Historical experiences, strategic culture, and strategic behavior: Poland in the anti-ISIS coalition

ABSTRACT

This article contributes to an explanation of why Poland, after a period of almost two years’ hesitation, decided to dispatch military forces to the United States-led coalition against the Islamic State in June 2016. The Polish case is examined by applying the concept of strategic culture, taking into account a state’s core military strategic beliefs and the historical experiences on which these beliefs are based. The case study shows that strategic culture shaped the Polish decision-making on the coalition, by predisposing the decision-makers toward a typical Polish behavior in international military operations, namely to exchange security benefits with important allies. The article also has implications for the general study of strategic culture, by specifying the relationship between historical experiences and strategic culture.

KEYWORDS:

• Coalition against the Islamic State
• historical experiences
• Poland
• strategic behavior
• strategic culture

Introduction

When Poland received assurances from the United States in the spring of 2016 that the continuous rotational presence of troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) on Polish territory would be enhanced, the Polish strategic leadership returned the favor by sending military forces to the coalition against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS, also known as IS, ISIL, and Daesh). This quid pro quo behavior is a common trait in Polish responses to invitations to join international military operations after the Cold War, evidenced in particular by Polish behavior in conjunction with the interventions into Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The overall objective of the operation, formulated by the coalition leader, such as defeating the Talibans in 2001, toppling the Hussein regime in 2003, or combating ISIS from 2014, was not the major reason for Polish participation in these endeavors. Rather, by taking part in these operations, Poland sought to gain security benefits of its own, aimed at balancing the threat posed by Russia. As demonstrated in previous research, by contributing to the Afghanistan and Iraq operations, Polish decision-makers tried to increase the support for Polish security among important NATO allies, in particular the United States (Dunn 2002, Lubecki 2005, Terlikowski 2013, Doeser 2013, 2016a, Piekarski 2014, Doeser and Eidenfalk 2016).

The empirical aim of this article is to contribute to an explanation of why Poland, after a period of almost two years’ hesitation, decided to send military forces to the anti-ISIS coalition in the summer of 2016. The main argument is that the Polish case can be explained by using the concept of strategic culture, since it takes into consideration a country’s core beliefs in military strategic matters and the historical experiences on which these beliefs are based. Polish strategic culture has been studied in previous research (Zaborowski and Longhurst 2003, Osica 2004, Chappell 2010, Terlikowski 2013, Szpyra and Trochowska 2014, Doeser 2016a). However, this article adds to our understanding of Polish strategic culture by empirically demonstrating the influence of culture on a case of Polish security policy decision-making, which has not been the subject of previous research. The article sets out to answer the following research question: How did strategic culture predispose the Polish strategic leadership toward a decision to send military forces to the anti-ISIS coalition on 17 June 2016?

Furthermore, the article has implications that go beyond Polish strategic culture and Polish behavior in the anti-ISIS coalition. The relationship between the historical experiences of a state and the state’s cultural dispositions is often discussed on a theoretical level in the strategic culture literature (Gray 1981, Klein 1988, Hyde-Price 2004, Lantis 2014). However, the relationship is rarely empirically investigated in detail. This article furthers our understanding of strategic culture by more clearly specifying the relationship between history and culture, and by highlighting the influence of this relationship on the strategic behavior of a state. In addition, the article develops an analytical procedure, based on previous research, for studying the influence of historical experiences and culture on strategic behavior.

The remainder of the article is divided into four sections. In the following section, the concept of strategic culture is placed in context, is discussed, and then defined based on an ideational conceptualization, which understands culture as a shaping context for behavior. After that, the section continues with a discussion about the relationship between history and culture and ends with a presentation of the analytical procedure. The next section describes the character of Polish strategic culture, the historical experiences on which the culture is based, and the general strategic behavior of Poland in the post-Cold War era, ending before the initiation of the anti-ISIS coalition. This is followed by a section that attempts to explain the Polish decision-making on the coalition from September 2014 to June 2016, based on the preceding framework of strategic culture and historical experiences, and by using the analytical procedure presented earlier. In the final section, the main conclusions and wider implications of the article are summarized and discussed further.

