On Thursday, March 16th, 2023, Andrzej Duda, the President of Poland, announced at a press conference, his plan to give Ukraine about a dozen MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine, which would make it the first NATO Member State to fulfill Kyiv’s increasingly urgent requests for warplanes, as Russia edges closer to foreclosing on the encircled city of Bakhmut in the longest, bloodiest, most destructive battle yet in the Ukraine war.
During the news conference in Warsaw, Duda explained that the first four of the MiG-29s would arrive “within the next few days,” while the rest would come at a later date after being serviced for repair, upgrades, or modernization.
“When it comes to the MiG-29 aircraft, which are still operating in the defense of Polish airspace, a decision has been taken at the highest levels, we can say confidently that we are sending MiGs to Ukraine,” Duda said.
Poland has a total of 28 MiG-29 jets. The multi-role fighter jets, nicknamed Fulcrum by NATO, were designed by the Soviet Union but first exported to Poland in the 1980s. These 28 MiG-29 jets represent only a portion of Poland’s 94 fighter jets.
The plan to provide Ukraine with its old stock of MiG-29 jets is not the result of an immediate, spontaneous, unpredictable process of decision making but part and parcel of its plan, already extremely advanced, to rearm ahead of its direct involvement in the Ukraine war.
Since Poland concluded a contract with several of South Korea’s arms dealers less than a year ago, there is reason to suspect that Poland planned—at that time—to send Ukraine the MiGs it would replace with South Korean FA-50s Golden Eagle light fighter jets or American F-35 Lightning II stealth fighters. The same may be said about its fleet of Leopard 2 tanks.
Since the start of the war last year, Poland is the leading NATO Member State driving Ukraine’s war effort. It is the first country to send German-made Leopard 2 tanks. Right after South Korea delivered its first batch of South Korean tanks, Poland staged a publicity stunt where the President handed four of the Leopard 2 tanks over to the Ukrainian tank crews Poland trained. It is now the first country to send fighter jets to Ukraine.
Poland is one of the primary beneficiaries of the Ukraine war. Prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, Poland’s population suffered from a declining birth rate. It is now home to more than 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees, all of whom are scheduled to offsets its declining birth rate, especially the single Ukrainian women or young widows fleeing for refuge after the deaths of their husbands in ‘meat grinders’ on the eastern front in Ukraine.
With Poland’s birth rate having decreased by 40% over the last 30 years, the country’s excess death rate of 29% is the third highest in Europe. New data from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics’ agency show that in 2021 Poland recorded 520,000 deaths—its highest annual figure since World War II—with no more than 332,000 live births, the lowest annual figure in that same period.
It is clear from these statistics that one of Poland’s primary motivations for the Ukraine war is to offset its own population’s decline with that of Ukraine’s. The more than 1.5 million refugees is three times the number of deaths from 2021. It is five times the number of live births.
The Ukrainians are of a lighter complexion than the people from Africa or the Middle East, whose perilous emigrations to countries like Poland are a source of endless cries of foul about a “refugee crisis” throughout the European Union.
Poland’s Decision a Turning Point in European Rearmament
White House officials said Thursday that Poland’s “sovereign decision” would not affect “our calculus” when deciding whether to send American F-16 fighters to Ukraine. Although Biden said earlier this year that the U.S. would not provide Ukraine with fighter jets, his pattern of reversals is the primary behavioral cue by which to predict their eventual arrival.
Although the U.S., U.K., and Germany have similarly rejected Ukraine’s requests for fighter aircraft, the logic of escalations portends a reversal not unlike the reversal these countries displayed in their refusal to send Main Battle Tanks. In fact, the U.S., U.K., and Germany have already started to deliver MBTs en masse.
Boris Pistorius has so far denied any knowledge of Poland’s decision.
“So far, everyone has agreed that it’s not the time to send fighter jets,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters. “I don’t have any confirmation from Poland yet that this has happened.”
Analysts at the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, have already begun to suggest a reversal. “This might be a turning point for when Western capitals start to reevaluate their previous decisions to refuse to send Ukraine fixed wing aircraft,” says George Barros, an analyst specializing in Eurasia at the Institute.
Indeed, there is every reason to believe Poland’s decision to send fighter jets to Ukraine is “a turning point” but for an altogether different reason. In contrast with tanks, Poland’s decision to send fighter jets to Ukraine is significant for two reasons. 1) Poland is the first country to send fighter jets. 2) Sending fighter jets is the last weapon, save a nuclear bomb, in a hierarchy of weapons sent thus far to Ukraine for the war. If you imagine the escalations as turning on a dial, you would have reached the last point at which to ratchet tensions up. Poland’s decision is therefore a major turning point in escalations.
The escalations, as they have occurred thus far, point to an underlying series of actions, all of which characterize Member States in the NATO alliance to varying degrees at different stages or events.
It is clear that leading Member States of the NATO alliance have seized upon the and exacerbated the Ukraine war to justify an agenda of militarism and imperialism primarily consisting of major actions, especially within rearmaments. The major actions of this agenda are the following:
- the exploitation of Ukraine as a military staging ground, its people as cannon fodder, and their economy as the “world largest construction site” for the sake of deploying, testing, experimenting with, or gathering data on advanced weaponry;
- the promised dispatch of combat effective heavy weaponry from Member States in the NATO alliance, whose ultimate failure to deliver is preconceived prior to the promise in the form of a “critical need” for repair, upgrades, modernization, or replacements, all of which stimulate the “military industrial base”;
- the discharge of Soviet era weaponry to Ukraine as “military assistance,” creating a “gap” in defenses the NATO Member State’s government seeks to fill with replacements from US approved major arms dealers such as Hyundai in South Korea;
- the depletion of Soviet era munitions, whose scarcity as a major “crisis” causes decommissioned factories to begin producing munitions all over again or as a basis for the delegitimization of Soviet era weapons, meriting replacement by a US approved major arms dealers. The delegitimization proceeds on the same level as it does for the service of nuclear reactors, where Westinghouse supplants Rosatom.
