Poland: Deterrence, Patriotism and the Missile Question

By Tracy Dove, Ph.D
Editor, The Russia News Service

February 2, 2008

In an unusual game of air defense poker, Polish negotiators were a bit punch drunk at how easily the Americans gave in to new demands and threw some more chips into the missile bargain. After satisfying discussions with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice this week, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski left Washington with a sack of magic beans in his fist, convinced that they would grow into a state of the art air defense system, and that the great Atlantic ocean would shrink to pond-size the way it was back when the Kaczinski twins were the kings of Poland. The new Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, is expected to make his first pilgrimage to the White House this March, and it is hoped that the two countries will cap the visit by inking the controversial deal for stationing US missiles in Poland. Naturally there is still considerable mistrust in Poland- after all, they have been abandoned more than once by great powers- but the Poles seem convinced that that won't happen this time with the Americans. They believe the Bush administration rhetoric that the missiles are intended to intercept rogue missiles only- of which there are none at the moment- but most armchair strategists in the northern hemisphere can read between the lines and know that the Bush administration intends for this installation to foil Russia. What does this mean for Poland?

Historically, much of the same. While Poland has been partitioned, shifted, fought over, laughed at and finally forgotten at critical times in history, the country found itself especially sandwiched during the Cold War, when the US and USSR considered the country a giant battlefield between two forces that couldn't agree over property rights. Let's turn the pages back to the 1980's, when the Soviet nomenklatura had bankrupted the Soviet bloc and disco music had set the Americans back by decades. The Reagan administration arrived just in time to watch détente deteriorate, and the military industrial complex took front seat in US diplomacy. But regarding the Cold War in Europe, misperceptions plagued the military planning on both sides- and in each case it had to do with fighting over Polish territory.

We now know that the Soviet Union was not at all interested in taking on NATO forces at anytime and did not harbor serious plans for a first strike on Western Europe. The war in Afghanistan and the million+ Soviet soldiers on the Chinese border prevented them from even thinking about it- and it is thanks to this shortage that the aging Politburo decided against militarily occupying Poland for its Solidarnosc antics up in Gdansk during the early 1980's. What they did do was present a Potemkin-like structure of Soviet military bases throughout Poland to convince NATO that if they decided for a first strike, it would be curtains for the free world. And for a time, it fooled the Americans.

Paranoia wasn't unique to the politics of the Soviet Union; NATO, too, lived in an ethereal world of constant vigil in the 1980's- the listening posts and reconnaissance flights around Berlin expected the Cossacks to cross the Elbe at any given moment. Their strategy- knowing that NATO troops were hopelessly outnumbered- was to deter a Soviet first attack on Western Europe by having a technological superiority. Never did they consider a conventional weapons first strike, nor could they have. At best, counter-attacks were to be concentrated on the FOFA line, or Follow-on Forces Attack, which ran along the border of the Warsaw Pact countries. These thrusts into enemy territory were designed only to win back lost territory. It was common deterrence policy, and for a time, it worked.

What was remarkable about those crazy 1980's was that both sides expected the other to strike first. The Soviet planners were armed with their ideology, which taught them that it was inevitable that war between the two worlds would come, so they had to have a plan for that eventuality: if NATO attacked the East with conventional forces, then they would respond with a nuclear attack on American territory. And while the Soviet missiles were on their wobbly way toward Washington the Warsaw Pact forces- which hardly knew each other- would advance west, through Poland, and be on the Atlantic within weeks. The Soviets claimed that the impetus for such thought came about once the Americans had stationed their Pershing missiles in Germany, altering the balance and changing the rules of the game completely.

And it was Poland those Pershings were aimed at, among other Eastern European countries. Consequently, the Soviets countered this with plans of their own to station SS-22 tactical warheads in Poland- in the name of defending the Warsaw Pact. For the Clausewitzian strategist, this made Poland a nuclear fry zone no matter who started the conflict. There is an interesting memoir of a Polish Colonel who spied for the United States through the 1980's precisely because his nation was- once again- predestined to be a battlefield. The book, A Secret Life, by Benjamin Weiser, tells the story of Ryszard Kuklinski whose aim was to prevent Soviet forces from gaining the upper hand in a war, and he pursued it by turning documents over to the CIA over a period of 12 years. A Polish patriot? Some say yes, others in Poland have screamed no, but the debate about what Poland has meant through history has never changed much.

If Poland does not want to become a target again, Prime Minister Tusk will have to carefully balance his discussions between Russia and the US- as well as watch his cards. History has taught Poland that waiting around for assistance has never helped, but taking sides hasn't worked out much better, either.

Tracy Dove, editor of The Russia News Service, is a Professor of History and Dean of Summer Programs for the Lessing Institute. He also teaches history at the Anglo-American College in Prague.

See all previous articles by Tracy Dove here.