WGA 2020 | Poland | Conclusions

Conclusions

Question:
Overall, in what ways and with what success has your country implemented a WGA? What would you consider the success factors underpinning a WGA in your country?

Poland Expert

Adam Balcer

Lecturer, Centre of East European Studies (SEW), University of Warsaw

Adam Balcer is a Political Scientist specialising in the area of Central-Eastern Europe, the Black Sea region and Polish foreign policy. He works also as a National Researcher at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and a Lecturer at the Centre of East European Studies (SEW) at the University of Warsaw. He cooperates on the permanent basis with the journals Nowa Europa Wschodnia (New Eastern Europe) and the Aspen Review Central Europe as well as the website ‘Dialog Forum: Perspektiven aus der Mitte Europas’. He also hosts ‘Lechistan’, a podcast about Poland’s historical relations with the Muslim world in association with the radio station TOK FM. Adam served as an Expert in the Balkan section of the Department of Central Europe (2001–2009) and Project Leader of the Turkish programme at the Centre for Eastern Studies (2005–2009). He has also been Director of the ‘Enlargement and Neighbourhood’ programme at demosEUROPA–Centre for European Strategy (2009–2013), a Member of the Advisory Group to the Committee of Foreign Relations of the Polish Parliament (2010–2012), and Adviser at the Presidential Expert Program (2013–2015). In 2015, Adam was Director of the annual conference ‘Polish Eastern Policy’, the largest event in Poland dedicated to Eastern Europe. In addition to numerous articles and reports, he has authored the books Polska na globalnej szachownicy (Poland on the Global Chessboard), Orzel i Polksiezyc. 600 lat polskiej publicystyki poswieconej Turcji (The Eagle and the Crescent: 600 Years of Polish Publications about Turkey) and Turcja, Wielki Step i Europa Srodkowa (Turkey, the Great Steppe and Central Europe).

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Poland’s considerable economic, diplomatic and military potential led it to elaborate official documents dedicated to a WGA to foreign conflicts and crises. However, the operationalisation of the WGA in foreign affairs has been only moderately success. Poland’s particular preoccupation with hard security has prompted it to deploy Polish soldiers, monitors, police officers, advisers and border guards abroad, but these resources receive very limited civil assistance, lack a supporting diplomatic presence on the ground, and are insufficiently reinforced by Polish ODA.

Poland’s WGA regarding foreign affairs also suffers from the general and structural deficiencies of Polish state institutions, such as the unsatisfactory coordination between them, institutional rivalries and the strength of informal networks. In fact, Poland’s WGA regarding foreign affairs represents an exceptionally interesting case at present, as the capabilities of the state structures engaged in the WGA are rapidly deteriorating. This negative trend stems from the fact that Poland has been experiencing a structural transformation of its political system since the national elections of 2015 from a liberal democracy based on a division of powers towards a ‘majoritarian’ democracy with authoritarian elements that is dismantling the rule of law. What’s more, due to the high level of factionalism within the ruling elite, its opaqueness and its inclination to reject technocratic and meritocratic criteria, the unprecedented scale of capture of state institutions that has occurred in the wake of the 2015 elections has injected more unpredictability into decision-making processes and more volatility into efforts to coordinate activities within and between state institutions.

The exceptional polarisation of Poland’s political landscape (e.g. between the government and the opposition) is also contributing to a weakening of the operationalisation of the WGA regarding foreign affairs, especially when it comes to ODA. In consequence, even though the PiS government is continuing to develop new comprehensive strategies promoting the WGA, successfully implementing them has become much more difficult than in the past. In fact, the Strategy for Responsible Development (Ministry of Investment and Development 2017), which includes a robust external component, largely remains just a strategy on paper more than two years after its announcement.

Moreover, the negative trends related to Poland’s WGA to foreign crises and conflicts may strengthen considerably in the years ahead. The PiS won the national elections in October 2019 and re-established a single-party government. Most probably, the process of de-democratisation and, by default, the PiS’s capture of the state will substantially accelerate and will further aggravate tensions with EU institutions and key EU member states. In accordance with its ‘sovereigntist’ vision of Europe, the PiS government is also likely to pursue its policy of distancing itself from the EU mainstream. Such a scenario will further hamper the operationalisation of Poland’s WGA related to foreign affairs.

Poland Report