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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35414 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 3, 2022

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Can anybody explain the Polish perspective on the Ukraine war?

I went to Poland and it looked like what Western Europe should look like. The urban areas were clean and seemingly safe. Indeed the people living there are mostly European or Slavic.

My understanding is that most of the tsunami of African or Middle-Eastern immigrants of the 2000s would rather go to Western Europe or Scandinavia for better welfare or economic prospects.

Still, Poland used to get in trouble with the EU for not wanting to take in a certain amount of them.

Moreover, Poland has also faced reprimand from the same union for their policies toward non-heterosexuals.

Why did Poland even join the EU? Did they really need the money so badly at the time?

Now it seems that Poland is going toward ever more alignment with the EU and US.

Are they really so scared of Russia that they would drink the corn syrup and give up on whatever is left of their culture/sovereignty/demographics?

Is anybody of relevance in Poland even attempting to contradict the pro-Western turn?

  • -14

You are unaware, perhaps, that Poland and Russia have a bit of a history?

They do, but so do Germany and Poland, or even USA and Poland, let's not forget the Lend-Lease that helped the USSR conquer Poland in the first place.

Why are the Poles so afraid of Russia?

Or are they afraid that they will lose their sovereignty and be forced to do horrible things, like welcoming people they do not like and allowing disgusting acts to be carried out on their countrymen?

Are they afraid that the Russians will replace the Polish population with an indistinguishable mix of ethnicities and cultures that have no bearing to the original Polish people and culture?

How do you figure that Lend-Lease helped the USSR conquer Poland? Your own link says that it was passed in March of 1941. The invasion of Poland was completed by October of 1939.

As others have noted, your grasp of the relevant history and politics seems a little shaky.

Presumably he's not talking about Lend-Lease enabling the 1939 invasions (plural; Hitler got half and Stalin got half) to happen, but rather enabling the invaded lands' retention afterwards. (Wikipedia says the parts incorporated into the USSR had something like 10M people, and of course the parts dominated by the USSR had everybody else) Without Lend-Lease we might easily imagine a world in which the USSR was too weak to be in any shape to race the other Allies to Berlin (or at least too weak to be able to afford a pause along the way waiting for Poles to get slaughtered, and too weak to object if we decided afterwards to let Poland return to the status quo ante bellum (because that's the natural Schelling point to discourage wars of conquest) rather than to the Potsdam agreement borders (because we were sick of war and because FDR was an idiot who played his hunch).

I'm not endorsing that theory, though. Alternate history is tricky, wishful thinking is easy. I don't see any reason why the good "USSR too weak without support, Poland freed half a century earlier" outcome would necessarily be much more likely than e.g. the atrocious "USSR way too weak without support, Nazis lock down Poland for years or decades longer and expel or kill tens of millions of Poles" outcome.

Either way, it's hard to argue that any of the major protagonists had the interest of the Polish people at heart while deciding its fate.

While Russia can be said to have somewhat recovered from its world-dominating communist fantasies, if anything the USA's foreign policy has only gotten worse.

While they had some semblance of justification to nuke Japan or firebomb Germany, hardly any moral observer can support the most recent US military interventions, which seemingly have to do with past allies turning into dictators or vice versa, and major US officials boldly reminiscing their history of coup d'etats.

Do you mean to imply that US foreign policy is more of a threat to Poland than is Russian foreign policy.

The Poles seem to think being under the American umbrella beats being under the Russian umbrella. Today, I can look at Serbia, at Armenia, at Kazakhstan, at Kyrgyzystan, at Belarus, at Ukraine, and see how the Poles have a point.

Why should they prefer being under Moscow's sway moreso than being under that of Washington/Brussel?

I'm not too familiar with the situation in all these countries. As far as I know, Serbia is relatively peaceful.

Ukraine is not exactly under the Russian umbrella, they are literally getting billions of dollars in supplies from the US to fight a war to the last Ukrainian.

After 50 years under Moscow, the Polish people still exists.

