Ukraine war re-positions ‘the heart of Europe’ more eastwards…in Poland

Message on a wall in Warsaw. Photo by Dan Ojog on Unsplash

The Washington Post recently quoted US military intelligence officer and Center of European Policy Analysis non-resident fellow Chels Michta on the geopolitical shift underway in Europe. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said, had moved “Nato’s center of gravity”. The 31-nation defence alliance no longer seemed to rest on its traditional anchors, France and Germany. Instead, it was moving east, he said, towards Poland, its Baltic neighbours and other former Warsaw Pact countries.

The piece was a meditation on Poland’s changing place in Europe, now so prominently at the “heart of Europe”. That’s not because of geographic location but because of Poland’s strong cultural and political convictions about the need to oppose Russia’s aggression.

The growing perception that Poland’s place in Europe is changing centres on acknowledgment that the central and eastern parts of the continent feel the weight of history more deeply than western …