spooked. Russia said it was merely reacting to NATO’s expansion eastwards and the installation of missile defence systems across nations that once were part of the Soviet bloc. Having a protective moat of acquiescent nations had long provided Moscow with a measure of comfort.

To achieve what it wanted in Eastern Europe, Moscow engaged in a multifaceted strategy some in the West tagged ‘hybrid warfare’. That worked best in countries on Russia’s borders where there was already some political instability or ethnic tension.

Russia builds up opposition to the status quo, ideally by working with members of an ethnic Russian minority, triggering demonstrations and targeting people such as journalists who raise the alarm to put them out of work by damaging their reputations and swamping their email systems to shut them down.

When the situation is destabilised, regular Russian troops can be sent to train and stiffen violent opposition groups and destabilise, disorientate and weaken the country. The next step is to make the opponent look like the aggressor so there’s an excuse to send in forces who look as if they are defending legitimate interests.

London’s Chatham House says this type of hybrid warfare is not new or substantially different from past Russian and Soviet doctrine. It’s just the Russian way of achieving its policy objectives and waging war using a range of weapons, some of them non-military.

The 2016 Exercise Anakonda led by Poland was designed to demonstrate to Moscow that the US and Western and central European nations were willing to come to the aid of one-time Russian satellite nations monstered by the Kremlin.

With them were forces from non-NATO nations Sweden and Finland. Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and ­Estonia, on the ­alliance’s vulnerable eastern flank, were former members of the Warsaw Pact that joined NATO after the collapse of the ­Soviet Union. All of these nations are now watching events in Ukraine with horror and disbelief. But they are also playing a part in supporting the Ukrainian government and forces with weapons to use in their defence. These newer NATO members have turned out to have influential voices in shaping the re-energised NATO we are starting to see.

Putin’s use of language is as chilling as his approach to nuclear weapons and is also an echo of past Russian doctrine and policy. As part of a ‘de-escalation strategy’ in the event of a conflict, Russian military chiefs could order the use of a relatively small and low-yield nuclear bomb fired by artillery or launched on a missile.

The intention would be to leave the NATO nations that have nuclear weapons—the US, Britain and France—with the unspeakable choice of using a similar bomb against Russian forces and embarking on a nuclear war or pulling back their forces to avoid possible annihilation.

Polish officials said in 2016 that even if Russia didn’t carry out such a threat, leaving the very possibility dangling was a weapon in its own right designed to create fear and uncertainty among allied ­nations and weaken their resolve to act.

Poland’s then defence minister, Antoni Macierewicz, said that he was less worried about the threat from Russia because his nation was assured of support from other NATO countries. Addressing a future that looked much like the current Russian war against Ukraine, Macierewicz told me that if a neighbour such as Ukraine were threatened by Russia, Poland would keep its promise to help ‘restore its territorial integrity’.

At the time, concerns focused on the area known as the Suwalki Gap along ­Poland’s border with Lithuania. This is the 100-kilometre-long strip of land between the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad and close Russian ally Belarus. Polish military leaders feared that if NATO forces advanced into Lithuania through that gap to help one of the Baltic nations, Russia could set off a nuclear blast to stop or discourage the allied advance.

As Russia continues to attack Ukraine’s cities with bombs, shells and missiles, its long military convoy on the road to Kyiv would make an enticing target for allied air forces.

Putin has shown off his army in action and, apart from what it’s done to Ukraine’s cities, NATO commanders must be wondering why they feared the Soviet and Russian conventional forces for seven decades—although those forces have demonstrated their traditional willingness to unleash massive firepower on ‘soft’ targets.

Some of the Russian troops have been so lacking in education, training or any sense of self-preservation that they used a tank to fire on a Ukrainian nuclear power plant, setting sections of it on fire.

With poor-quality tyres unable to deal with boggy ground, the formidable looking Russian troop transports and rocket launchers have had trouble crossing terrain that could be traversed by enthusiasts from any serious four-wheel-drive club.

That appears to be forcing the attackers to line up their vehicles side by side and bumper to bumper on whatever tarseal is available.

In a war against any peer adversary, the Russian force locked onto that road to Kyiv would long ago have been a smouldering ruin.

The restraint of NATO military planners is explained by their fear that too much military success might invite a nuclear response. That restraint on NATO’s part also demonstrates why it never posed any sort of existential threat to Russia.

