Garvan Walshe: Russia’s drone attack on Poland leaves the new pro-Trump Polish President out on a limb

Garvan Walshe is a former National and International Security Adviser to the Conservative Party. He runs Article7  – Intelligence for democrats.

Eighteen Russian drones crossed the Polish border Wednesday morning, to be shot down by Polish and Dutch warplanes under NATO command. Too many to be an accident, too few to be an unambiguous military attack, it was a classic Russian salami tactic, designed to split not only the Western alliance, but Poland itself.

Since Karol Nawrocki was elected president in June, Poland has had two foreign policies. The Government’s, led by Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Foreign Minister (now also deputy foreign minister) Radoslaw Sikorski, and the President’s.

The Government sees Poland’s security as delivered through a web of alliances including NATO, the EU and bilateral security treaties with the UK and France. This is an alliance system to which Poland contributes with its growing defence budget (set to exceed 5 per cent of GDP), strengthening land forces, and air force due  to be re-equipped with F35s.

The President distrusts Poland’s European allies (he is still attempting to extract World War II reparations from Germany). He prefers to build bridges with Trump’s Washington and visited the White House last week.

In other words, Tusk and Sikorski want to anchor Poland’s security in European and like minded democratic alliances, President Karol Nawrocki has put his faith in a like minded individual: Donald Trump.

By attacking Poland,  Russia has posed a grave test for Nawrocki’s Trumpist policy. Nawrocki promised Poles that Trump will provide them security – even as Trump has withdrawn support from the rest of NATO’s eastern flank. So now that Russia has attacked Poland, what is Trump going to do about it?

Russia has of course timed this carefully, to coincide with their annual Zapad exercises, giving their ill equipped forces numerical superiority in North East Europe.

Trump now needs to extract visible and immediate concessions from Putin or it will be clear to the Poles that they can’t rely on him.

Conversely Poland’s other allies in Western Europe and Asia also need to show their mettle and stand by Poland’s Prime Minister.

“Europe is in a fight” Ursula von der Leyen said in her State of the European Union speech yesterday morning. This is still a figure of speech – but concrete support for Warsaw is now essential.

Russia cannot sustain the Zapad  exercise in the field much beyond the weeks for which it has been scheduled. Thus any immediate Western military moves are best delayed until that’s over, and Russian forces on the Polish-Baltic-Finnish frontier return not normal levels.

Cover for the delay should be provided through a diplomatic offensive.

Poland must immediately make its case at the EU and UN, where the General Assembly is soon to meet, and keep the attention focused on this Russian escalation. Here Poland has a superb asset in Sikorski, who presents his case articulately, with conviction and with a balance of humour and seriousness most of this generation of leaders lacks.

Essential to Poland’s case must be that Russian expansionism is not only directed at Poland, but at the entire front from Svalbard in the Arctic to Burgas on the Black Sea. It needs to be resisted by Europe collectively (and, if possible by the United States too). Bilateral US support for Poland alone fails to meet the threat Russia actually poses.

While the diplomatic case is made, the democratic nations of Europe need to prepare their a reply with military effect. As former British Ambassador to Riga and Deputy Director of the Centre for European Reform Ian Bond notes, this response should be “robust, but not necessarily  symmetric.” Robust, because Russia underestimating democracies’ resolve to resist its aggression has repeatedly led Moscow into ill-advised military adventures.  Asymmetric because we should target Russian weaknesses rather than respond tit-for-tat.

The most effective European policy would be to seize frozen Russian assets, and put the money into Ukrainian long-range strike missiles.

After more than three years of fighting, Russia’s war effort hangs on its ability to export oil and gas.

It needs the money to replenish its dwindling stocks of equipment and to persuade men to sign up for service on the front.

Its oil and gas industry is now under heavy Ukrainian attack, helped by Ukraine’s new long-range missiles. Now is the time for European democracies to show they have Poland’s back, and take action against Russia while Trump offers only empty words.