I enjoy this rhyme: Pole wise after injury But if the fact and it make us sick A fresh parable a Pole will buy That and from harm, and after harm foolish
Jan Kochanowski, Song of the Desolation of Podol
If the past of Poland teaches something, it is that the geographical location does not warrant political success. It is more common to believe that Poland lies on the “best land on the globe” than with examples of utilizing this privilege for its own benefit. We have borne the costs of our location many times. So if Poland is in an area of exceptional geopolitical importance, why has it been losing more than it is gaining for 400 years?
British geographer Halford John Mackinder (1861-1947) characterized the “best land on the globe” in the work “Democratic Ideas and Reality” (Democratic Ideals and Reality, 1919), where he wrote crucial words: “He who reigns in east Europe is in control of the heart of Eurasia. If you control the heart of Eurasia, you control the island of the world. He who rules the planet island, he who rules the world." The celebrated Heartland explanation (heart of Eurasia) formulated already in 1904 in an article "Geographical axis of history", published by the Royal Geographical Society. To this day it is the basis for knowing global relations, and in the United States it was behind the doctrine of stopping the russian Union and China. presently it helps explain the geopolitical background of American-Russian rivalry. Ukraine became its bloodiest field after the democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych he advocated Ukraine's accession to the Asian economical Area, not an association with the European Union. Poland participates in this war on the western side, due to the fact that after 1989 it was incorporated into it.
Colorful revolution, or nihil novi sub salts
As he notes Hans-Hermann Hoppe, following the fall of socialism, east Europe has become an area open to Western capital expansion. The transformation process meant not only privatization of state assets, but besides the adoption of financial institutions modeled on the Western model. In his interpretation, this created a mechanics of economical dependence, in which capital and the credit strategy became tools for perpetuating Western leadership over the economies of the region. "With the fall of socialism, east European countries abruptly had something to offer [..] part of east European property became day to day to day for adoption" (“Democracy – a god who failed”, 2006, p. 191).
Transformation marked in Poland by Balcerowicz's name was carried out by people who well understood that profits are larger neoliberal economy of the West than in the centrally planned economies of the east bloc states. adequate engineers building factories in the era of comrade Gamer were in abroad internships to know the difference from autopsy. prof. Andrzej Targowski, chief designer and initiator of the PESEL system, sidetracked by PZPR for projects specified as Infostrada (a prototype of the net establishing a threat to censorship and the monopoly of the organization free movement of information) even claimed that it was a wide group of engineers after returning from the West (and after unquestionably contact with the CIA) that was the basis of the “Solidarity” movement. The banned publication and removed from key projects Targowski went to the West, where he worked for the IBM company. Others have undertaken a long-term process of integration of Poland into Western economies, starting with borrowing and acquisition of licences. It can be doubted whether they were aware of the geopolitical context of the changes they had made (video: Paul God’s “Revelation according to Paul. How Our Country Was Destroyed”, Vectors, 2015).
Were political thinkers full aware of him? Roman Dmowski in ‘Germany, Russia and the Polish issue’, Adolf Bochenski in ‘Between Germany and Russia’ or Aleksander Bocheński in “Todays of stupidity in Poland” they concluded analyses of Poland’s political position (although they did not always give accurate predictions). However, the variability of this position was adopted by them simply as an empirical 1 to which to adapt. This is how political realism is understood in Poland. Realists do not address the causes of this variation. Hence, operational, geared towards optimising measures, not strategic, identifying the reasons for the deliberate nature of the analyses. In Polish historical memory, Napoleon's expedition to Moscow will be a romanticist crusade, sentimentally mentioned in Mickiewicz's “Pan Tadeusz” alternatively than an imperial effort to close the continental blockade of England. Without a broad context of geopolitical Napoleonic war are as incomprehensible as the long-term peace between the invaders at an incomprehensible minute interrupted by planet War I.
The deficiency of strategical reasoning is present in both the old and fresh past of Poland. It is written in terms of a dynastic or spiritual policy, rejecting geopolitical suggestions as absurd (see further the casus of Zygmunt III Vasa). Insurrection tradition is hard to give a meaningful political explanation at all. In II Poland, power-detached colonial delusions appear, which can be understood as a prosthesis of geopolitical reasoning after all. In the Polish People's Republic, the deficiency of strategy is simply a systemic rule imposed by Moscow, which was utilized by the West after 1989.
