The present tensions between Washington DC and Warsaw over the Polish constitutional crisis are a function of the unfortunate policies of both governments regarding plans to increase American military presence in Poland. If Warsaw did not insist on this increase, the United States would have little interest in Poland’s internal political partisanship. If Washington DC did not intend to ratify this increase at the July NATO summit that is to be held in Warsaw then Poland would not be under intense pressure to stabilize its’ domestic politics in order to avoid embarrassing American efforts to “defend democracy” in a country now universally accused by major EU powers of violating democratic principles. If ever there was a practical example of the validity of President George Washington’s warnings given in his farewell address, it is the current decline in Polish-American relations owed principally to the Polish insistence that America take responsibility for Polish security while staying out of Polish affairs.
In his recent op-ed for the New York Times, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski demonstrated his utter ignorance of George Washington’s foreign policy thought when he argued that Americans were obligated to risk war with Russia because the Polish insurgent, Tadeusz Kościuszko, fought and died with General George Washington during the American revolution. Minister Waszczykowski quoted the Polish motto “for your freedom and ours” which stands behind Poland’s persistent foreign policy of engaging in foreign wars and foreign squabbles in defense of abstract notions of foreign liberty while always putting Polish liberty second. This foreign policy has hurt Poland and is antithetical to the political philosophy of President George Washington, who, while no doubt happy to accept Kościuszko’s aid, was loathe to emulate his the failed tenants of Kościuszko’s misguided politics which had led Poland to ruin in XVIII century Europe.
A further consideration of American political history will also help elucidate the present constitutional crisis in Poland. Everyone remotely familiar with American history recognizes the importance of Madison vs Marbury in setting the foundations for a practical working relation between the Supreme Court and other branches of American government. Students of American history cannot fail to notice that the current Polish supreme court crisis began as a mirror image of Marbury vs. Madison when the newly elected President of Poland, Mr. Andrzej Duda, refused to swear in a handful of Judges to the Polish Constitutional Tribunal appointed by the previous outgoing parliament. While Senator John McCain has blasted off a letter about how disturbed he is with this development, his Republican colleague, Senator Ted Cruz, has made clear during Town Hall meetings during the 2016 Presidential campaign that never in the course of the last 80 years has a sitting US President tried to fill a vacancy in the Supreme Court during an election year, for fear of politicizing the nomination process in the Senate. Poland’s new President felt that the last minute judicial appointments by a lame-duck parliament that was down in the polls was illegitimate, and there is nothing in the Polish constitution which requires him to swear in Judges ratified by parliament.
Sadly for Poland, things only became worse from then on. Emulating President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the Polish President next attempted to pack the Constitutional Tribunal with his preferred appointments. While Poland’s President is as yet far from emulating President Abraham Lincoln who fought a bloody civil war to over-turn a Supreme Court decision (Dredd Scott), there is a real Constitutional Crisis in Poland at this moment and a very real fear that Poland’s attempt to sustain a Republic based on the rule of law will not weather this storm. Be that as it may, all of this would no doubt be an interesting curiosity for American observers of Polish politics if not for the fact that Poland expects Americans to put their sons and daughters in harm’s way and provoke Russia into a potential war. Under the circumstances, if American men and women are going to be asked to “risk their lives for democracy” – it is not surprising that Washington DC would like to make sure that Poland is indeed a democracy and not a banana republic ruled by an extra-constitutional authoritarian who manipulates political affairs from a small room near the Marriot hotel in Warsaw, as the Financial Times reported recently.
This brings us to the leader of the ruling Law & Justice Party, Mr. Jarosław Kaczyński. Those who have long studied Polish politics from up close are not surprised that Mr. Kaczyński is the kind of man who would be capable of winning the war for Poland only to put his entire army on the line in a marginal battle over the Constitutional Tribunal. Mr. Kaczyński’s temperament is that of all classic Polish insurgents, including those who fought in the Warsaw Uprising – a battle which had no strategic impact on World War II, but which did leave Warsaw in ruins and led to the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles. Mr. Kaczyński, whose party won the Presidency and a parliamentary majority, has decided that instead of systematically implementing the vast array of legal, economic and political reforms promised during his campaign and now within his reach, he will risk his government on a battle to the death with the Constitutional Tribunal.
Battles to the death need not be fatal, so long as one has the proper support. Polish conservatives who held out hope that Mr. Kaczyński’s government would be similar to Mr. Orban’s are now disappointed. Mr. Orban took a radical course in opposing the European mainstream, but he did not go it alone. He leveraged what he knew would be attacks from the West by mending ties with President Putin in the East. He has also been clever insofar as his Fidesz party is in coalition with the largest center-right European Parliament faction. He changed the constitution of his country legally and – most importantly of all – he extended his reforms over a long period of time, winning a smashing second election victory in the process – and for better or worse, the European Union has accepted that he is here to stay. While tensions remain, the EU and Hungary have learned to co-exist.
