The anti-American hysteria that erupted in Poland after the capture of the Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro is not merely an instance of “virtue signaling,” as people describe those who rush to demonstrate their supposed moral superiority. This affair also reveals the real direction of Donald Tusk’s government’s foreign policy and the unexpected (?) allies it may be able to count on.
The intricate special operation carried out by the American Delta Force unit, which resulted in the capture and imprisonment in a U.S. jail of Venezuela’s self-proclaimed president, demonstrated not only that the United States is a global hegemon. Maduro’s capture should be regarded as a real consequence not only of Donald Trump’s warnings that any strike against the interests and security of the United States would end badly for the aggressor. One may also view this case, much like the boarding of Russian vessels from the so-called shadow fleet carried out a few days later, as a consequence of those warnings. Maduro and his regime, dangling on the edge of the “axis of evil” (Russia, China, Iran), had long been perceived by both the United States and the European Union (!) as illegitimately elected and therefore “formally non-existent” as Venezuela’s leader, a criminal, in other words. Venezuela, let us add, had long since been transformed into a state run like a drug cartel: a laboratory with a bloody regime and its beneficiaries on one side, and a majority of an exhausted society on the other.
At the same time, Venezuela under Maduro functioned as something akin to a Trojan horse, shuffling about in the immediate vicinity of the United States and persistently harassing it through drug smuggling, including deadly fentanyl (up to 100,000 people die annually in the U.S. from drug overdoses, including fentanyl).
Above all else, Maduro’s capture constitutes the most painful blow, not merely a reputational one, to both Beijing and Moscow. Not only did they invest billions of dollars in Venezuela, which they are unlikely to recover, but they are also losing access to the country’s oil as well as the operational capabilities derived from their presence there. They are likewise losing credibility as allies and are being forced to react and minimize their losses. From Poland’s point of view, this is a positive development, if only because it disrupts Russian plans while they continue to harass a Ukraine that is defending itself.
All of this is already known, and readers of “Gazeta Polska” can find extensive analyses on the subject this week. What is interesting from our perspective, however, is how Poland reacted to this surprising and world-freezing U.S. operation. Although the statements and positions voiced sound as if taken not only from a political sandbox but straight from a communist agitator’s handbook, they are unfortunately being expressed today by the most important figures in Poland. This, in turn, may prompt reflection that, contrary to appearances, this is not mere chatter but the implementation of a certain strategy.
Sikorski Mocks, Tusk Seeks Symmetry
“Another day passes as our sovereigntists fail to defend Venezuela’s sovereignty. Could it be that sovereignty applies only to the European Union, which poses no threat to them?”
wrote Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski on X.
This was long after Maduro’s capture, yet for some reason the head of the MFA decided to strike not only at the parliamentary opposition for its criticism of the EU’s encroachments on Polish sovereignty, but also to advance a rather acrobatic thesis that the overthrow of a narco-terrorist regime amounted to depriving Venezuela of its sovereignty. In fact, Sikorski spent much of the previous week circling around the United States, not only indulging in spiteful remarks but also openly demanding that the U.S. Congress respond to Donald Trump’s declarations regarding a desire to take over Greenland. One must admit that this is surprising even for Sikorski, who is known for his inflated ego.
It was precisely the topic of Greenland that so electrified the Polish authorities that they decided to exploit it by building a counterweight not only to Venezuela but even to the issue of the war in Ukraine, which is close to us. Before a meeting of the so-called coalition of the willing in Paris, Prime Minister Donald Tusk even said that this issue would be “discussed in parallel with the situation in Ukraine and Venezuela.” Tusk’s surprising statement found no confirmation in the facts. After the meeting, he announced: “No one wanted to spoil the atmosphere of good cooperation on Ukraine. Therefore, no one, not even the Prime Minister of Denmark, raised the issue of Greenland. Today’s topic was our joint work together with the Americans on security guarantees for Ukraine.” So why did he flex his muscles beforehand with anti-American tirades?
The answer may lie in recalling Tusk’s other statements about Donald Trump. Somehow, the Polish prime minister repeatedly pushes his criticism of the U.S. president ahead of the pack of European politicians. These supposedly “hawkish” statements toward Trump have continued since the inauguration of the 47th president of the United States, already a year ago, Tusk described relations with the new administration as “potentially difficult” and distanced himself from transatlantic relations (characteristically blaming them on the then president of Poland, Andrzej Duda). At the time, he also issued a surprising appeal (in an interview with TVN24): “To everyone in Poland, politicians, commentators,” asking “that we not fall into hysteria on the one hand that this might be the end of the world, it is not the end of the world, but also that we not build for ourselves the illusion that we are the favorites in this new arrangement.”
This is all the more interesting because a year later, we are seeing the opposite: despite the bluster of Tusk’s government, the new American administration sees Poland as a durable ally and a regional leader. This is evidenced not only by the excellent relations between President Karol Nawrocki and Donald Trump, which should be regarded as an intensified continuation of Andrzej Duda’s policy, but also by the fact that the new U.S. ambassador to Poland, Tom Rose, does not hide it.
Pushing the U.S. Out of Poland and Europe
In a debate with Mateusz Morawiecki on Kanał Zero, Rose stated outright that from the U.S. perspective, Poland’s role is significant and that our country exemplifies “true partnership.” He also assessed that Warsaw, as NATO’s leader in Europe, should take responsibility for the European Union and act as an animator of change within the Alliance. “Of course, we will be here, we are staying here, we are engaged in Europe, in Poland. That has not changed, but we need more partners like Poland,” Rose said.
