Patrick Wintour
Adviser to Poland’s president says Russia’s Syria intervention
demonstrated to US that its diplomatic ‘pivot to Asia’ was a mistake
Vladimir
Putin’s new geopolitical ambitions have led the US to realise it made a
strategic mistake turning away from Europe and
making a pivot to Asia, the foreign affairs adviser to the Polish president has
said.
Krzysztof Szczerski urged the west to recognise that the Russian
president was no longer simply seeking to restore his country’s dominance in
former Soviet states such as Ukraine,
but to adopt a more dominant military posture across the globe.
He told the Guardian: “It is now a strategy of geopolitical
confrontation, so the next strikes of Putin are not guaranteed to be in the
post-Soviet sphere. It could be anywhere in the world. It is wrong to think
that Putin has narrow territorial limits. Syria has
shown that is not the case.”
Szczerski said Putin’s Syrian intervention last year showed Russia had
the capacity to move large amounts of equipment at speed across a great
distance without their preparations being noticed. “His capacity to set these
new challenging fronts around the world should be an alarm call,” he said.
Poland
is hosting a Nato summit in July and is pressing the alliance to increase itsmilitary presence in
eastern Europe by stationing two heavy brigades. They
would be underpinned by regular joint military drills and become a core part of
Nato defence plans.
Szczerski said on Friday that Poland was
pleased by the US decision, announced at the beginning of the month by the
American defence secretary, Ash Carter, to quadruple its investment in defence
equipment to $3.4bn (£2.4bn) in a “European reassurance initiative”.
He said: “This signal of Obama to quadruple the amount
of money on the eastern flank is a sign that something has changed the other side
of the Atlantic. America, for the first time in a couple of years, is coming
back to Europe. They realised that this pivot to Asia was a mistake.”
Putin is a
bigger threat to Europe’s existence than Isis
Poland wants Nato to station the two heavy brigades – typically
between 3,000 and 5,000 troops – on Polish soil in response to Russia’s intervention
in Ukraine, where Moscow denies it is actively
assisting pro-Russian rebels.Nato has so far been reluctant to station troops permanently in central Europe, with some states wary of violating a 1997 Nato-Russia agreement on the size of forces the alliance can have in former Warsaw pact countries, of which Poland is one.
Szczerski said: “Nato should be present on the eastern flank because Russia on the other side of the border is building its offensive capacity in the region. Their offensive capacities should be matched. It is Russia that is defining the level of security in the region by its acts and by its decisions.
“Nato should come back to its roots so it is an alliance that is guaranteeing the defence security of its own territory in a cohesive way so it should be able to defend every member of our alliance. That means reinforcement and presence.”
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