Mr. Kaczyński, by contrast, has not done what is necessary to sustain his political ambitions – and he is fast running out of time to do so. Rather than invite Prime Minister Orban (a natural ally) to an official state dinner in Warsaw, and give the Hungarian leader full military and political honors, Mr. Kaczyński invited him to a secluded location for a secret talk. Rather than organize an international conference in Warsaw bringing together the various political leaders of newly elected protest party governments throughout Europe (whether of the left or right) in order to display before the world the unity and solidarity of the peoples of Eastern Europe in taking back their democracies, he has not engaged in any meaningful diplomacy with anyone.
Rather than reach out to Russia, which has made several gestures of friendship to the new Law & Justice government, he snubbed the Russian Minister of Culture who paid a visit to Poland, and a Polish television reporter accused the Russian Minister of defending a Russian war hero who “murdered” her grandfather. In short: Mr. Kaczyński has alienated Brussels, Berlin and now Washington DC while worsening the already strained relations with Moscow, Budapest and other Eastern European countries. The fact that Hungary has promised, due to its age old friendship with Poland, not to support any sanctions against Poland in the EU is commendable, but the practical effect is no different than the Hungarian promise not to allow their German ally to enter Poland through the Hungarian border in 1939. In short: Mr. Kaczyński has decided Poland will go it alone – totally alone.
A very large part of the problem with Mr. Kaczyński, whose party only won the election by putting him aside and pretending to offer up a new generation of moderate conservative leaders, is that he is completely out of touch with reality – and yet he is also completely in control of his government, which is now out of control. Mr. Kaczyński believes that the Western-sponsored liberal “Committee for Defense of Democracy” which stages Maidan style protests in the streets of Warsaw is in fact controlled by Vladimir Putin. Mr. Kaczyński’s Defense Minister, Antoni Macierewicz, wrote a forward to a book arguing that the now deceased elder Catholic Conservative statesman of Poland, Marshal Wiesław Chranowski, who fought in World War II and was tortured by the Communist security services, was actually a secret Communist spy. Mr. Kaczyński’s penchant for emulating Polish dicator Marshal Józef Piłsudzki, who ruled with an iron-fist without occupying any actual legal office, is an unfortunate Polish habit which is tearing the country apart. Recently, Poland’s Prime Minister, Beata Szydło, was threatened with being prosecuted in the State Tribunal by the opposition party which demands that she follow the rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal and by her own Minister of Justice – a Kaczyński loyalist – who demands that she not follow the rulings of the Constitutional Tribunal. The Prime Minister, who is merely no more than a Temp Worker under contract from Mr. Kaczyński, is legally responsible for her actions, but is not sovereign in any of her decisions. This is a recipe for disaster.
This disaster would, like the Polish civil war of 1926, be a wholly Polish affair if not for the unfortunate fact that Poland has spent the last two years convincing the West that Russia poses an existential threat to the world and is about to launch an all-out war against Polish democracy. Even now, Mr. Kaczyński’s supporters argue that Russia is in fact waging a form of hybrid warfare against Poland – and part of this hybrid warfare is turning American journalists and the White House against Warsaw. The absurdity of this kind of thinking, whereby American criticism of Warsaw is a function of Vladimir Putin’s influence on American media and American officials, ought to be clear. The United States has already embarrassed itself by supporting the Ukraine revolution which brought to power a banana republic that crumbled into civil war. Now, America is on the brink of committing to an increase in US military personnel in defense of Polish democracy which – according to the State Department, the Wall Street Journal and several other American sources – is threatened by Poland’s own government. It is little wonder that the United States is pressuring Poland to resolve rather than deepen the constitutional crisis in Warsaw before the July NATO summit. A NATO summit in Warsaw to defend democracy in Poland against Vladimir Putin when half of the Polish people believe their own government to be a threat to democracy would be an international embarrassment for the United States.
It remains to be seen whether sensible conservative forces in the Law & Justice party can eject Mr. Kaczyński and appoint a new leader, whether President Duda and Prime Minister Szydło will find the courage to assert themselves and actually take responsibility for their country rather than simply take orders from their political boss. People of good will, whatever their political disposition, should wish Poland well. The United States government should, however, reconsider the wisdom of stationing large amounts of American soldiers in a country which – if left to itself – might hopefully work out its’ internal political problems but which, if it becomes home to scores of American soldiers, might be tempted to escalate internal and external instability in the hopes of using American troops as pawns in its’ age old enmity with Moscow.