Few elections in Europe of late have elicited as much uniform editorial commentary and speculation in Western media as the recent parliamentary election in Poland. Several op-eds have flirted with an alarmist view that the era of stability and progress in Poland is coming to an abrupt end as the “right-wing roars back,” the “euroskeptics claim victory,” and “Kaczynski regains power.” With only a few notable exceptions much of the commentary is saying more or less the same thing: namely, that with the new PiS government things will get worse not just for Poland but for Europe as a whole, at a time when the continent is struggling already.
A lot of apprehension seems to concern a supposed impending course-correction in Polish foreign policy, with predictions of deteriorating relations with Germany, tougher relations with Russia, and overt anti-EU sentiments doomed to dominate a divided NATO. But perhaps this sky-is-falling foreboding reveals more about the writers’ editorial biases than it does about the complexity of the political scene behind a potentially transformative election in the largest country in Central Europe.
So how does such punditry actually square with what is going on in Poland today? What has just happened in Polish politics, and how is it likely to impact on the country’s foreign and security policy choices?
First the easy part: There is no question that the latest balloting marks the end of an era in Poland. The Civic Platform (PO) government has had an eight-year run. The length of this term is impressive by any measure but is especially remarkable when judged against the combustible nature of Polish politics. The years that the Civic Platform (PO) held power saw its share of policy successes and failures. It was a period of strong economic growth and investment as well as accelerated military modernization in Poland, though the second term was a bit lackluster compared to the first. By the end of the second term, though, one did not have to be a fortune teller to predict early on that PO would most likely lose its third election bid. The anger aroused in the electorate over the government’s pension reform, its decision to increase the retirement age, scandals linked to the so-called “tape-gate” affair (when secret recordings of senior government ministers in various Warsaw restaurants were made public), the growing pressure from labor unions, especially among the struggling coal mining industry—all of these things signaled the upcoming change. The abrupt departure for Brussels by Donald Tusk, the party’s leader, whose appointment to the post of the European Council President left the PO government scrambling to consolidate under the prime ministership of Ewa Kopacz as it geared up for the double whammy of the presidential and parliamentary elections, combined with an impulse to replace the elites to produce a defeat for the party in power.
Admittedly what has made the sting of PO’s defeat even sharper was the unanticipated loss by Bronislaw Komorowski of his bid for re-election as the country’s President in May—an upset delivered by a young and virtually unknown Andrzej Duda, a PiS-nominated candidate. Komorowski’s defeat threw PO into disarray and re-energized the opposition. In part because of Komorowski’s failed campaign, what could have been simply an electoral defeat for PO became a rout. Today PiS, with its 235 seats in the 460-seat parliament, is poised to create a government without the need to look for coalition partners—an historical first for Poland’s postcommunist democracy. And there is a fear among PO supporters that PiS may use its power to settle old political scores. We should know soon enough.
Now for the more complicated part of the post-electoral landscape: What can we expect in terms of a foreign policy course-correction going forward? In the near term probably not much, notwithstanding campaign-trail rhetoric. The new foreign and security policy team currently being considered for the cabinet of ministers is by default less known in the West, no different than in any other case of post-electoral transition. To an extent the uncertainty among Western observers about the direction the new team will take stems from the fact that, for eight years of the PO-led government, we have grown accustomed to one group of interlocutors. The incoming team is also arguably less experienced overall—though some among them have extensive resumes of past government service or have worked in various Polish think tanks. But the apprehension that personnel change is bound to lead to policy change—and change for the worse—is at this stage unwarranted.
The more serious charge is that PiS’s “nationalist orientation” will represent a setback for Poland’s position in Europe and will undermine the EU. The truth is we do not know, as the experiences of 2005–07, when PiS was last in power, are not necessarily a predictor. Moreover, the charges of nationalism and populism aimed at a government that has yet to be assembled are premature at this point and manifest the personal conflict and antagonism that has defined the narrative of government-opposition relations over the past eight years. This line of reasoning also reinforces the ultimately specious conviction that the only parameters of Polish foreign policy are those framed, on the one hand, by “Europeanism”—the avatar for the policy consensus articulated in Berlin, Paris or Brussels—and, on the other hand, by “nationalism,” which is taken to stand for locally brewed policy prescriptions and priorities, usually with an admixture of populism and historical politics. In reality this binary view has little relevance for policymaking in general, and few in the United States would argue that a foreign policy bereft of a domestic national context makes much sense, or that one can even exist.