The difficulties in treating past as discipline were already known to Aristotle. He realized that the technological explanation demands necessity and generality, while past (i.e. history) consists of casual events. Facts can happen as the Kosciuszko Insurrection happened or not happen as there was no triumph of the November Uprising. What laws could govern something so casual?
Although it is hard to treat past in technological terms, it does not mean that it is impossible. Offensive realism convinces John Mearsheimer and cliodynamics Peter Turchin, which can be applied to the analysis of the Polish case. The past of Poland illustrates the recurring mechanism: a state located between the large centres of force pays the price erstwhile it cannot exploit its position. However, it is easier to mythize history, as with the glorification of "national" uprisings. Regardless of the version (messianist for believers and Promethean for atheists) this is always done in isolation from the geopolitical context.
The blind granary of Europe
Mackinder didn't say anything revealing. He summed up respective 100 years of operation of the innovative financial strategy at the time erstwhile the effects became visible on the political map. Mackinder's thesis of the global importance of east Europe provides an interpretative key to explain the past of the Republic in a coherent way, although poorly present in Polish literature.
In the 16th century, the Republic of Poland considered itself a power, but from a systemic point of view it was blind and defenseless. large geographical discoveries have shifted the centre of gravity of economical life from continental trade to maritime trade. "Unlike Poland, which was de facto cut off from the silk way following Turkish conquests, the west of the Old Continent had free commercial access to China or India" (J. Wozinski, "From the mouth of the Vistula River to the Black Sea. Commercial-economic background of Polish past 1572-1795", p.2, p. 175). It is worth remembering that by the end of the 18th century China was the world's largest economy. Only the industrial revolution in England has changed this state of affairs. Poland's nobles, giving control of the mouth of the Vistula to abroad merchants and giving up the construction of the naval fleet, condemned the immense country area to the function of supplier of agricultural and forestry semi-finished products.
Dutch and then British perfectly understood that controlling the territory generates immense costs (holding the army, suppressing uprisings, etc.). In view of the size of the areas occupied, it is sometimes impossible, as they have seen Napoleon Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler. It is more effective to control global trade hubs (ports and coasts) and its financial markets. Political problems can be solved with the aid of local wars by natives. This is the essence of the concept of the Coast (Rimland) and the securing naval power (Sea Power). Its principles were developed in relations with the Republic. With the aid of an autonomous intermediary, specified as Gdańsk, Poland was forced to trade asymmetry. The Republic exported low-processed natural materials with low added value (agricultural and forest products) and imported costly luxury goods, cloth, wine and roots. Since Poland did not own its own commercial fleet, the margin on maritime transport, insurance and stock trading remained in Amsterdam and then in London. The British neocolonial model was so based on the mechanics described by quoted Hoppe in relation to the transformation after 1989: the imposition of an externally controlled credit expansion. The country exploited is drawn into the debt spiral. At this point, local work and production become collateral for interest paid to western syndicates. The nobles are left with only raising the dimension of the serenity.
Poles raised as Sienkiewicz's or martyrdom imagination of past identify colonialism with military conquest. They think of abroad (recently Ukrainian) flags flying over offices and physical occupation. They do not realize the essence of financial and commercial colonization. In this division mechanism, the state retains formal independency attributes, specified as emblems, governments and borders. However, its economical cycle is utilized by external capital centres. The rulers who realize this problem do not gain the designation of deioscriptors. I mean Sigismund III Vasa. The textbook films make him see a Catholic fanatic who wasted Polish blood in the dynastic wars of the Swedish crown and Moscow samodury. The thought that Vasa wanted to give sovereign trade instruments to a vast, land-based state is not even considered.
