Central Europe warns against a second ‘Munich betrayal’

MUNICH, Germany – “We must accept that keeping EU member states enthusiastic will be a huge challenge,” warned Poland’s Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki in a podcast Last week. “We have woken the West, so we cannot let it sleep again.”

Leaders from Central Europe, the Baltics and Scandinavia, including Morawiecki, have an instinctively different and much more stomach-churning outlook on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine than their Western European counterparts.

Countries that were once crushed under the Russian boot – or anxious neighbors of a bully Soviet Union – have reacted to war with what psychologists call the survival response. And it traces not only the recent past, but a history that goes back centuries, forcing these countries to total and unrelenting Russian defeat.

They see their future as inextricably tied to that of Ukraine, and a Russian victory – partial or otherwise – as their defeat as well. For them, there can be no frozen conflict, and no talks that could leave an opportunity for Russian President Vladimir Putin to regroup his forces and come back to intimidate them.

And this fear of a clear and present threat is here informing cajoling talks with Western European counterparts at the Munich Security Conference – one of the most influential forums for global diplomacy – as warplanes and more tanks rush to central European Ukraine. and for a clear understanding that the fighting could only end when Russia was catastrophically defeated.

At previous conferences in Munich, journalists and observers were more drawn to the interplay between the adversaries. But this time, without Russia or Iran — both countries uninvited — the focus is on the Western allies and how they will combine and move on Ukraine.

There will be much talk of unity in the next two days and self-appreciation for the unity shown till date. It will be an opportunity to demonstrate the strength and purposefulness of the transatlantic alliance. But the looming fear for Morawiecki and his comrades is that Western Europe will tire and, if an opportunity for a negotiated solution presented itself – however dubious – they would seize it.

And it may not just be Western European.

After a meeting of Western defense chiefs in Ramstein on Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Western partners had agreed to deliver more air defense systems, tanks, artillery and shells, as well as training for the Ukrainian military. “This contact group has made it clear that we will support Ukraine’s fight for independence for a long time,” Austin told reporters.

but the US authorities have Allegedly is urging Kiev to make significant gains on the battlefield as soon as possible while the West has a strong political appetite to take it back and before the Republican-led US Congress begins to reduce support in earnest , or the election cycle gets under way and the question of a more cautious exit strategy in President Joe Biden’s administration is beginning to press.

Central European leaders do not view this war through the lens of election cycles, and their nervousness is based on history – including the history of Munich.

Earlier, notably in 1938, when I was writing this, Britain’s Neville Chamberlain and France’s Edouard Daladier had been left in limbo when they signed the infamous accord that gave the Sudetenland to Germany 85 years earlier . check appeasement is known as munich betrayalOr the Munich Betrayal.

Then, after the war, there were Yalta and Potsdam – the conferences at which Joseph Stalin took off his boot over central Europe.

But, when the Berlin Wall came down, Central Europe and the Baltics could finally stop looking east with bewilderment and look west, shaping their post-Soviet identity and direction. They had escaped the trap of history – or so they thought.

For them, joining the European Union and NATO was motivated by different motives than other Western European countries. According to Polish historian Jaroslaw Kuysz, founder and editor of the weekly Kultura Liberalna, he thought these alliances represented insurance against being trapped again.

But, now – as throughout their history, from commissars to czars going even further back – “the East is back,” he said.

From the beginning, Russia’s invasion of the region was interpreted “not as an event, but as part of a longer historical process,” Kuijs said. And this belief is founded on the experience of previous generations, passed down through public and private education and shared at the kitchen table as families recount their history.

It also informed the welcome that Poles and other Central Europeans extended to Ukrainian refugees, in contrast to their rejection of those from other parts of the world. Poles say that historical reasons explain the different behavior, pointing to the proximity of Ukraine and the cultural and linguistic ties linking the two countries, as well as an underlying sentiment that could be described as retrospective sympathy. Is.

Asked about embracing fleeing Ukrainians, middle Europeans of all ages cite a moral duty and compassion, but they also highlight concerns about the escalating conflict. The horrors of Buka and Irpin, along with a volatile historical anxiety and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, have inspired a genetic shudder – shared by all of Russia’s neighbors.

Viewing the war as part of a historical process, as opposed to an event that could be ended arbitrarily or quickly, reshaped alliances in Central Europe. Established partnerships like the Visegrad Four are being sidelined by a group of countries stretching from Estonia to Bulgaria – Hungary being a notable exception – determined to bring this war to a definitive conclusion, however long it takes , and pulled back into a trap to make sure they are not.

Or, as Morawiecki put it: “We do more than others because we have more to win and more to lose than others.”