The result of these processes, all of which are combining together, is accelerating rearmament of the entire continent of Europe from as far west as Portugal, Spain whose governments promise Leopards, through Germany, to the, Baltic, Nordic or Scandinavian states, whose governments long ago promised Leopards.
The rearmament, which is happening in just the last year, an extremely short period of time, coincides with significant increases in spending for these countries’ defense budgets, especially Poland’s.
In the New York Times, for instance, the Polish Prime Minister, Mateusz Morawiecki is quoted as saying, “[A] broad consensus on the need to support Ukraine … has allowed the government [in Warsaw] to ramp up spending on the military, which is now around 3 percent of gross domestic product, far above the 2 percent set by NATO but missed by most members of the alliance.”
“If weapons and other military equipment ordered by the government arrive this year, the figure would hit 4 percent. This is going to be the highest portion of all the countries in NATO, including the U.S., as a proportion of G.D.P. on the military, ” Mr. Morawiecki said.
Along with rearmament and increased defense spending, the old, historic, decades long tensions, latent up until now, are beginning to surface disagreements.
In an article emphasizing Poland’s new role in Europe entitled, “Having Been Proved Right on Russia, Poland Savors its New Influence in NATO,” the New York Times reports on February 22nd, 2023:
“There is already irritation in Germany over the Law and Justice party’s revival of the issue of reparations for World War II, a matter that Berlin considers long closed. Poland is insisting that Germany still owes more than a trillion dollars for the carnage caused by Nazi Germany.”
The reparations, which Poland requests not for the sake of any recompense with European Jewery, as evidenced by the Law and Justice Party’s criminalization of speech and historical research into Polish anti-Semitisim, are directed at the achievement of a competitive war advantage, on the execution of the plans for which the Polish Law and Justice Party have already secured substantial gains by way of its decision to rearm with South Korea rather than Germany, bypassing its competitor Germany.
Germany, which not only seeks to court but openly compete with Poland in the arms race, experiences its own tensions now with Switzerland.
Constrained by the Hague Convention of Hague Convention of 1907, “The Swiss have so far blocked German efforts to buy fresh ammunition, ” even though the Swiss company OerlikonBührle, a subsidiary of Nazi Germany’s best manufacturer of arms, Rheinmetall, is “effectively the only producer of ammunition for the Gepard, a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun of which Berlin has sent dozens to Ukraine,” as reported in the New York Times’ on March 13th, 2023 in an article entitled, “Swiss Neutrality Is Tested In Time of War in Europe.”
Although Switzerland proclaims and “maintains” a stance of neutrality, it’s stance is, at best, questionable, if not altogether ignored from time to time. Switzerland now openly considers NATO membership, which would undo years of its role in Europe as neutral pro forma. These discussions lift the veil from its secret diplomacy. The Ukraine war is therefore exposing and laying bare the countries who contribute to its expansion.
The Myth of a Ukrainian Counteroffensive
Poland’s decision will likely apply pressure on other Western nations to provide military aircraft amid pleas from Ukraine ahead of a likely counter-offensive this Spring.
It is widely circulated myth of propaganda that these weapons, which cannot contribute to but are bound to fail in the hands of Ukraine’s military General Staff in response to a decision to launch a counteroffensive, are intended to serve that purpose.
At times the myth of a Ukrainian counteroffensive is directed at Zaporizhzhia, a Nuclear Power Plant, whose rescue from the evil machinations of Vladimir V Putin ensures a new investment is made not in Rosatom but Westinghouse, or Melitopol, whose defenses throughout the city include the dispersement of Drachenzähne, “Die bis zu 1,20 Meter hohen Panzersperren sehen aufgrund ihrer Pyramidenform, zu Hunderten nebeneinander gereiht, aus wie Zähne,” as reported by Tagsspiegel on February 2nd, 2023. Is it Zaporizhzhia? Is ultimately Melitopol?
The myth of a Ukrainian counteroffensive, on which the NATO alliance hedges its bets to propagandize a procrastinated retreat from Bakhmut, is designed, Ukrainian analysts say, “to sever the land bridge the Russians have seized that links the Crimean Peninsula to the eastern Donbas region,” as reported by the New York Times on March 14th, 2023 in an article entitled, “Russian Attacks Yield Little but Casualties in Wide Arc of Ukraine’s East.”
If Ukrainian forces, whom “Russian Forces Attack [in] Bakhmut From 3 Angles as Battles Intensifies,” cannot even perform–against the backdrop of “triple digit losses–a tactical withdrawal from the city,” whose line of communication for logistics is no longer the M03 but Highway T0504, then there can be no expectation of a Ukrainian counteroffensive against Zaporizhzhia or Melitopol, especially with a flank fully exposed in the north. Militarily, there is simply no way.
The collapse of Ukrainian armed forces, whose lines of defense, albeit staggered in terrain more favorable to Ukraine than to Russia in ensuing onslaught following the fall of Bakhmut, is already well underway. The meager amount of tanks or aircraft, which Member States from the NATO alliance, primarily Poland, have sent to Ukraine, is not schedule to delay, obstruct or impede its eventual collapse.
The collapse of Ukrainian armed forces, nonetheless, portends the entrance of the active participants of the war, Poland, the United States, or one or more Member State from the NATO alliance, into it as directly involved, vastly expanding the conflict from a regional to a European, cross-continental world war between nuclear armed nations.