Jakub Wozinski accuses Polish historiography that this 1 does not realize the concept of this ruler. The Union of Poland, Lithuania and Russia under 1 scepter would mean creating a powerful empire from Vistula to Kamchatka. The provision of specified a land giant in maritime policy instruments provided for participation in planet trade, including trade without western intermediaries with the East, where the world's largest economy was located. Sigismund III Vasa was to realize that as long as Rzeczpospolita was just a granary, The Vistula grain to Gdańsk, until it remains an economical colony where the Protestant camp is grazed. His Baltic politics, the construction of the war and trade fleet and customs plans were an effort to take control of the distribution of goods in favour of the Catholic camp. It was so to impose on the West their own conditions of division of labour on the Baltic-Black Sea bridge.
For overseas trade powers, the unification of Polish and Russian resources combined with maritime ambitions meant the end of imperial dreams. It would have been an Anglo-Saxon Heartland nightmare realized 3 100 years before Mackinder wrote it. That's why the West had to crash this project. This was not a series of political decisions that left traces in the archives, but the logic of the financial strategy itself that arose in the West. For conventional historical methods, this process may be invisible, but is detectable for historical cybernetics. It is no coincidence that the first central bank is established in Stockholm (1668), another 1 in London (1694) and the prototype for both is the “mother of all trades” – as defined by the Baltic Jews trade, the stock exchange bank in Amsterdam (1609). Commercial capital from Amsterdam or London did not request Cromwell's orders to drain east Europe. It worked through the very difference of potentials. Where money was cheaper and better organized (West), there sucked real goods from areas with primitive financial and economical structure (Rzeczpospolita). The buyer from London, buying Polish grain, realized the logic of maximizing profit and capital accumulation, controlled by the emerging banking system. due to the fact that Poland – unlike Prussia – did not respond to this economical challenge, this led to the division of work known as dualism on the Elbe.
Power fuse and deactivation
When the Vasa task collapsed, the Republic gradually declined into interior paralysis. What Zygmunt III did in Warsaw was done by Piotr I in St. Petersburg, which he founded in 1703 in marshy areas at the mouth of the Newa River to the Gulf of Finland, picked up Sweden during the 3rd Northern War. "The large asset of Russia was that it did not have Gdańsk in its territory, as did Poland, so the proceeds from trade could supply the most crucial areas for the state. The territorial expansion of Russia in the 17th century yet led to the fact that the issue of access to the highly developed markets of China, India or Persia entered a completely fresh phase for Europe as a whole. [...] For a time, it seemed that Russia would become a large competitor in trade with the east for the Netherlands or Portugal.[...] Nevertheless, trade competition from Russia will be seen over time by Western powers, which will effort to counter it in various ways" (J. Wozinski, “From the mouth of the Vistula...” p. 175).
Since the late 17th century and the Northern War, Poland has been a de facto protectorate of Russia. Petersburg controlled the full area of east Europe, taking over the Baltic trade and building its power on it. The question arises as to why, in the late 18th century, the partitions of Poland took place, erstwhile Tsarica Catherine II ruled in Warsaw anyway? The proposed thesis is that the partitions were the consequence of countering the emergence of the Eurasian power. Russia's exclusive dominance over Poland was mainly to reconcile Prussia, the Netherlands and Britain. If Russia had maintained its protectorate over Poland, it would have gained control of the east European Corridor. The demolitions arranged by Prussia forced the sharing of the spoil. The geopolitical insurance mechanics consisted of dismembering the Republic of Poland into 3 separate legal and economical bodies. The dissections were a warrant that no 1 would gain an advantage in the delicate geopolitically east Europe. Poland was so a price paid for maintaining the powers in a state of equilibrium.
Strengthening Prussia at the expense of Poland yet spawned a fresh monster in Europe, the Second Empire of the German Chancellor Bismarck. Germany's dynamic growth, based in a way on the denial of Anglo-Saxon "free market" paradigms, led to a breach of the balance of power in a key geopolitical place and to challenge the British maritime empire. With the second factor, which was the industrialization of the Tsar empire, this led to the outbreak of planet War I. Industrialized Germany realized what Mackinder wrote in 1919. Berlin has developed a concept of German political and economical dominance between the Baltic Sea, Black Sea and the Adriatic (Mitteleuropa), intending to master the gate to Heartland and another version of the task proposed the 3rd Reich. planet War I was the inevitable consequence of this crack in balance. The Anglo-Saxons had to set fire to east Europe in order to prevent German and Russian cooperation. The Republic of Poland was reconstructed in 1918 at the initiative of the USA, as a fresh hegemon, not due to historical justice, but as a sanitary cordon – a buffer designed to physically separate Berlin from Moscow.
