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  The Allies and Russia: A Tear in the NATO Bulwark

The Allies and Russia A Tear in the NATO Bulwark

By Walter Mayr

Part 4: A New Polish Front in Slupsk

"First we had the Russians, and now the Americans are coming. Why doesn't Europe move closer together?"

Andrzej Kotlicki is standing in front of the decommissioned military airfield near Redzikowo, formerly known as Reitz, in Western Pomerania. He is outraged. Kotlicki, now retired, served in the Polish army on the same airfield. He is an affable man who has trouble understanding why US missiles should be stationed at his doorstep to protect against the threat of attack from rogue nations.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently paid a visit to Kotlicki's house, where he was confronted with the furious citizens of Redzikowo. Still, the majority of Poles overall support the installation of the US missile defense system. After four Polish partitions and millions of war dead, the American promise of life in peace and liberty falls on especially fertile ground in Poland.

This sentiment becomes clear when the residents of Slupsk, the regional capital near the military airfield, congregate in the Church of St. Mary on the national holiday. They include naval infantrymen carrying their bayonet-tipped assault rifles, heavily armed militias, veterans of World War II and members of student leagues, all standing side by side under red-and-white flags. There is something archaic in the area, something that has become a rarity in Old Europe, a mixture of incense and gun smoke: the Polish essence.

For a long time, Slupsk was one of those places in the heart of Europe -- like Narva, Memel and Pillau -- that were routinely flogged by history the way carriage horses are flogged by the driver's whip. Even as the identity of its masters changed, suffering always returned to these cities. The Germans laid the foundations for the airfield, which they used in 1939 to launch their first air strikes on Poland. The Soviets arrived in 1945, followed by soldiers from the Polish People's Republic. And now 200 US soldiers are set to manage the 10 planned missile silos.

At least, if the Polish government has its way. "Everyone will agree," Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski recently said in Washington, "that countries where US soldiers are stationed are not attacked." Although he did not name potential attackers, he did provide an indication when he likened Russia to the "glacier ice" covering the Eastern European landscape. Sometimes, he said, it moves forward, and sometimes it recedes.

The objections of the eloquent Sikorski are legendary among his European colleagues. On one occasion, while speaking to fellow ministers, Sikorski issued the following warning to Russians seeking to attack Ukraine: "Then they will face 90 million people. Poland will fight side-by-side with Ukraine." On another occasion, he referred to the German-Russian pipeline project as part of the "Molotov-Ribbentrop tradition" -- a reference to the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany which signed the World War II non-aggression pact, part of which involved the carving up of Poland between the two powers.

If there is a trench between the old and new Europe, it would have to run along the Oder and Neisse Rivers, which mark the border between Germany and Poland. But despite the mutual suspicions of the past, the relationship between Warsaw and Berlin has become more trusting of late. Following the NATO meeting in Brussels, at which the membership prospects of Georgia and Ukraine will be on the agenda once again, Sikorski have a private dinner with Foreign Minister Steinmeier in Berlin. "Despite our different biographies, we attempt to maintain a close relationship," says Steinmeier.

Steinmeier has inherited one insight from Willy Brandt who, like a stylite immortalized in bronze, adorns one corner of his office: "Europe was and remains like a torso without its east."

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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