Polish democracy in the crosshairs

There has been nothing like it before in Poland. On 10 February, newspapers and magazines suspended publication, news websites went dark, and dozens of radio and television stations ceased broadcasting. Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the abolition of censorship and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Poland’s civil society is again defending its hard-won democracy from a state determined to do away with it.

The policies that Poland’s independent media outlets are now protesting have made them as vulnerable as their counterparts in Russia and Hungary. In fact, as Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, Poland’s de facto ruler, has publicly admitted, the template for his regime is Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Hungary. So, to understand the Polish media’s protest of silence, the Hungarian experience is worth recalling.

After returning to power in 2010, Orban, determined to consolidate what he called an ‘illiberal democracy’, relied on the ‘salami tactics’ invented by Matyas Rakosi, the so-called Hungarian Stalin, to establish communist rule after World War II. In the fight against the ‘class enemy’, Rakosi’s communists methodically diminished free institutions, slice by slice, until nothing but the casing remained. Orban adapted these tactics for the 21st century, and Kaczynski has followed him.

The first slice, then and now, was the public media, which has been turned into a mouthpiece of Kaczynski’s ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party. Poland’s official news outlets now peddle a steady stream of lies and slander, reminiscent of master propagandists like Joseph Goebbels and Andrei Zhdanov. The constitutional tribunal, the prosecutor’s office and cultural institutions were next to be politicised and subordinated to the ruling party. Bit by bit, a democratic state ruled by law was transformed into an authoritarian Potemkin village.

Following the lead of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Orban, the PiS is no longer satisfied with control of public media and the fealty of pro-government websites and newspapers, and is turning its attention to strangling independent news outlets. Falsifying history and concealing corruption scandals are not enough. The string of lawsuits—sometimes by the government and sometimes by individuals or groups at the government’s behest—against critics of the government is not enough. All media organisations that are not under the PiS regime’s control, and that do not serve its interests, must be destroyed.

Viewed against this background, the regime’s planned advertising tax, which triggered the current round of media protests, is yet another slice of the salami. The tax is not just a heavy, discriminatory financial burden, but also a weapon to stifle criticism and free speech.

The survival of most independent news outlets depends on advertising revenues, which have already plummeted in a pandemic-ravaged economy. Depriving these outlets of even more income will force them to lay off journalists and cut budgets for core tasks, like fact-checking government statements and conducting investigations of official wrongdoing. To add insult to injury, the revenue from the advertising tax is to be transferred to the pro-government media.

The government’s claim that the tax applies primarily to America’s tech giants, which avoid paying levies on their turnover in Europe, is an obvious lie. The PiS government, utterly servile to former US president Donald Trump, actually declined to tax the tycoons of Silicon Valley. Moreover, collection of such a tax would have to be agreed by many countries, particularly those in the European Union. Poland has no chance of being effective against the US tech giants without the EU, from which the PiS government is estranged.

The PiS regime’s attack on the economic underpinnings of free media is no less an assault on democracy than the 6 January storming of the US Capitol by Trump supporters. Behind both are lies, violent rhetoric and the perversion of politics and public life. The PiS government, too, has demonstrated its contempt for the rule of law and human rights, to say nothing of independent media. The evidence is a plethora of government scandals, widespread corruption (including in the fight against the pandemic), the transformation of school curricula into nationalist kitsch, and the use of the police as a tool and as bodyguards of the PiS regime.

At the root of such policies—wherever they are adopted—is not only fear of freedom and truth, but also the desire to instill such fears in our societies. All Polish courts are to be as controlled as those in Moscow, which can try, convict and sentence the Kremlin’s opponents in record time, as the recent case of Alexei Navalny demonstrated. All Polish media are supposed to speak with one voice, like those praising Putin or Orban.

A colleague of mine, an insightful observer of contemporary politics, told me: ‘As an analyst, I will tell you that they, the enemies of freedom, could win. As a citizen, I will ask you to promise me that you will do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.’

I replied: ‘I promise.’

Will women defeat Poland’s illiberal regime?

Authoritarian political leaders in neighbouring Poland and Belarus have tested the limits of public tolerance in recent months. In both countries, they have provoked mass demonstrations. And in both cases, women have been in the front ranks of popular opposition.

In a rigged election on 9 August, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko gave himself 80% of the vote when a more plausible 55% would have sufficed. Poles followed the events in Belarus closely and with admiration, hoping for similar mass opposition to the increasingly despotic Law and Justice (PiS) government.

Then, on 22 October, with Covid-19 infections rising exponentially, Poland’s de facto ruler, PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski, effectively dared Polish citizens to take to the streets. Having stacked the country’s constitutional tribunal with PiS lackeys, Kaczynski ordered the court to issue a ruling all but banning abortion.

