Central Europe map
Posted on 02/27/2006 10:55:12 AM PST by lizol
The Visegrad Group - Polish Geopolitical Axis
Simon Araloff, AIA European section
Fifteen years ago the "Visegrad Group" (or V4) association was perceived by its founders to be a completely natural necessity for that period. It was a natural reaction to the political and economic vacuum formed in the central part of Europe after the collapse of the Council of Economic Mutual Assistance and the Warsaw Treaty Organization. Also it was a completely necessary tool for a dialogue with NATO and the EU. The Soviet giant collapsed on the east, Germany was uniting in the West. And Berlin with Moscow under Gorbachev, as under Yeltsin, carried on an active dialogue, restoring what would become a decade later under Putin and Schroeder, a powerful geopolitical axis. In this situation Poland, which was not invited to this association, and frankly was not really rushing to fraternize with the Germans and Russians, was a unique state suited for a role at the center of the creation of a completely different axis - the "north - south" axis, from Estonia in the north to Croatia and Slovenia in the south. The "Visegrad Group" was supposed to become the core of this new geopolitical axis around which Warsaw intended to build an alternative center of gravity on the European continent.
The Self-affirmation Problems
However, when V4 already existed on paper, Warsaw, applying for the role of a new unifier of Central Europe, had to face two difficulties of a conceptual character at once. The first was the necessity of defining the geographical borders of the Central European region, which should be united under the Polish aegis. The second was the necessity of changing the traditional perception of Poland both by its neighbors in the region, and potential partners in the West. At the beginning of the Visegrad process they and others did not perceive the Poles seriously as possible future regional leaders. Conceptual disagreements concerning the frontiers of Central Europe existed even during the Hapsburg period. And up to this day, they have not lost their acuteness. The leaders of the "Visegrad Group" countries had to decide whether they wished for revival of a “narrow" medieval union of Poland, Hungary, Czechia and Slovakia, or if “Central Europe” meant also such former possessions of the Austro-Hungarian empire as those populated by ethnic Hungarians, Transylvania and Banat (modern Romania), Bukovina (modern Romania and Ukraine) or Croatia? It was necessary to take into account that all these potential parts of the future geopolitical union had no experience of a similar strategic cooperation in the past. Moreover - their mutual relations were far from being always radiant, as for example: Hungary and Czechoslovakia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Besides, there was also a problem of defining Poland’s place on the map of the region. The matter was that, by applying for regional leadership, this state, nevertheless, was not perceived by all of its potential partners as Central European. And actually, in a strictly geographical sense Poland cannot be called a Central European state. The northern part of Polish territory belongs to the Baltic region, whereas the eastern areas adjoining Belarus and Ukraine, historically, culturally and economically, undoubtedly belong to Eastern Europe. By the way, for this reason, after joining NATO in the spring of 1999, Poland was added to the Northern Wing of NATO, which concentrated its activity on the region of the Baltic Sea, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Thus, strictly following definitions of a geographical science, Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary had to reject the claims of the Poles for regional leadership. Also, by virtue of historical, cultural and economic reasons, association with Austria and Slovenia would be more natural, more reasonable. Voices supporting this approach were repeatedly sounded at the beginning of the nineties in Prague, Budapest and Bratislava. However, the scornful attitude to the potential regional leadership of the Poles represented a much bigger problem for Warsaw. For a long time in the attitude of the leadership of NATO and the EU towards Poland an opinion prevailed expressed by the American political scientist of Polish origin, Zbigniew Brzezinski, according to whom this country was too weak to become a geo-strategic player and its only chance of future development was in unconditional integration into Western Europe. Such an attitude of the West was very attentively perceived by the Czechs, Slovaks and Hungarians as having an extremely adverse effect on Warsaw’s ability to fulfill its geopolitical ambitions.
The Ghost of the Polish Commonwealth
Even the politicians of neighboring countries, especially Czechia and Hungary, who accepted theoretically the opportunity of Poland’s leadership, expressed fears that the weak Polish economy would lead to hampering of the integration processes, instead of accelerating them, and, finally, would bring stagnation to the whole region. Skeptics remembered the sad historical example of the Polish Commonwealth, the state, established in the 16th century by the merging of the Polish kingdom and the Lithuanian Grand Duchy (1569-1795). Similarly to Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary at the end of 20-th century, Lithuania of the 16-th century aspired for a union with a strong at that time Poland seeking protection from the imperial encroachments of Moscow. However, at the end, the Lublin Union (1569) turned out to be a trap for the Lithuanians. The enormous economic recession, which had begun in Poland, quickly spread to Lithuanian territory. As a result, even a hundred years after the disappearance of the Polish Commonwealth, at the end of the 19th century, Lithuania remained the poorest province of the Baltic region. It lacked advanced industry and effective commercial agriculture; all of which was brought by German land owners to neighboring Latvia and Estonia.
At the end of 20th century the fears of the countries of Central Europe over the possibility of Poland rolling down to an economic crisis, as well as the temptation to apply for assistance to Germany, also were substantially great. For this reason Hungary constantly aspired to emphasize the cultural - educational aspect of the "Visegrad process". Such a vision of the situation was considerably justified as the economic situation in Poland was much worse, which caused serious censures from the EU leadership, rather than in Czechia and Hungary, or in the Baltics.
The Victory of the Polish Spirit
But, nevertheless, finally, the spirit of the Poles prevailed in the realization of the Visegrad program. With all their behavior during the last one and a half decades they proved the incorrectness of their American fellow tribesman, Brzezinski. In his article "Euroatlanticka solidarita ", published in May 1999 in the Czech edition of Mezinarodni Politika, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Poland, Bronislaw Geremek, wrote the following: "Poland is not a big country, but it is not a small one… As a member of two big structures - European and Euro-Atlantic - Poland can play the role of the country responsible for the Central European region… Poland is a role model for the region, today even more than ever it is an example of a successful transformation due to which there was a refusal of political relations based on dependence on the Soviet Union, and the introduction into a world in which freedom means an opportunity to achieve economic success and national independence”. Poland, nurturing its memories of former greatness and a thirst for revenge for many historical iniquities, is showing strong geopolitical ambitions, which today all its Central European neighbors totally lack... It initially thought of itself as the soul of Central Europe and achieved the status of the leader of this region not only due to its position on the map of the continent, the size of its population or its economic potential. Its high prestige in the region is derived, first of all, from precisely formulated and put into practice purposes and tasks of foreign policy, having regional and continental character. As against its partners in the “Visegrad Group”, Warsaw constantly, under every government, produces geopolitical ideas and decisions for problems within the framework of the EU and NATO, being an active conductor of Euro-Atlantisist ideas. This position results not only, and not so much, from the pragmatism of the Poles, but from their confident, centuries-old orientation toward western civilization. In this sense the present Polish leadership, which came to power at the end of 2005, is not an exception. Its recent initiative of "collective energy security of Europe” testifies to that.
Central Europe map
The Spirit of the Polish People.
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