Strategic culture and historical experiences

The concept of strategic culture focuses on a state’s core beliefs and assumptions in military strategic matters, including, inter alia, enduring assumptions about when, how and why force should be used, civil-military relations, and threats to the survival of the state. It was Jack Snyder (1977) who introduced the concept in a work on Soviet nuclear doctrine, thereby breaking with the dominant approach to strategic studies, based on the notion of states as rational actors reacting to each other’s behavior in a calculated way. Among the early contributions, the work of Colin Gray (1981) on American strategic culture also belongs to the classics. He argued that the historical experiences of states produce “modes of thought and action with respect to force”, which generate a unique set of “dominant national beliefs” regarding strategic choices (Gray 1981, p. 22). However, the field of strategic cultural studies began to expand rapidly first from the mid–1990s (Desch 1998). Researchers have since then described the character of the strategic culture of several states, mainly great powers. They have also used strategic culture to explain strategic behavior, which also is the purpose of this article. Previous research includes attempts to explain the choice between defensive and offensive military doctrines (Kier 1995), Germany’s reluctance to use military force (Duffield 1999), the organization of strategic decision-making in Britain and Germany (Freuding 2010), differences in the way that small states escalate in military operations (Angstrom and Honig 2012), and the willingness of different states to participate in military operations (O’Connor and Vucetic 2010, Britz 2016, Doeser 2016b, 2017, Mirow 2016, Becker 2017).

In spite of several contributions, there is no scholarly consensus on a definition of strategic culture or on how the concept should be applied in empirical studies. Previous research is often divided into three generations. The first, with scholars such as Snyder and Gray, used the concept to understand why different states approached strategic affairs in different ways. The second generation, including critical theorists such as Bradley Klein (1988), perceived culture as an instrument of hegemony. The third generation, emerging in the mid–1990s with scholars such as Alastair Iain Johnston (1995), tried to develop falsifiable theories of strategic culture. In recent years, a fourth generation, based on the tenets of social constructivism, has appeared, focusing primarily on competing subcultures on the domestic level and on strategic cultural change (Lantis 2002, Libel 2016).

The debate between first and third generation scholars is the most prominent in the literature on strategic culture. Third generation scholars perceived culture as an independent variable, separable from material and non-cultural factors, which produces a set of ranked preferences to guide strategic behavior (Johnston 1995). This led to criticism from first generation scholars such as Gray (1999), claiming that it is impossible to make a distinction between culture as a dependent and an independent variable, since strategic culture is a “shaping context for behavior”. According to Gray (1999), behavior and culture are inseparable, because behavior is carried out by actors who are “encultured” (p. 55). Thus, from this point of view, strategic culture is “an interpretive prism through which decision-makers view the strategic landscape. It is always there, both within individuals and institutions” (Poore 2003, p. 281).

This article takes as its point of departure the assumption that strategic culture is a shaping context for behavior. More specifically, strategic culture is here defined as an ideational context surrounding the decision-makers in a state at any one time, shaping which options are perceived as effective and productive by the decision-makers with regard to participation in military operations.¹ When faced with a strategic problem, decision-makers do not start with a “blank sheet”, but act based on “pre-existing” beliefs about effective and productive behavior (Meyer 2005, p. 527). Strategic culture, thus, predisposes decision-makers toward certain actions over others: “Some options will simply not be imagined. Of those that are contemplated, some are more likely to be rejected as inappropriate, ineffective, or counterproductive than others” (Duffield 1999, p. 772). Contrary to Gray (1999), this approach does not mean that an explanation of outcomes is impossible. Rather, the study can investigate the reasons for action, which can “be considered as part of the explanation (the ‘why-question’)” (Meyer 2005, p. 527).

What, then, are the sources of strategic culture? In previous research, sources encompass both material and ideational conditions, including historical experiences (Lantis 2014). Since the ontological assumptions of this article are based on an ideational understanding, material conditions such as geography, technology and natural resources do not have any independent causal power (Meyer and Strickmann 2011). However, geography, for example, may play a role in the evolution of a state’s strategic culture, under the condition that elites in the state perceived geography as vital for their military strategic choices at one point in time, and these beliefs were inherited by succeeding generations of decision-makers. What matters here are the historical experiences of geography or other material conditions, acquired by strategic decision-makers through instruction or imitation (Snyder 1977, p. 8). For instance, the different attitudes among European states regarding the use of force are, to some extent, “rooted in 20^th century history, particularly the experience of World War II” (Hyde-Price 2004, p. 325). For Germany, the war led to the emergence of a strategic culture embracing civilian power, while France concluded that they needed military resources to defend their national interests. Different historical experiences of World War II also shaped the different strategic cultures of Denmark and Norway on the one side, oriented toward NATO and the United States, and Sweden and Finland on the other side, oriented toward military non-alignment (see contributions in Edstrom and Gyllensporre 2014).

