By Mateusz Piskorski
On May 18th, 2016, the well-known Polish politician Mateusz Piskorski was arrested on charg-es of spying for “third countries.” Shortly before, he wrote an article that predicted the beginning of mass political repressions against NATO opponents in Poland and Europe as a whole. He was right. Katehon presents the following exclusive translation of his article:
Predictions concerning the upcoming NATO summit in July in Warsaw are beginning to clearly indicate that today the alliance’s goal is first and foremost preventing the emergence of social movements demanding the liberation of Europe from underneath the tutelage of the United States. As can be seen, the Financial Times’ inadvertent uttering of the words of one of the Polish Army’s senior commanders show just what decisions can be expected this summer. These are decisions which completely undermine not only the sovereignty of Warsaw in the field of foreign policy, but also clearly speak to the fact that from this moment on NATO is supposed to be a police force ready to participate in the pacification of eventual social protests or intervene in the affairs of domestic Polish politics.
The actual intensions of the alliance’s latest decisions were revealed honestly and in a frankly military way by Brigade General Krzysztof Krol, the commander of the Multinational Corps Northeast. The issue under consideration was the concept of the so-called NATO spearhead advocated for years by the Americans and longed for by the Polish politicians of both the for-mer and current government. Let us give the floor to the general: “The VJTF (Very High Readiness Joint Task Force) is to deal with Article 4 situations [of the North-Atlantic Treaty] and that is our intention with it.” Article 4 speaks of cooperation and consultation between member states which cannot be described as in article 5 as experiencing armed aggression against any of them, but rather subjective feelings of para-military threats. What kind of situations are we dealing with here? General Krol leaves no doubt: “The plan was developed to react to hybrid threats in our area of operation. Our plans are scaleable to the situation,” he told the Financial Times.
The concept of hybrid war or hybrid actions has blossomed as a definition of the activities of Russia following the Ukrainian revolution of 2014. But what is interesting is that to this day it has not attained any unambiguous academic interpretation and various authors and experts define its scope in different ways. In The Financial Times, however, we read that the NATO spearhead has the right to take action in the case of the destabilization of the international situation in the country triggered by, for example, public protests.
What does this mean in practice? Any internal disturbance could be treated and presented by native as well as American “spearheadologists” as part of the activities vaguely defined as hybrid war. This might lead to the case in which protests against the effects of the TTIP Agreement supported by the Polish state could be treated as “hybrid activities.” Poles’ protests against crimes committed by US Army soldiers stationed in Poland could also turn out to be “hybrid war.” Antoni Macierewicz’s sick imagination could suggest dozens of different theories. After all, the current defense minister is so divorced from common sense that he believes that Radoslaw Sikorski, another pro-American hawk, is actually working for Moscow. Social unrests, protests, strikes, attempts to form information resources independent from the establishment, demanding transparency in the defense and foreign policies of the Polish authorities – all of these could become pretexts for one or another swing into action of advisors from NATO (mainly from the USA), who would provide “brotherly aid” to the Polish units and services subordinated to them. In this situation, all that is left is to hope that officers and officials will not want to stay in an “oral relationship” (the colorful expression of Sikorski) with their American overlords, will remind themselves of the dignity of the Polish uniform, and send all those representatives of foreign interests “concerned about our security” far back across the Atlantic Ocean. Meanwhile, we have been left with one thing: to loudly protest and by all law-abiding means block the realization of NATO’s plans which it will announce in July in Warsaw. It is also worth organizing a social movement for Poland’s exit from this pact as a condition of gaining elementary state sovereignty and a real sense of security.
Translated by Jafe Arnold