Aside from Ukraine and Israel, the US (or EU) are not really protecting the integrity of any country's borders, not even theirs, and that's one of the main expectations for a defense body.

Considering that they also flood their allied countries with consumerist and anti-natalist propaganda, they are a real risk for their allied country's people, at least from a demographic point of view.

The Poles find your arguments unconvincing, and are the most ardently anti-Russian people in the EU. I don't blame them. The Ukrainians might agree, and are fighting a war because they very clearly think people like you are wrong.

Mind you, the arguments you then bring forward are drivel too. Demographics in Russia and its sphere of influence are worse than the west's. You talk about propaganda without thinking for even a moment of what sorts of propaganda is blared from the other side. You talk about organisations protecting its borders that literally can't - the US because it is on the other side of the Atlantic, the EU because it doesn't have the people.

None of these things are oit-there facts particularly tough to find out about. They only require you to look beyond the part of the world that is extremely online. I don't know why you keep insisting on things that (large) nations of people nigh-unanimously agree on are wrong without stopping to listen to them and see what they are talking about.

Without the lend-lease, USSR logistics would have potentially collapsed before reaching Germany, and the USSR would not have been able to keep their annexed territories way beyond 1939, which is where a lot of the modern grudge comes from.

Between this post and others, I don't think your model of how Europeans think and feel is a good one, east or west, nor do I think you quite understand what the EU does or even can do with its member states. Stefferi's post up there would be a good start for you to read; in short, immigration isn't as big a deal as you imply it is, and the EU has little influence on any particular nation's handling of it anyway.

and the EU has little influence on any particular nation's handling of it anyway.

This isn't as the ECHR, of which one must accept the authority of to join the EU, has significantly impeded the capability of countries to prevent illegal immigration.

Well not really, I would say that the situation is not as simple as that. Sometimes countries can take measures against illegal immigration with the unspoken consent of western Europe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pushbacks_in_Greece

https://twitter.com/ECHR_CEDH/status/1544958198125404161

https://ecre.org/greece-systematic-pushbacks-continue-by-sea-and-land-as-meps-demand-eu-action-deaths-up-proportionate-to-arrivals-number-of-people-in-reception-system-reduced-by-half-mitarachi-still-not/

If the ECHR had battalions, I might in fact agree. In practice, it doesn't, and countries that flout it see no consequences.

One doesn't need an army if words suffice. Which in this case they do; countries act accordingly and change laws after ECHR deems them incompatible with its interpretation of the convention.

Can you provide evidence to the contrary, that is, ECHR ruling against a state, which decides to ignore the judgement and doesn't make claimant whole?

First of all, the ECHR is not related to the EU; it is part of the Council of Europe, which includes all European countries except Belarus and Russia, the latter having been expelled this year due to the invasion.

Quoting Wikipedia:

The court lacks enforcement powers. Some states have ignored ECtHR verdicts and continued practices judged to be human rights violations. (...)

The number of non-implemented judgements rose from 2,624 in 2001 to 9,944 at the end of 2016, 48% of which had gone without implementation five years or more. In 2016, all but one of the 47 member countries of the Council of Europe had not implemented at least one ECtHR verdict in a timely fashion, although most non-implemented verdicts concern a few countries: Italy (2,219), Russia (1,540), Turkey (1,342), and Ukraine (1,172).

The article has a few examples of non-implemented judgments.

I don't get that last part. Claimant whole? I don't know how to parse that.

Probably "make the claimant whole". Read claimant as plaintiff/complaining party. Make whole as in do something to resolve the complaining parties issues to their/the courts satisfaction. It doesn't make much sense here since the assumption would be that a state would ignore the judgement for the purpose of not acting in the ways the complaining party would want to make them whole.

More comments

Germany and Russia have history of long periods of peace and mutual economic development with burts of wars or proxy wars as they inevitably clash for geopolitical reasons only to make peace again for economic reasons.

Poland has history of being subjugated by both, although economic background is similar. This makes Poles much more cautious and paranoid.

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