If the US-European alliance, which guarantees freedom and security, does not expand eastwards as a result of the current war, it would be a historic defeat of all Eastern European universalism, writes Jan Rokita in an article published on Wednesday at the Lithuanian portal 15min.lt.
“The phenomenon of that EU state”
Today, the Western Alliance fulfills the same mission of security and opportunities for civilization development that the Republic of Poland fulfilled in the past, as a union of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians, Rokita emphasizes in the text on the occasion of the Day of the Constitution on May 3.
According to him, “the phenomenon of that EU state was that it spread in the vast territories of Eastern Europe (up to the present Donbas, before which a bloody war is raging), a political order unprecedented for that world, based on noble democracy , the rule of law and religious tolerance’, and when in the eighteenth century the EU state ‘lost the ability to guarantee the security of this vast area, there was a common historical catastrophe of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians’.
Regardless of the disputes and civil wars that the four united nations have waged throughout history, the time of those four centuries has shaped their national character. From them came the Polish “Solidarity”, which had a decisive influence on the new shape of Europe at the end of the 20th century, as well as on the current heroic defense of the freedom of Ukraine against a new attack from Moscow. The nations that once made up the vast Commonwealth have learned over the centuries that they may simply cease to exist if they fail to defend themselves against the constant threat from the East.
Rokita convinces.
“There is no more important question in European politics today.
For this reason, according to the author, the contemporary political aspiration of the nations that once co-created the Republic of Poland is to “reconstruct the former ‘safety zone’ that their common state once gave them”.
Without this aspiration, Poland and Lithuania would not have made a successful attempt to join NATO, even in the 1990s, when there might have been a false impression that peace in Europe was here to stay and that Moscow was finally on the West would seem. Without this effort, there would be no urgent call from President Zelensky to open for Ukraine the still closed gates of the Western alliance.
notes Rokita.
Therefore, for Poles, there is no more important question in European politics today than whether Eastern Europe, and Ukraine in particular, will eventually be included in the Euro-Atlantic security zone as a result of the ongoing war. This is because the Western Alliance today fulfills the same mission of security and opportunities for civilization development that the Republic of Poland fulfilled in the past, as a union of Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians and Lithuanians. So let’s be very clear: if this American-European alliance, which guarantees freedom and security, did not expand eastwards as a result of the current war, it would be a historic failure of all Eastern European universalism. As for the political future, not only Ukraine, but also Poland would lose this war miserably. And this regardless of how the war itself would go
says the publicist.
Jan Rokita’s article was written as part of the latest edition of the global project “We tell Poland to the world” carried out by the New Media Institute with the support of the Institute of National Remembrance, the Polish National Foundation, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Polish Press Agency. All texts of the project “We tell Poland to the world” are published (in all languages of the project) on the website www.WszystkoCoNajwazjsze.pl.
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olk/PAP
Source: wPolityce