Welcome to European Tribune. It's gone a bit quiet around here these days, but it's still going.
Display:
This is really interesting, thanks for your insights. It seems the Poles have lots of enemies, and manage to keep their friend sufficiently far away, across the Atlantic.

Still, how come France has managed to get into the business of repairing its relations with Germany right after WWII (Adenauer, de Gaulle) ?
Is there any hope that Poland will one day realize it's time to work towards having friends in Europe ? Is it on the agenda for anyone over there ?

by balbuz on Thu Aug 21st, 2008 at 10:13:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]
There's been a lot of work in repairing relations with Germany. There are three catches. First is the large viscerally anti-German segment of the Polish population, which includes the twins - so that sort of didn't help things. The issue of how the Germans treat the history of the postwar expulsions is another - and there's blame on both sides of that dispute, with German political pandering to the Vertriebene lobby and Polish nationalists objecting to any commemoration of what was a horrible tragedy for the Germans.  Finally, the issue of German relations with Putin has recently caused problems, particularly under Schroeder. But overall, it's not that bad.

On Russia, with the current mindset of the Russian elites, not a chance. You would need a Russia willing to consistently and strongly express regret and apologies  for 1939-41 and 1945-89 while treating the break up of the Soviet Union and it's East European empire as a clearly positive event. I don't mean that they can't express regrets at the turmoil and suffering that accompanied it, but the actual loss of empire itself has to be seen as a good thing by the Russian elites. At the moment they are doing the reverse. As long as that is the case, the Poles will treat the Russians the way any former colony would treat it's former imperial masters who clearly see the loss of the colonial empire as bad, and believe that they deserve a certain deference in their former colonies.

by MarekNYC on Thu Aug 21st, 2008 at 10:54:43 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Display:

Occasional Series