Furthermore, the article applies an analytical procedure that involves two steps. The first is to identify the character of Polish strategic culture, important historical experiences on which the culture is based and a typical Polish strategic behavior in international military operations after the Cold War, especially those led by the United States. The first step is based on government reports and previous empirical research on Polish foreign, security and defense policy by country experts (see list of references). The second step is to empirically demonstrate that strategic culture influenced the Polish decision to send military forces to the anti-ISIS coalition. To establish such a relationship, we should find that the decision follows the typical Polish strategic behavior identified in the first step, and that decision-makers in their speeches, statements and remarks explicitly link the decision to the historical and strategic cultural elements identified in the first step. Evidence of this kind should also be found in multiple sources from different decision-makers in key positions, and from different contexts. In the empirical section, examples of this are provided in the form of quotations. The second step is mainly based on government reports and on speeches and remarks made by members of what is here called the strategic leadership of Poland, which includes the president, prime minister, foreign minister, and defense minister. In Poland, the decision to use troops abroad is made by the cabinet or the prime minister; however, the president must sign the decision. The formal powers of parliament, comprising Senate (Higher House) and Sejm (Lower House), are very weak in this matter (Doeser 2016a, pp. 128–129).

Finally, critics of cultural approaches might argue that Poland’s decision to send forces to the coalition was a calculated response to the external political environment. However, this article is based on the ontological assumption that culture and perspectives such as realism, neorealism or neoclassical realism are not in opposition (Glenn 2009). Individual decision-makers are all encultured and act based on their culture (Gray 1999). Thus, if “decision-makers behave according to realist predictions, it is because of their culture, rather than of any external objective force” (Doeser and Eidenfalk 2018). As demonstrated below, Polish strategic culture is mainly the product of historical experiences, a condition not recognized at all by neorealists, nor fully considered by most realists and neoclassical realists.

Polish historical experiences, strategic culture and strategic behavior

In short, the strategic culture of Poland is characterized by a strong belief in territorial defense and a strong belief in the need for reliable security guarantees.² This culture has its roots in enduring historical experiences, including fear of great power intervention and fear of abandonment by allies.³ The culture predisposes Polish decision-makers toward a typical strategic behavior along the following broad lines: modernize territorial defense capabilities, and exchange security benefits with important allies. This behavior is what Polish strategic leaderships perceive as effective and productive action in international military operations. Thus, the argument here is that, if participation in a military operation is perceived to offer opportunities to modernize (Polish) territorial defense capabilities and/or to exchange security benefits with important allies, the Polish willingness to join the operation increases.

The relationship between historical experiences, strategic culture and strategic behavior is specified in Figure 1. The figure shows that historical experiences (the outer circle) shape strategic culture (the middle circle), and that strategic culture is a shaping context for strategic behavior (the inner circle).

Figure 1. Main aspects of Polish historical experiences, strategic culture and strategic behavior.

Starting with the historical legacy, the fear of great power intervention is first and foremost the result of experiences of sharing borders with not only one, but with two great powers, Russia and Germany (Zaborowski 2002, pp. 131–132, Longhurst 2013, p. 364, Terlikowski 2013, p. 269). Polish strategic decision-makers believe that it was the country’s geopolitical position that mainly caused Poland’s collapse in 1795 and in 1939,⁴ and contributed to the gradual installment of communism, starting in 1945 (White Book 2013, pp. 9, 29–31, Council of Ministers Report 2014). While Poles today see Germany as a partner with which relations should be built, Russia remains “unreformed and imperialistic” (Longhurst 2013, p. 367). According to Lašas (2012), the Polish view of Russia is based on traumatic and painful experiences before, during and after World War II, in particular the so-called Katyn massacre (pp. 1062–1063)⁵:

While the linkage between modern day Russia and the Soviet Union is far from unproblematic, Moscow’s willingness to identify itself as the heir of the USSR, to glorify the Soviet past, and to essentialise itself as the principal hero of World War II helps to maintain the perception of continuity. For the vast of majority of Baltic and Polish people (and political elites), the Soviet Union is constructed as ‘principal victimiser’ by dint of its role during World War II; and this is not simply an abstract idea or a discursive narrative, but the result of a prolonged tragic experience that left deep and painful wounds in individual and collective psyches.

The end of the Cold War did not obliterate the fear of great power intervention, although it made intervention considerably less likely for a few years, until Russia intervened in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine in 2014 (see also below) (Taras 2015, pp. 123–125, Doeser 2016a, pp. 127, 141–143). The guiding lesson now is to avoid an armed conflict between Russia and the West, since such a war would most likely involve Polish territory due to its strategic significance in the Baltic Sea region (Koziej 2014, Szpyra and Trochowska 2014, p. 165). While Russia instills great fear in Poland, the threat of transnational terrorism has never been high on the Polish security policy agenda (Doeser 2016a, pp. 132, 139, 144n).

