Polska has not yet perished

Poland and America have reached an impasse in bilateral negotiations on the deployment of global missile defense missiles on Polish territory. While champagne is being uncorked in Moscow and prayers of thanks are offered in Tehran, the geostrategic paths of Poland and the United States are diverging. This is an important development and should not be underestimated.

Tehran, meanwhile, tested 9 ballistic missiles, including Shihab-3, capable of delivering a warhead to Tel Aviv or cities in southern Europe, as the mullahs announced. Iran is working to produce even longer-range ballistic missiles. In a few years, the Islamic Republic's missile arsenal will be able to cover all of Europe, including Russia and possibly the United States.

But the deployment of a missile defense battery in Poland is on the verge of failure due to diverging interests on different sides of the Atlantic. Now only strong diplomatic efforts from Warsaw and Washington can save the deal, as well as the relationship between the two countries.

Everything could have been different. During Bush's second term, the US wanted to strengthen its security relationship with Europe by deploying missile defense systems there, while Poland wanted to become Washington's preferred NATO partner. Warsaw needed to modernize its military and was poised to become a cornerstone of the US and NATO force deployment, bolstering its defense position against Poland's traditional rival Russia.

This may have happened during the era of the Kaczynski brothers and Don Rumsfeld, when the Pentagon aggressively promoted policies to transform the US military, which included missile defense. Now, different foreign policy interests in the United States and Poland make it difficult to achieve consensus between the two countries.

The era of the Bush-Cheney tandem in power is ending, and this is usually not the best period for serious breakthroughs in the field of foreign policy. In Bucharest, America's European allies seriously disappointed George W. Bush when they opposed plans for Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO. The prospects for the much-desired peace in the Middle East between Israel and Abu Mazen's Palestinian Authority are as dim as ever. Pakistan is becoming an increasingly uncomfortable ally for the United States. And now Bush received another diplomatic “slap in the face” from Warsaw.

The White House, Condoleezza Rice at the head of the US State Department and Robert Gates at the Pentagon have outlined their foreign policy priorities: Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and the Arab-Israeli conflict. Missile defense is receding into the background.

While many believe that the deployment of the missiles failed because Poland demanded too much for it, the reality is not so. Prime Minister Donald Tusk is right: it’s not about the money, or even the Patriot missiles or THAAD missile defense systems that Poland requested from the Pentagon as a “package deal” - and which Washington is not ready to give to Warsaw.

The Polish leadership has decided that relations with Europe are more valuable to it than relations with the outgoing Bush administration. The European Union, which disapproves of the growth of US military power, including missile defense, pays Poland billions of dollars every year in subsidies. Prime Minister Tusk, after the conflicts of the Kaczynski era, is restoring relations with Berlin and Paris, which do not like the missile plans. According to senior sources in Warsaw, the career ambitions of Polish leaders may also have played a role in developing the current government's adamant stance towards the deal.
What will happen now? The Bush administration can sweeten the pill by providing Poland with at least some of the equipment that the Tusk government has asked for. But it will not be able to provide Poland with billions of dollars in military aid, as was the case with Pakistan and Egypt, as Foreign Minister Bogdan Klich spoke about.

First, it would be a disgrace to compare Poland with Pakistan and Egypt, where per capita incomes are among the lowest on the planet and illiteracy rates among the highest. Poland would like to compete with Italy and maybe even Great Britain for the place of a key European ally of the United States.

Secondly, Egypt and Pakistan are anchor countries in the most unstable regions of the world, the Middle East, Central Asia and the Indian Peninsula. Pakistan fights al-Qaeda on its soil and is a springboard for the US and NATO to wage war in Afghanistan.

Thirdly, the United States has a mountain of debt, and its efforts are too scattered around the world. The US foreign debt is $7 trillion, and domestic debt, including mortgages and private sector lending, is a staggering $35 trillion—almost 300% of GDP. The United States would be willing to supply Poland with modern weapons systems and train the military how to use them, but it would not pay for it.

Threats from Russia could intimidate Poland into not agreeing to the deployment of a missile defense battery, but if it does not compromise, Lithuania and Croatia could deploy missile systems on their territory.

If Warsaw is still serious about the issue of deploying missile defense systems on its territory and wants to gain access to American military know-how, a compromise can be found during the remaining term of the Bush administration. However, there is less and less time left for this.

If a deal is not concluded before the November US presidential elections, it is difficult to predict what will happen next. If Barack Obama wins, then the missile defense system may be put to rest. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Obama's foreign policy mentor and former national security adviser to Jimmy Carter, said the proposed missile defense system was unworkable and rejected by the Europeans, and that there was no threat from Iran.

On the other hand, if John McCain wins, the missile defense initiative will most likely survive and his administration may knock on the Poles' door in 2009.

It is true that countries do not have permanent friends, but only permanent interests, but sometimes it seemed that the United States and Poland were the happy exception to this rule. However, Warsaw should remember that geography remains unchanged and five hundred years of Russian-Polish relations will not disappear overnight.

Many Poles today are proud of the self-confidence their country has gained and the fact that Poland can say “I won’t allow it” even to America. And in Washington, those who remember the Solidarity movement and the Cold War are wondering whether friendship with Poland can be maintained.

The post-Cold War world is becoming a thing of the past. Welcome to the twenty-first century.

Ariel Cohen, Ph . D. , leading expert of the Heritage Foundation