Divide et impera
The management of the Polish situation requires knowing of geopolitical mechanisms governing the space between Europe and Asia. Historically, Rzeczpospolita was a front wall that artificially separated the coastal region from the heart of Eurasia. The function of the war bumper between the powers in the Central European plain always ends with a drainage of resources and a biological disaster. In order to usage the location of the “best land on the globe”, Poland would gotta become a link, precisely as the concept of Zygmunt III Waza intended.
Peter Turchin in his explanation of empireogenesis proves that large empires (such as Rome, Russia or the USA) are never born in a safe center, but always at the faults of civilization, i.e. at metaethnic boundaries, where different cultures and civilizations clash rapidly. It is in specified collisions that asabija, defined by Turchin in the book War and Peace and War, is born as the highest social solidarity (cooperation) that drives the construction of an empire. The old Rzeczpospolita lay on specified a textbook fault. Latin, Byzantine, and Turkish influences were mixed in its territory. So she had all the data to grow up into an empire, provided that it would transform a civilizational clash into an imperial structure.
The rejected Catholic concepts of Vasa and their subsequent unequivocal condemnation show that Poland has not retained the Latin program. She was nominally a Catholic country. Now. Zygmunt Krasiński He exposed appearances, mocking ruthlessly with spiritual tolerance, which led Poland to cybernetic inertia. “After we died, we only wanted to live... That there were no spiritual wars with us is just proof that no 1 believed anything strongly. What people believe, they fight. War is simply a sign of life. The Polish nation has always been lazy to war, to a common move, liked conveniences. But the large fanfaron—because he only boasts, who feels the scarcity of the things he boasts of; but the ape—because he only imitates who has nothing of his own” (“the election of political letters”, 2013, p. 47).
The coexistence of different cultures under 1 roof naturally weakens ethical incentives and social cohesion. In order to prevent specified a strategy from falling apart, the weakening had to be compensated with an increase in legal control (video: Prussia). However, the spiritual and systemic tolerance of the nobility was higher than the construction of strong institutions. As a result, the state ended up with the “fantom body of the king” if you usage the metaphor of John Owl (“Fantom body of the king. Peripheral conflict with modern form”, 2011). According to Jarosław Bratkiewicz Poland, alternatively of retaining its western (Piastovian) matrix, the consequence of which was a barren Sarmatian culture (video: “Euasianism on the back. Polish traditionalists look at themselves in the mirror of Eurasia and pretend it is not them”, 2021). That's what he said. Felix Koneczny, uncovering in the past of Poland confirmation of its (controversial) rule that 1 cannot be civilized in 2 ways. After all, the influences of Western enlightenment were opposed to Polish Sarmatism, which (civilized in 2 ways?) Conclusive missed. Stanislaw reforms headed by the Committee on National Education, the Constitution 3 May, or the Kosciuszko Insurrection (with its effort to establish a central bank) are apparent examples here.
The above mentioned tolerance (with a large share of inferiority) led to a characteristic Polish consciousness of confusion between Catholic (Latin) civilization and Western civilization. Adam Mickiewicz already had a forerunner relation between the ideals of the French Revolution and Catholicism in a conglomerate, which the Vatican present laicized calls a "synodical church". As he noted Józef Bocheński "Polish Church long before the Council was post-conservative" (the Second Vatican Council 1962-1965, referred to as W.K.). However, during the gathering of the poet with Pope Pius IX in March 1848, erstwhile Mickiewicz shouted the celebrated words that the Spirit of God is present “in the sweatshirts of the Paris people”, shocked and offended Pius IX tried to silence the prophet with the words “Piano, piano!” (Silent, Quiet!) and “You forget yourself!” and after the gathering he called Mickiewicz “the mediocre man.” The Papal summary could be applied to the full nation.