The preeminent concern about PiS’s electoral sweep when it comes to foreign policy is that it will deepen the fragmentation within the EU and make it more difficult to deal with Russia. Though the tenor of Poland’s interaction within the EU may indeed change, this view seems misplaced at present when it comes to relations with Russia. There is in fact not much daylight between the PO and PiS positions on how to respond to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war against Ukraine. Most likely in the near term the PO government’s hard line on Russia will be continued by PiS, as will its strong pro-NATO and pro-United States stands. On the other hand, the tenor of Poland’s intra-EU relations may become more assertive, but it is a stretch to draw parallels between PiS and British “euroskeptics,” as Poland has benefitted from the resource transfers from the EU and enjoys a broad consensus that EU membership enhances the country’s security.
One area of apparent divergence between the outgoing and incoming Polish governments is the extent to which regional cooperation in the Baltic-Central European region can be leveraged to strengthen the country’s position and the region’s security. We will know soon enough whether the PiS criticism that the PO government willfully neglected its regional allies holds water, or if the divergent interests of individual so-called Visegrad Four states, especially when it comes to Russia, will continue to make regional cooperation on foreign and security policy difficult to achieve. If the so-called Visegrad Group (Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary) can be revitalized, this would be a bonus, but it remains to be seen whether this is in fact achievable, and, if it is achievable, whether it can serve as a basis for a Central European security block in the region. This is an uphill battle at best.
The largest issue set—namely, Poland’s relations with the United States and Germany—is unlikely to change in any fundamental way, though there will be shifting accents on how the policy process unfolds and where the principal emphasis is placed. Poland’s relations with the United States are broadly recognized as fundamental to the country’s security. The United States will remain the central security relationship for Poland, with NATO as its key security framework. With the approaching NATO summit in Warsaw in 2016 it will be important for the new government to show diplomatic skill as it works for a permanent NATO base on the country’s territory. This is an area where Berlin and Warsaw remain divided, and where U.S. leadership on setting the agenda for the summit will be essential.
Likewise, Germany remains central to Poland’s position in Europe, and judging from the first official visits by President Duda and statements from various PiS politicians this relationship will remain a priority for the new government, even if from time to time Warsaw will take a strong position on issues it considers vital, such as Nord Stream 2, energy policy, and military bases along the northeastern flank of NATO. Poland is also likely to work to enhance its relationship with France. Clearly, there will still be disagreement on how to approach the resettlement of refugees both in Poland and across Europe, but the problem goes far beyond the parameters of Polish foreign policy and is now firmly a pan-European issue, potentially yielding a larger crisis in Transatlantic relations.
On balance, the foreign policy menu for the incoming PiS government does not present a radical departure from what the PO government has generally prioritized. There is a risk that individual accents or the particular execution of an agenda item may quickly differentiate the overall tenor of foreign policy between the outgoing government and its successor. Still, the coming of a new government, emerging on the political scene in Poland after eight years in the opposition, should not be cause for commentators to run ahead of actual developments on the ground. In fact, if anything, PiS proved quite adept at running a campaign that appealed to a broad cross-section of Polish society, gaining a popular mandate unlike any government in Poland’s postcommunist history. This grants the new government unprecedented power, but also saddles it with unprecedented responsibility for the decisions it makes.
It goes without saying that elections have consequences, and that an electoral sweep of the kind PiS has just achieved in Poland will reshape the country’s domestic politics, making it more conservative overall. But on foreign policy the shift is unlikely to be as pronounced as at home, for the country’s key interests, threats, and challenges remain the same. The supporters of the emerging new government, as well as its critics, would do well to take a breath, watch who gets the foreign and defense portfolios and what their priorities and policy vectors will be, and then pass judgment.