One thing is clear: an important pivot towards Nato’s eastern flank is under way. “It does feel as if the centre of gravity has shifted eastwards in Europe,” General Ben Hodges, the former commanding general of US Army Europe, tells me. “Sweden and Finland have changed their defence postures, the Baltic states are standing firm, Romania is strengthening its military position in the Black Sea.” That’s on top of the dramatic modernisation of the Polish armed forces.
Europe’s traditional engine of integration, the Franco-German axis, looks pretty tired. It was President Macron, who once declared Nato to be brain dead, who has been calling for Europe’s strategic autonomy (“which really means security without the US”, says Hodges) and he dreamed of a common space with Russia ranging from Lisbon to Vladivostok. It was the French president and Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, who imagined President Putin could be talked out of staging an invasion. Poland and the Baltic states, meanwhile, had no doubt that the Nord Stream gas pipelines were part of a sinister strategy to make Europe, west and east, dependent on Russian energy. They were proved right.
The German rivalry with Poland will, however, have a toxic effect on the outcome of the war if it is allowed to fester on. “Germany thinks it is in the right on migration, on the financially irresponsible south, on the rule of law in the east,” said Buras, “but now Germany is on the wrong side of the moral argument — so the Polish government saw it as their moment to seize the high ground. We have been right on energy security, on dealing with Putin, on defence spending.”
If Poland really wants to capitalise on this chance to become a big player then it has to do two things. First it has to stick to its ambitious military plans and ensure that the US honours its role as a de facto frontline state. And second, it has to find more ways to co-operate with Germany in aiding the fight against Putin.
The two losers of this first year of war are thus clear: the Russian military which has been exposed as badly led and corrupt, and Macron who has been shown to be out of touch with the East. Scholz, of course, has been the butt of criticism throughout, yet he has acted quickly to correct Germany’s energy dependency on Moscow.
