German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Thursday invited Poland and Sweden to bepart of a voluntary EU treaty that would seek deeper financial integration and oversight among its members, the German newspaper Bild-Zeitung reported, citing an unnamed source. The special invitation follows the controversial speech on Monday by Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, during which Sikorski described the possible fall of the eurozone as the biggest existential threat to Poland and called on Germany to take a more active role to stabilize the European crisis.
Sikorski's comments and the subsequent reported invitation by Merkel and Sarkozy are indicative of the complex geopolitical challenges that Poland is facing as the eurozone crisis intensifies and moves toward a potentially devastating climax. Should the eurozone collapse - and especially should the EU project in general fail — Poland would find itself confronting an impossibly dire security paradigm.
Warsaw perceives Russia's resurgence within Moscow's former area of influence as a grave existential threat — a threat Warsaw has continuously attempted to thwart by engaging in several security alliances and commitments. A strong independent Germany traditionally poses another existential threat to Poland; however, while Germany has been restrained by the institutional binds of the European Union, it actually has acted as one of Poland's best levers against Russia. The dissolution of the eurozone would remove those binds, requiring the implementation of alternative security guarantees. Meanwhile, there are problems with other traditional security pillars of the Cold War era.
NATO, Poland's traditional and long-standing post-Cold War security guarantor, has been experiencing a continued loss of strategic identity. Most importantly, the political and existential crisis that would arise in Western Europe should the European Union fall would make NATO an even more fractious and unreliable ally - which in many ways Poland and other Central European countries already perceive it to be. In addition, as the United States slowly steps back from more than a decade of conflicts in the Middle East, its willingness to single-handedly take on a costly security alliance in Central Europe would also likely be diminished by the financial fallout of the eurozone's dissolution.
Poland, and the other Central and Eastern European countries that find themselves precariously exposed to Russia, have attempted to revitalize alternative security arrangements, including the Visegrad Group and the Nordic Battlegroup. However, these arrangements require a level of political and economic commitment that no party involved has been willing or able to put forth. The very nature of the eurozone crisis is that it is nearly impossible for any nation to put in motion adequate preparations for the potential failure of the currency union. Furthermore, it is these countries that are most committed to keeping the existing institutional infrastructure at nearly any cost. As Sikorski's speech points out, if it becomes clear that some EU members are readying contingency plans for a post-euro era, they can hardly expect anyone else to bet on their success. Such regional commitments are likely to only be mustered once the fall of the European Union becomes a reality; they are remedial rather than preventive measures.
Therefore Poland is left with only one course of immediate action: to push for the maintenance of the existing institutional system, which in this case is the European Union. Sikorski's speech is a landmark in that it represents the first time a pre-eminent European political figure has stated that the survival of the European Union depends on Germany taking a stronger position within the organization. The speech implied that Poland was prepared to support Germany's gaining a measure of financial and political control within the European Union, if it helps avoid the dissolution of the entity.
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The integrationist core of the European Union (Merkel and Sarkozy) has caught the hint offered by Warsaw. France and Germany invited Poland and Sweden - another strategic non-eurozone EU bystander - to join a group that will likely support the European Union's deeper integration. The treaty would be open to any EU member state willing to follow a shared set of financial regulations and oversight. This offer provides Warsaw the opportunity to demonstrate its commitment to the survival of the European project.
While it makes little economic sense for Poland to integrate itself further into the European Union - its economy has remained relatively healthy throughout the crisis - Warsaw will have shown its willingness to endure sacrifices in order to prevent the eurozone crisis from spiraling beyond control. Such an intensification of the crisis, after all, would have disastrous effects for the Polish economy, in great measure reversing the economic gains Warsaw has made.
In an implicit sign that Germany understands the conundrum faced by Warsaw, the German defense minister Thursday invited Poland to join the Eurocorp - a joint EU military contingent that pledges to field up to 60,000 troops - by 2016. While the move bears no immediate tactical relevance to Polish security, it nonetheless sends a clear signal that Berlin is willing to at least symbolically push forward strategic and military cooperation with Warsaw within the EU framework, if Poland is willing to support Germany's increased influence within the economic governance of the European Union.
Warsaw is now at a critical juncture. It must weigh the strategic risk it would face from Moscow and Berlin, should the union fall, against the potential negative implications of a strong Germany sitting at the helm of the European Union. The result of this difficult, yet familiar, existential balancing act for Poland will determine the level of commitment it is willing to put into the preservation of the European Union. So far, Poland seems to have decided that even with freer rein within the European Union, Germany will remain constrained enough — and this is preferable to facing the risk of Russia's expansion at the doors of a potentially disunited post-EU Europe.
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