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Monday marked the 75th anniversary of one of the ghastliest events in history, the German invasion of Poland that launched the Second World War.

Sixteen days after the Nazi invasion, the Soviets invaded from the east. Independent Poland disappeared from the map of Europe, and unspeakable atrocities were committed against her people by Nazis and Soviets, who later went to war against each other. (Russians who throw around the accusation about "Nazis" in Ukraine today might remember whose forebears made an alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939.)

Today, Germany and Poland are both admirable countries. Poland's Prime Minister was recently elected president of the European Council, a tip of the hat. Both are members of the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Until recently, Poles believed they had achieved something almost unheard of in their history: friendly relations with Germany and acceptable relations with Russia. Now, they cannot be sure – not after the Russian annexation of Crimea, the stirring-up of trouble in eastern Ukraine and the chauvinist talk from President Vladimir Putin.

In a loose historical comparison, what is unfolding in Russian foreign policy and what passes for intellectual discourse in that country is reminiscent of pan-Slavism in the 19th and early 20th century, whereby Mother Russia believed it had special responsibility for and interest in certain Balkan entities. This pan-Slavism led to Russia's belief that it had to protect Serbia from Austria-Hungary, which led to the first matches being struck to ignite the First World War.

The idea, now apparently widely accepted in Russia, that it has responsibilities to people of Russian descent in other countries has profoundly unsettling consequences for many countries.

Look at the map of Europe. There are minorities everywhere: Hungarians in Romania and Slovakia, Czechs and Slovaks in each others' territory, ethnic minorities throughout the Balkans, Macedonians in Greece.

The territorial boundaries of postwar Europe were largely deemed to be inviolate (although not when Yugoslavia disintegrated). Now, this assumption and the international law that underpinned it are being directly challenged by Russia, which arrogates the right to intervene outside its borders and rearrange them to its satisfaction.

If you are a frontier state, as the Poles consider themselves to be because of a border shared with Ukraine and another with Belarus (an ally of Russia run by an autocrat), then you tend to be more nervous, less trusting and more desirous of some kind of firm stance against Russia. He is a crackpot, to be sure, but the so-called Russian journalist who recently suggested throwing his country's weight around by dropping a nuclear weapon on, say, Warsaw, was bound to capture some attention in Poland.

If you are further removed geographically but still economically linked with Russia, like Germany, then you are less aggressive, more cautious and if not more trusting then at least more eager to talk. And if your population, owing to the last war and its ingrained memories of German-inflicted agonies, has developed a deeply ingrained reluctance to take military action, then you adopt a different stance toward Russia than the Poles.

Many variances of these differing Polish and German perspectives exist within NATO (Stephen Harper's government leans toward the Polish view) about how to handle the new Russian reality. The situation has taken most NATO countries by surprise, with the possible exception of the Poles, who never trusted Russians to embrace Western-style democracy and peaceful co-existence.

Russia is not planning an invasion of Europe, but rather the dismembering or enfeeblement of targeted small areas that are contiguous to itself. The danger, of course, is that Russia and Ukraine will find themselves in an escalating conflict that leads to a wider war that drags others in.

This creeping (and creepy) approach has made Mr. Putin hugely popular at home; Russia's liberal voices have been rendered marginal. He understands that NATO will make no military advance against Russia, and that the rhetoric directed at Russia is so much hot air.

Relations cannot be as they were so recently between the West and Russia. Additional economic sanctions and forward-stationing of NATO troops to Germany's east are appropriate steps, but no one should assume they will do much good in changing Russia's political direction.

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