The historical experience of fear of abandonment by allies is mainly the result of Polish perceptions of being victim of disloyalty or betrayal from its West European allies on a number of occasions in the 20^th century. First, the appeasement policy of Britain and France toward Hitler in 1938–1939 and the failure of these two countries to support the defense of Poland in 1939 “gave rise to a very skeptical view of Western Europe and, specifically, of its ability to guarantee security and stability on the Continent” (Longhurst 2013, p. 363). Second, the West’s deal with Stalin that the Soviet Union could annex a part of eastern Poland in 1945, although Poland was compensated with territory taken from Germany, and the agreement between the Americans, British and Soviets at the Yalta conference that Central and Eastern Europe would belong to the Soviet sphere of influence, created a feeling among Poles that they were not in control of their own sovereignty (see also below) (Zaborowski and Longhurst 2003, p. 1014, Chappell 2010, p. 229, Longhurst 2013, p. 363). The feeling of being a victim of disloyalty or betrayal was further reinforced during the Cold War, more specifically by the perceived inability of the United Nations (UN) to prevent the superpower confrontation that left Poland on the wrong side of the divided Europe (Osica 2004, p. 304).

These two historical experiences have shaped Polish strategic culture in two central ways. First, there is a strong belief in territorial defense, which has contributed to an eagerness to modernize territorial defense capabilities through interoperability with NATO and large-scale transformation of the Polish armed forces (Zając 2016, p. 10). Owing to this obsession with territorial defense, Poland desires only to supplement international military operations (Terlikowski 2013, p. 271). However, participation in military operations led by the United States or NATO, such as Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan (2001–2014), Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) (March–April 2003) and the subsequent stabilization missions in Iraq (2003–2008), offered opportunities for Poland to modernize (its) territorial defense capabilities and to exchange security benefits with important allies, especially the United States (Doeser 2016a). Poland invested heavily, both politically and economically, in these operations. In Afghanistan, Poland sent troops to OEF and contributed to ISAF, reaching its peak with 2,500 soldiers and civilian armed forces in 2010, thereby meeting the expectations on Poland in NATO. In Iraq, Poland sided with the United States in the controversial OIF, which lacked a UN Security Council mandate, and dispatched about 2,500 troops to the stabilization force and took responsibility for one of four occupation zones in south-central Iraq (Lubecki 2005, Doeser and Eidenfalk 2016).

By participating actively in these operations, a succession of Polish strategic leaderships believed that, first, by helping the United States, the United States (unilaterally or by means of NATO) would help Poland against future Russian aggression, and, second, Polish armed forces would gain combat experience and develop military skills useful for territorial defense (Piekarski 2014, p. 94, Szpyra and Trochowska 2014, p. 160). The strategic behavior of Poland in these operations was, thus, characterized by the desire to modernize territorial defense capabilities and to exchange security benefits with the United States. Poland has also contributed to military operations led by the European Union (EU) and to the EU battle group concept, based in part on a desire to achieve similar security benefits from Poland’s European partners. However, the Poles mainly rely on the United States and NATO for their security (Chappell 2009).

After the Russia-Georgia war, a re-thinking process was sparked within Polish security policy circles, in which elites gradually became less optimistic about using military operations as an instrument to modernize territorial defense capabilities (Koziej 2014). This re-thinking process was also fueled by the lack of success in the protracted Afghanistan campaign and the financial burdens of this mission (Koziej 2014, Szpyra and Trochowska 2014, p. 164). Polish decision-makers started realizing that government spending on the needs of a foreign military operation had negative influence on the investments necessary for territorial defense (Komorowski 2013). In addition, active participation in foreign operations left the forces remaining in Poland not armed adequately (Szpyra and Trochowska 2014, p. 181). Poland’s decision to not take part in Operation Unified Protector in Libya in 2011 was partly based on such reasons (Doeser 2016a, pp. 126, 140–141). In 2013, President Komorowski (2013) declared a “retreat” from the country’s “overzealous” policy of “eagerly sending Polish forces to the world’s antipodes”. The Komorowski doctrine stated that Poland should concentrate on operations that are “absolutely necessary” and that “are not too far away” (quoted in Doeser 2016a, p. 139). The Russian intervention into Crimea in February–March 2014 then came as a complete surprise for the Polish strategic leadership, reinforcing the long-standing fear of great power intervention (Koziej 2014).