For the past 27 years, Poland’s already restrictive abortion law allowed a woman to terminate a pregnancy only when her life was at risk, the pregnancy resulted from incest or rape or the foetus was damaged. The new ruling removes the last exception, meaning that women will be forced to bear children who have little or no chance of survival.

The subsequent mass protests—which have occurred both in large cities and small towns and villages—are unlike anything seen in Poland since PiS came to power in 2015. Some 100,000 people marched in Warsaw, and more than 500,000 nationwide. And, as in Belarus, women played the leading role.

That is no accident. In Poland, organisers have created a consultative council—a direct reference to the Belarusian opposition’s coordination council, and women protest leaders have been exchanging strategies with their counterparts across the border. One lesson from Belarus is that regular organised action is crucial, so Poles have committed to blocking major intersections throughout the country every Monday.

Belarus’s experience has also shown that people will risk their health to protest against authoritarian power grabs, especially given the authorities’ failure to manage the pandemic, which is another major source of popular discontent. Poland’s infection rate is now among the highest in the world, suggesting that the timing of Kaczynski’s decision to impose a highly controversial policy change may have been intended to distract attention from the PiS government’s pandemic-related failures.

In Poland’s most recent parliamentary elections, the extreme nationalist party Konfederacja won 11 seats in the Sejm (the lower house of parliament). Kaczynski perceives this as a personal defeat, because he has always sought to be at the Polish parliament’s right-most extreme. Konfederacja is growing in strength, which is mobilising the right-wing faction within Kaczynski’s camp associated with Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro. Without Ziobro’s 18 deputies, Kaczynski does not have a parliamentary majority.

Ziobro is also competing directly with Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki to position himself as Kaczynski’s eventual successor. When Kaczynski came in from the sidelines to become deputy prime minister in the current government in September, it was so that he could keep closer tabs on Ziobro, whom he hopes to reconcile with Morawiecki. Kaczynski’s sharp ideological shifts should thus be understood as part of a broader attempt to reclaim control over the far right.

In a special address responding to the protests, Kaczynski called on PiS members to fight those standing up for women’s rights. ‘In particular, we must defend Polish churches’, he declared.

We must defend them at any cost. I call on all members of PiS and all those who support us to take part in the defence of the church. … Now is a time when we must say ‘no’ to everything that can destroy us. Everything depends on us. It depends on the state and its apparatus, but above all on us, on our determination, on our courage. Let’s defend Poland!

Taking their cues from Kaczynski, far-right organisations are now organising militias to attack women during demonstrations. After one hooligan with a criminal record assaulted a Gazeta Wyborcza journalist, Ziobro stepped in to prevent the local prosecutor’s office from arresting the assailant. Charges were, however, brought against a 14-year-old girl arrested during the protests. As Michal Woś, a deputy justice minister, explained, the authorities are directly threatening the organisers: ‘Prosecutors received guidelines to treat all organisers of illegal demonstrations as criminals, and appropriate charges are to be brought against them, entailing up to eight years in prison.’

Both sides have learned from Belarus’s experience. The Polish government has deployed hundreds of police and military personnel to use tear gas on women protesting in front of Kaczynski’s house. But not all uniformed personnel are willing to brutalise demonstrators. Police Inspector General Jaroslaw Szymczak, for example, has threatened to resign. And in a recent open letter, 210 retired military, police and security service generals warned that the abortion decision ‘has caused public opposition and mass street protests. Further escalation, incitement and irresponsible behaviour by politicians will lead to tragic and irreversible consequences.’

As matters stand, it appears that Kaczynski has blundered badly. In a recent poll, 73% of respondents said they are against the tribunal’s ruling (including 60% who are strongly opposed). Even the PiS base is divided, with 37% supporting the judgment and 36% opposing it. As a result, PiS’s support overall has fallen sharply for the first time since it came to power. In a Kantar poll published on 28 October, the party had just 26% support, compared to 24% for Civic Coalition (an alliance between Civic Platform and Modern). All told, PiS and its allies have just half the support of parties opposed to PiS.

As a result, there is growing disappointment with Kaczynski within PiS. While there still is no alternative leader, and the next scheduled general election is not until 2023, infighting within the ruling camp could eventually lead to an early vote, as happened with the first PiS government in 2007. Like Lukashenko, Kaczynski clearly overplayed his hand. And, as in Belarus, women have been the first to smack it away.