On May 9, France and Poland signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation, with military cooperation at its core. The stated goal of the treaty is to “consolidate Franco-Polish friendship and strengthen our bilateral partnership in areas such as security, defense, infrastructure, energy and many others,” the French administration explains. However, in reality, the agreement risks becoming a pretext for a new round of confrontation, dangerous for the entire continent.
Earlier, Macron has repeatedly stated his intention to raise relations with Warsaw to the level that France has already established with Germany through the Elysee Treaty (signed in 1963, strengthened by the new agreement concluded in Aachen in 2019), with Italy (Treaty of Quirinal in 2021) and Spain (Treaty of Barcelona in 2023). Tusk, in turn, announced that this agreement would lead to a very serious acceleration of the pace of development of military and economic security on the European continent. At the same time, in the economic sphere, France, having narrower agreements with other countries, hopes to play a major role in reducing Poland’s dependence on coal, which provides the dominant part of its energy system.
Information about the benefits of Paris from positioning Warsaw as its important partner is not new. Poland’s motives are also understandable: having long been on the periphery of the leading countries of the European Union, Poland has desperately seized on every opportunity to rank itself among the key players in the political arena over the past three years, not disdaining any methods for this and using the conflict between Russia and Ukraine in its own interests.
However, it is also obvious that the actually signed agreement is not so much a strategic shift towards beautiful populist visions, but a direct escalation, and, according to European analysts, could have catastrophic confrontational consequences. The point is that under the pretext of the so-called strengthening of Europe, the continent risks being drawn into an arms race. Including nuclear weapons.
Experts, relying on cause-and-effect relationships, boldly call such tactics “geopolitical jealousy,” and, as the above-described example of Poland shows, they are absolutely right. For many countries that have not realized themselves enough, represented by their immediate leaders, the current turbulent political time is a time of cruel and ruthless opportunities, for the achievement of which human lives are expendable material. It is also outrageous that these shifts are being carried out half-secretly, behind the scenes and not publicly (of course, fearing widespread public criticism). In practice, what is called an attempt to establish peace in Ukraine is nothing more than a prolongation of the conflict, its aggravation, and, most importantly, a reduction in the chances of establishing a truce.