The two historical experiences have also shaped Polish strategic culture in another way, that is, there is a strong belief in the need for reliable security guarantees. Since the early 1990s, Polish political elites have been guided by the belief that only the United States can defend Poland from Russian aggression and that Poland should aim for NATO membership (Dunn 2002, pp. 65–66, Lubecki 2005, p. 70, Terlikowski 2013, p. 269). The preference for an American-led alliance with strong defense capabilities persists in Polish culture to this day (White Book 2013, p. 157, National Security Strategy 2014, pp. 11, 27). Hence, the United States is Poland’s key strategic partner, while NATO is a supplementary force. Polish membership in the EU is seen as a “second insurance policy” (Terlikowski 2013, p. 274). According to Dunn (2002), the special relationship between the United States and Poland is based on a combination of historical, cultural and strategic ties (p. 65):

Poland’s historical ties go back to the late eighteenth century when many Poles fled their partioned homeland to fight under George Washington in the American War of Independence. These ties were strengthened when President Woodrow Wilson championed Polish independence at the end of World War I. They were furthered still during World War II when Poland’s valiant resistance to the Germans won it considerable favour among the American public.

During the Cold War, many Poles perceived Voice of America and Radio Free Europe as evidence that the United States had not forgotten their predicament. President Ronald Reagan’s harsh stance on the Soviet Union and his support for the Solidarity movement improved even further the image of the United States in Poland (Dunn 2002, pp. 65–66).

According to Polish strategic thinking, to ensure these reliable security guarantees, which is something more than the formal guarantees of NATO, American and/or NATO troops should be permanently stationed on Polish territory (Koziej 2014).⁶ If American soldiers are stationed in Poland during a military intervention by Russia, the willingness of the United States to come to Poland’s help increases (Matláry 2014, p. 261). To achieve this aim, a succession of Polish strategic leaderships has exchanged security benefits with the United States, by allowing Poland to participate in, and contribute to, military operations led by the Americans or NATO. In 2011, Poland received a symbolic reward for its contributions when the United States dispatched a detachment of its air force to Poland, including permanent logistics and annual aircraft visits to Poland (Terlikowski 2013, pp. 274–275). In addition, after the NATO summit in Wales 2014, with the approval of the Readiness Action Plan (RAP),⁷ Poland could count on faster deployment of a strengthened NATO Response Force (NRF). The visibility of NATO troops in exercises in the region has also increased. Polish elites have also been working for the establishment of a United States missile defense system on Polish soil, which led to several Polish troop surges in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2010 (Piekarski 2014, pp. 89–90). The system was originally designed under the Bush Administration, to defend the United States against an attack from Iran. The architecture of the system then changed under the Obama Administration, to defend Europe against an attack from Iran. In September 2011, agreement was reached that a system of SM-3 Block IIA interceptors would be operational in Poland by 2018, however, missiles will be put in the base only when the threat from Iran materializes (Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance 2017). Poland is also developing its own national missile defense, which will be integrated with the American system and a ballistic missile defense currently constructed by NATO (Ministry of National Defense 2017).

Poland in the anti-ISIS coalition

When President Barack Obama requested Australia and eight NATO members, including Poland, to join a broad international coalition to combat ISIS in early September 2014 (Cooper 2014), the Polish strategic leadership declined to contribute militarily, stating the situation in Ukraine as the main impediment. By the end of 2014, Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France and the Netherlands had joined the air strikes in what was now called Operation Inherent Resolve (OIR), while other states had pledged to provide military training and/or to send weapons, ammunition or other military equipment to Iraq. The majority of states opposing ISIS, including Poland, limited their engagement to humanitarian aid and the provision of political support to OIR.⁸ As noted by the Polish Minister of National Defense, Tomasz Siemoniak, on 12 September 2014: “Poland does not envisage participation of its soldiers in military operations, though it intends to politically support the coalition and organize humanitarian aid” (quoted in Drennan 2014). The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Schetyna (2015), added that “Polish military engagement is out of question.” However he also noted that, “if there is an expectation on the part of the grand coalition, we are open to talk about it” (quoted in Radio Poland 2015a). In spite of aspirations on the part of the United States to build a broad coalition, and Secretary of State John Kerry’s reference to Poland as “a very important NATO member” (quoted in Radio Poland 2015a), Poland would not send any forces to the coalition until the summer of 2016. Part of the explanation can be found in Poland’s historical experiences and strategic culture.

While there is widespread fear of great power (Russian) intervention in Poland, there is relatively little fear of terrorist attacks against Poland among the strategic decision-makers. In the fall/winter of 2014, the expansion of ISIS was by the Polish Defense Minister recognized as a threat “close to the EU” but not as an explicit threat to Poland (Siemoniak 2014). In early 2015, Foreign Minister Schetyna (2015) said that: “We are far from playing down the threat posed by the so-called ‘Islamic State,’ the civil war in Syria, and the so-called foreign fighters.” However, for the strategic leadership, ISIS was clearly less of a threat, compared to Russia (see also below). In addition, the historically rooted fear of Russian intervention had significantly increased in conjunction with the Russian annexation of Crimea and the subsequent Donbass War from April 2014: “The situation in Eastern Europe is the cause of our greatest concern and anxiety. Poland is the only EU country to share border with both Ukraine and Russia” (Council of Ministers Report 2014, p. 4, see also, 2015, Radio Poland 2015b).