All of this sounds excellent, but how are we to calmly assess the fact, made evident by the situations surrounding Venezuela and Greenland, that the December 13 coalition appears to be sabotaging our relations with our most important ally, not only verbally but also through its actions, while simultaneously placing the entire responsibility for contacts on the president?
This is, of course, confirmation of what we signaled several months ago: Tusk and his people will alternately criticize and ignore the United States, while at the same time rebuking the President of the Republic for “independent foreign policy” and simultaneously calling on him for “greater activity.” What at first glance appears to be paranoia is in fact a political plan, one that is not only harmful to Poland but increasingly difficult not to perceive as un-Polish.
For months now, Tusk’s administration and Tusk himself have continued to issue criticism of the United States that is incomprehensible from a Polish point of view, perhaps counting on the patience of partners eventually running out. “The European Union’s economy is nine to ten times larger than Russia’s. We successfully fought Russia even before the United States existed, so we should be able to do so today as well,” Radosław Sikorski said last week, and it is hard not to conclude that this is indeed the government’s position and its plan. To quote Michał Rachoń from the series “Reset”, this is about “Europe without the USA, without American armed forces.” For Poland, this is an extremely dangerous vision. It also shows how important Karol Nawrocki’s victory was; without it, we might already be “off the U.S. radar.”
Still Fighting Imperialism
But this latest anti-American hysteria also contains surprising threads. As one, “anti-imperialists” revealed themselves, accusing the United States of “eternal greed” and repeating arguments straight out of deep communist times. Interestingly, these arguments are invoked both by old “resetters” and heirs of the People’s Republic of Poland, as well as by representatives of the Confederation of the Polish Crown and their hangers-on, who for some reason consider themselves “right-wing.” From the far left, through “experts,” all the way to the far right, everywhere one hears rhetoric taken from communist newsreels.
For example, Łukasz Adamski, deputy director of the Juliusz Mieroszewski Centre for Dialogue (formerly the Polish-Russian Dialogue and Agreement Centre), wrote in a mocking tone: “I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump first issued an executive order changing Greenland’s name to ‘Trumpland,’ and then claimed that agreements with Denmark concerning Greenland were invalid because the country in question no longer exists.” Earlier, Adamski had described the intervention in Venezuela as a “violation of the foundations of international law.”
Former head of the National Security Bureau, General Stanisław Koziej, in turn, treated the action in Venezuela as a “violation of the world constitution, namely the United Nations Charter.” Interestingly, according to Koziej, the matter demonstrates the “weakening of NATO” and, naturally, warns that NATO cannot be saved in its current form or even “in a formula of American-European cooperation.” “Let us think about building a European system, let us think about militarizing the European Union so that it can take over the role that for decades has been fulfilled by the North Atlantic Alliance,” he said on Polish Radio 24 (in liquidation). Does this sound like pushing Americans out of Europe? It also sounds absolutely contradictory to the vision jointly presented by Tom Rose and Mateusz Morawiecki, and to the facts.
The fact that “resetters” became particularly active on the occasion of events in the other hemisphere was also pointed out by the current head of the National Security Bureau, Prof. Sławomir Cenckiewicz. In a conversation with Michał Rachoń on TV Republika, he stated that the “orphans of the reset” possess a conceptual framework derived, precisely, from the period of the “fight against American imperialism.” Interestingly, this approach was exemplified, among others, by Katarzyna Pełczyńska-Nałęcz, who stated that the “attack” on Venezuela “puts Poland in an even more difficult situation.”
“Regardless of what we think about Maduro, and we think badly, unfortunately, the United States has, in practice, applied an imperial principle, namely that the military force of a neighboring country can decide who rules in that country. A world in which such thinking and action become widespread is a dangerous world for us,”
she declared.
Russia Like the USA?
Cenckiewicz found the comparison of the U.S. action in Venezuela with Russia’s “special operation” against Ukraine particularly outrageous. “This elevates Vladimir Putin to the level of a leader of a democratic state,” said the head of the NSB. But what can one do when such rhetoric seemed last week almost like the “message of the day” of the December 13 coalition and its experts?
What is additionally interesting is that similar reflections were shared by representatives of, seemingly, the opposite side of the political scene. Thus, Włodzimierz Skalik, considered one of the leading figures of the so-called “fire-extinguisher” milieu, that is, the Confederation of the Polish Crown of Grzegorz Braun, thundered on social media that “American actions in Venezuela were meant to trigger mass protests in the United States.”
Nothing of the sort occurred, as it turned out, Skalik, not for the first time, spreading disinformation, presented photos from anti-Trump protests from October of last year. He did not stop at fakes: “In none of the countries ‘liberated’ by the United States did life improve for residents: in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and Libya, chaos and devastation persist to this day. However, after such ‘interventions’ things always improve for one group: Zionists,” he wrote, weaving into the matter antisemitic insinuations favored by that crowd.
And although such statements can be brushed aside with a wave of the hand, like, for example, the tirade of Witold Gadowski, sympathetic to the “fire-extinguishers,” who divined from the whole situation that U.S. involvement in Venezuela would result in America’s withdrawal from our region and that “Poland will lose”, it is still worth noting this broad anti-American chorus. One can only hope that its influence will be as audible in the world as the homeopathic anti-American picket of the far left and hardened communists in front of the U.S. embassy in Warsaw. Amusingly, despite the lack of attendance, it was joked that it was still more numerous than any global demonstration by Venezuelans in defense of Maduro.