EU elites have been lining up in euphoric droves to celebrate the passage of the Lisbon Treaty. Having fudged, connived, bullied and browbeaten the final hold-outs, the creation of an EU super-state will now take its greatest leap forward.
Contrast the throngs of headlines over Lisbon’s passage with the EU’s response to Russia’s simulation of a nuclear attack on Poland. A Polish newspaper recently revealed that Moscow simulated a war game in which Russian armed forces invaded Poland and nuclear missiles were fired. Eerily similar to the propaganda methods adopted by Moscow during the Russia-Georgia war, Poland was labeled an aggressor country. Speaking in Washington this week, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski drew attention to Russia’s gamed deployment of 900 tanks during this exercise.
Brussels’ silence has been deafening; not a word of condemnation has escaped the lips of the elites who have manically pursued the suprantionalization of foreign policy within the EU. With wanton appeasement, Brussels has made it clear that it has no intentions of coming to Poland’s defense over this massive provocation.
Polish MP Karol Karski has formally protested to the European Commission over this matter. One of the driving elements of the Lisbon Treaty is the formation of a single foreign and defense policy which will allow the EU to ‘speak with one voice’. Allowing Moscow’s maneuvers to go unanswered demonstrates how loudly that single voice will be raised in Warsaw’s defense if push-comes-to-shove.
Warsaw has traditionally looked to NATO for security and the EU for commerce. The EU has long been unhappy with that arrangement. Its relentless integrationist tendencies are conceived to centralize members’ power in one unelected body, and to restrain the hyperpuissance of the United States. Worse still for Warsaw, Washington could not be less interested in this region of the world right now. President Obama’s commitment to resetting relations with Russia trumps any interest in Central and Eastern Europe, demonstrably proven by its willful abandonment of the Third Site missile defense installations without pre-consultation with Poland and the Czech Republic. As Economist commentator Edward Lucas bluntly states, Obama “does not care very much” about European security.
NATO needs to respond to Russia. NATO needs to honor its Article 4 treaty obligation and plan against Moscow’s threat to the territorial integrity, political independence and security of one of its members. The EU needs to abandon its foolish and foolhardy attempts to counter U.S. leadership in Europe through the Lisbon Treaty. And Warsaw must realize that its warm embrace of the Lisbon Treaty has sent Washington the very dangerous message that its engagement in Central and Eastern Europe is no longer needed when nothing could be further from the truth.