The increased perceived fear of Russia, in combination with the fear of abandonment by allies, reborn in the wake of Obama’s “reset” policy⁹ (Longhurst 2013, p. 368–369), reinforced the strong beliefs in territorial defense and reliable security guarantees (Komorowski 2014, Schetyna 2014). These strategic cultural elements predisposed the strategic leadership toward exchanging security benefits with important allies in its approach to the anti-ISIS coalition. After the approval of RAP, which focused on strengthening NRF, consisting of a multinational force formed by different NATO countries, Poland was still looking for the possibility of having permanent presence of allied troops on its territory. Strengthened and faster NRF required at least a couple of days to be deployed and did not solve the problem of possible Russian surprise operations. Poland was ready to contribute to the anti-ISIS coalition, provided the allies agreed to place troops on Polish territory (Komorowski 2014, Schetyna 2015). For the strategic leadership, the rotation of NATO forces should be so intense that in practice it meant permanent, thus improving the ability of NATO to move troops to a threatened region (Lorenz 2016). The Polish plan was to reach NATO consensus on the issue during the next NATO summit, to take place in Warsaw in the summer of 2016. The Polish negotiating strategy, shaped by its strategic culture, was to claim that NATO’s eastern flank had been ignored in terms of military resources for years, and that Poland would not contribute to the defense of NATO’s southern border, in the fight against ISIS, unless the eastern border was secured first, making it a “give and take” situation. Examples of this negotiating strategy, characterized by the exchange of security benefits, exist in several Polish statements, including the Council of Ministers Report (2014, p. 3) on the goals of Polish foreign policy:

European security is one and indivisible. We are prepared to strengthen it together with our allies, including in southern borderlands, guided by the principle ‘one for all, all for one.’ However, this principle must apply in equal measure to the South and to the East.

A subsequent Council of Ministers Report (2016) also supports this interpretation of the Polish negotiating strategy:

We want Warsaw to be the place where, through practical steps, the Alliance reaffirms the credibility of security guarantees vis-à-vis countries of its eastern flank. Our proposals in this regard are now subject to allied consultations. What they amount to is eliminating evident disproportions in defense infrastructure between the so-called old and new NATO members. Our goal is an equal security status for all the NATO member states across the entire territory of the alliance.

In addition, a statement by President Komorowski (2014) further supports this interpretation:

For us, as far as prospective involvement on a greater scale in any other region of the world is concerned, it could simply be easier and more understandable when we feel more secure ourselves on the eastern flank.

That Polish participation in the anti-ISIS coalition could increase Polish chances of reaching a favorable NATO agreement was claimed by several contemporary observers (McKelvey 2015, Milczanowski 2016). A related ambition (to reaching the NATO agreement) was to deepen Poland’s security and defense policy cooperation with the United States, both bilaterally and multilaterally, especially within NATO (Council of Ministers Report 2014, 2015), which had become all the more important as the fears of great power intervention and abandonment increased. The implementation of the Polish-American missile defense agreement, set to start in 2016, and a more permanent presence of United States armed forces on Polish territory were two parts of this ambition (Council of Ministers Report 2016).

In 2014–2015, the United States had on several occasions requested military aid from Poland in the war against ISIS, but the Poles never responded positively to these requests, apart from sending ammunition to Jordan (Radio Poland 2015a, 2015b). One reason for this was that the Obama Administration accepted a low engagement in the coalition on the part of Poland, due to Poland’s security situation after the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, according to the evidence examined here. For instance, Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski (from 16 November 2015) noted on 2 December 2015 that “none of the coalition countries expects Poland to commit significant military forces. Our attention right now must be turned toward the Ukrainian conflict” (quoted in Radio Poland 2015b). Thus, the demand from the United States to cooperate may not have been as pressing, compared to the situation after 11 September. Polish strategic decision-makers also perceived that Poland by now had adequately contributed to the alliance (Doeser 2016a). The newly elected President, Andrzej Duda (2016) (from 6 August 2015), motivated Poland’s low engagement in the anti-ISIS coalition on the basis of Polish contributions to Afghanistan and Iraq, to Poland’s relatively high defense spending of 2 percent of gross domestic product, to Poland’s current modernization of its armed forces, and to its participation in the Baltic Air Policing operation.