As a consequence of weakening the ethical and legal element, the dominant function began to be the vitality, typical of Poles to this day, and frequently sentimentally confused with morality. Vitual submission to alien influences is tantamount to losing the ability to control the social strategy in its own (systemic) interest. As a result, the Polish elites chose for themselves the function of an "premural" (isolator), which effectively blocked the mechanics of imperiogenesis. Without transforming the energy of a metaethnic responsibility into a origin of your own power, Poland has become an arena on which its energy was burned in its own interests by neighboring powers. The clientyism of the elites of the Stanislaw era described by Kalinka became an apparent expression of this. The last years of the reign of Stanisław Augustus", 2023).
Contemplating the Fall
The fall of the Noble Republic fits into the explanation of secular cycles (lasting 200–300 years) and generation cycles (30–40 years) of Peter Turchin. The first is characterized by the process of civilization and the second circulation of elites within this process. Each secular cycle consists of a phase of integration (growth), a phase of stagnation, erstwhile over-proliferated elites begin to fight for resources and phases of depression/chaos. Generation cycles are a reaction to stableness or chaos (retaliation phase lasts about 2-3 decades). Since the mid-16th century, "the erstwhile noble families have lost more and more importance, and their place has been occupied by magnate families, which have won their material power through the Protestant revolution and expansion in the east" (J. Wozinski, Ibid., p. 174). Overproduction of elites competing for resources sucked out by Gdańsk, with weak royal power, generated rokoshes and confederates by tearing the state apart by seeking abroad protection by individual "family".
The example shown at the outset with Game Engineers and systemic transformation can be a contemporary illustration of the phase of overproduction of elites. Engineers who returned from the West (and saw the difference in life levels) became a competitive elite, generating a crisis of the old system, possible to be utilized by the establishment, having a political and economical position to do so, while ignoring the cost of sacrificing sovereignty. The generation of transition fathers (Balcerovich and beneficiaries after 1989) built the current strategy of submission to the West in the name of holy peace and consumption. The generation of sons is now entering a phase of violent emotional reaction in the form of pro-war messianism, preparing the ground for another phase of cliodynamic depression.
Today's Poland, unlike the erstwhile one, is an indivisible part of the West (NATO and EU), but the mentality of its political class is akin to the elites of the Noble Republic. Without being able to find the state's strategy, it is dependent on Western allies in a completely neutral way. It could be a structural trap. If the West wins the global start for Eurasia, Poland will most likely yet be assimilated by global capital and will cease to be as an entity (according to the authoritative agenda of the large Reset and implemented in parallel with a deep reset). erstwhile the West loses, Poland will become a bloody forew in place of the bleeding Ukraine. We are so in a position in which the conventional deficiency of our own strategy can transform geographical location into an existential threat.
John Mearsheimer claims that the states are rational players who strive to maximize their power. The eventual nonsubjective is the position of hegemon in its region, as global hegemonia is unattainable. erstwhile Russia gained an exclusive protectorate over the full Republic of Poland in the 18th century, it was close to achieving regional hegemony in Europe. From the position of offensive realism, partitions were not an act of irrational hatred, as Mickiewicz would like, but a structural balance of forces from Prussia and Austria (with the approval of the United Kingdom). The powers had to teardrop down Russia to take the monopoly over the east European Corridor and prevent the birth of the Euro-Asian superhegemon. This does not mean, of course, the moral legitimacy of dissections, but simply an effort to explain their logic in the strategy of balance of forces.
Similarly present for the US, as a global hegemon Ukraine, and now Poland, it is just a tool to shift the cost of land war on the periphery, aimed at weakening Russia and China. According to the logic of offensive realism, if the West loses, it will devote Poland to buying time to consolidate its own forces. The past of power policies shows that hegemonic states are subject to their alliance obligations to their own strategical interests. The United States is no exception. Their abroad policy, like the policies of another empires, is primarily subordinate to maintaining a favourable arrangement of forces. Will the Poles stay behind John Kochanowski to contemplate their own thoughtlessness?
Vladimir Kowalik
Przemyśl Polska, nr 33-34 (16-23.08.2016)