A change in the Polish position on the anti-ISIS coalition can be discerned from February 2016. This was most likely stimulated by the announcement of the United States in early February to increase funding for its European Reassurance Initiative,¹⁰ including strengthening of its rotational force presence and boosting pre-positioning of military equipment in Europe (Majumdar 2016). Another reason was most likely the agreement among NATO defense ministers on 10 February on a set of principles for the modernization of NATO’s defense and deterrence posture. This decision included an enhanced forward presence of multinational and rotational character in Central and Eastern Europe; however, it did not specify the details of the arrangement, leaving it for the planned summit in July (Stoltenberg 2016). Later the same day, at a joint press conference with United States Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter, Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz (from 16 November 2015) stated that Poland has accepted to participate in the anti-ISIS coalition after weeks of discussions (Macierewicz and Carter 2016):

When it comes to the details of our participation, we will continue to discuss this topic, especially since we can see it in the broad terms of the situation in which NATO finds itself, counting on the support of both the United States and all of NATO to assist Poland and other countries of the eastern flank with a durable, permanent presence.

In this statement, the Defense Minister indicated that the scale of Poland’s involvement in the coalition would depend on responses from the United States and NATO to Russia’s assertiveness on the eastern flank, hence playing the quid pro quo game once again (see also Radio Poland 2016). However, President Duda did not admit that Poland had agreed to join the coalition: “Perhaps some comments are over interpreted. Today there are absolutely no such decisions. These are open issues which we will discuss at the NATO forum” (quoted in Bolton 2016). However, he more clearly acknowledged the threat posed by ISIS: “[W]e fully recognize seriousness of challenges from the South. Terrorist activities of the so-called Islamic State pose a threat which undermines the foundations of our civilization” (Duda 2016). This was most likely a reaction to the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, which killed 130 people. However, in the assessment of the strategic leadership, the threat of terrorism was still far behind that of Russia. As stated by the Polish Foreign Minister on 16 April, Russia’s activity is “a sort of existential threat because this activity can destroy countries”, while ISIS is “not an existential threat for Europe”, although “being a very serious one” (quoted in Pempel 2016). Yet, by this time, the Polish strategic leadership had adopted a more positively oriented view of national military involvement in the coalition, although it was not yet certain that Poland would participate.

On 30 May 2016, at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, President Duda was asked whether Poland would be satisfied with about 4,500 soldiers along the entire eastern flank of NATO (Stoltenberg and Duda 2016). 4,500 was the number of soldiers speculated about in the media regarding the outcome of the Warsaw summit. The President replied that the most important outcome is that NATO have multinational forces from several different member states. This, in combination with the military protection of the missile defense base and the deployments to Poland announced by the United States, means that “we will have really a lot of allied soldiers present in Poland” (Stoltenberg and Duda 2016).

In June, the strategic leadership was most likely certain that a positive outcome would be reached at the NATO summit in Warsaw (see also below). This contributed to a Polish decision to join OIR on 17 June 2016 when President Duda authorized, at the request of Prime Minister Beata Szydło, the use of two Polish military contingents during the period 20 June–31 December 2016 (Press communique 2016) (the Polish operation was later extended in time and is still ongoing). The two contingents include 150 soldiers and military personnel, stationed in Kuwait, and 60 soldiers, deployed to Iraq. The force in Kuwait consists of four F-16 aircraft, prepared with DB–110 reconnaissance pods, executing aerial surveillance assignments for the support of OIR. In Iraq, part of the soldiers includes Special Forces, with the task of providing advice and training for Iraq’s military forces. The head of the Polish National Security Bureau, Pawel Soloch, said about the June 2016 decision that the contribution is an expression of solidarity with NATO, and that President Duda “expects support from its Allies on the Eastern flank” (Press communique 2016, see also Macierewicz 2016a). Thus, according to the evidence examined here, by joining the coalition, the strategic leadership exchanged security benefits with important allies, a typical strategic behavior on the part of Poland, shaped by its strategic culture and historical experiences. Secretary of Defense Carter (2016) said of Poland’s decision: “Expanding the resources dedicated to the fight allows us to further accelerate the campaign. I am grateful for the meaningful action of the Polish government.”

President Duda received the expected allied support during the Warsaw summit, which took place on 8–9 July 2016. Consensus was reached on the strengthening of NATO’s military presence in Central and Eastern Europe, with four multinational and rotational battalion-size battlegroups in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, to be in place by 2017 (Warsaw Summit Communique 2016). The expectation on the part of the Polish strategic leadership that NATO would reach such an agreement, most likely informally communicated to Poland by the United States, was the major reason for the Polish decision to join OIR, according to the sources investigated here. Thus, when the Polish leadership perceived that its allies would satisfy Polish demands for the eastern flank, the leadership returned the favor by sending military forces to the southern flank. The linkage between the two flanks in Polish thinking is further supported by a speech given by the Defense Minister to Polish soldiers in Kuwait in August 2016 (Macierewicz 2016b):

If it was not for your decision, if not for your service here, there would not be a guarantee of the safety and independence of Poland, which we have obtained thanks to the recent decisions of the NATO Summit, thanks to the decisions of the US government, with the result that the US military and NATO will be permanently stationed on the eastern borders of the North Atlantic Alliance, on the eastern frontiers of Poland. I want to say that every last drop of sweat, each one of your missions, each flight that you make is like a brick, building a defensive wall to protect Poland.

The linkage between the two flanks was also later explicitly recognized by President Duda (2017b): “We are showing [in Iraq] that we are a reliable NATO ally, that we can offer others security and support. This is one of the reasons why NATO forces are stationed in our country.” The belief that it is vital for Poland’s security that forces of the United States and NATO are stationed on Polish soil is well rooted in Polish strategic culture, based on specific historical experiences. When the Multinational Battalion Battle Group was officially welcomed to Poland on 13 April 2017, President Duda (2017a) explained the importance of the battlegroup for Polish security because of bitter historical experiences:

Today is the Day of Remembrance of the Katyn Massacre perpetrated in April 1940 on defenseless Polish soldiers, representatives of Polish intelligentsia because the allies had not kept their word, because Poland fell victim to two types of aggression from the two sides, and because Poland was erased from the map and the Polish army was unable to fight against two invaders since the allies did not help.

Today, the presence in Poland of the US army, the biggest army in the world and the biggest NATO army, is proof that the world has been changing and is a chance that such dramatic developments in Poland’s history like in 1939 and 1940 will never repeat themselves.

In sum, Polish decision-making on the anti-ISIS coalition follows the typical Polish strategic behavior described in the previous section, that is, exchange security benefits with important allies, and Polish decision-makers explicitly linked the decision to join the coalition to the historical and strategic cultural elements in Figure 1.¹¹ The initial Polish reluctance to take part in the coalition can be explained by: Polish disappointment with disproportions in defense infrastructure between old and new NATO; increased Polish skepticism about using military operations to modernize (its) territorial defense capabilities; priority given to the Russia-Ukraine war over the ISIS threat; and the view that Poland already had adequately contributed to the alliance. In early 2016, the first condition started to change when the Polish strategic leadership perceived that the United States and other NATO members were about to enhance their troops on the eastern front. According to the evidence examined in this article, to encourage and facilitate this process, the Polish strategic leadership dispatched forces to the anti-ISIS coalition, hence exchanging security benefits with important allies.

Concluding remarks

This article has contributed to an explanation of why Poland decided to send military forces to the anti-ISIS coalition in June 2016. The case study showed that Polish historical experiences, the fears of great power intervention and of abandonment by allies, shape Polish strategic culture, the strong beliefs in territorial defense and in the need for reliable security guarantees. This strategic culture then influenced the Polish decision-making on the anti-ISIS coalition, by predisposing the decision-makers toward a typical Polish strategic behavior in international military operations. This strategic behavior is characterized by the desire to exchange security benefits with important allies, mainly the United States but also vital European partners within NATO and the EU. Thus, in military operations led by the United States, NATO, or the EU, Poland tries to exchange one currency, its participation in the operation, for another currency, greater security for itself. This behavior is what Polish strategic leaderships perceive as effective and productive action in such operations.

The article also has implications that go beyond the particular case of Poland in the anti-ISIS coalition. The linkage between the historical experiences of a state and the state’s strategic culture has often been taken for granted in the strategic culture literature but rarely examined in detail. The article has more clearly specified the relationship between historical experience and strategic culture, by showing that strategic culture is shaped within a larger context of historical experiences, as illustrated in Figure 1. In addition, the article has developed a two-step analytical procedure, based on previous research, for studying the influences of history and strategic culture on the strategic behavior of states.

In future research, this combined theoretical and analytical framework can be applied to other cases, to investigate whether strategic culture had any influence and, if so, how. It seems that strategic culture has been influential in the decision-making of other states participating in the anti-ISIS coalition. Many of these states, such as Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden, just to name a few, seem to have contributed in a way that is consistent with their earlier behavioral patterns in international military operations, implying that strategic culture could be the primary explanatory factor. However, this issue demands further research. Another area of future research is whether and to what extent strategic culture translates into a rational strategy that helps the state secure its survival in the long run. For instance, the “contractual” approach of exchanging security benefits, which characterizes Polish strategic culture, is exactly what Poles fear that the great powers will do at the expense of Polish security, which also happened in Yalta 1945. Thus, the Polish quid pro quo strategy will only be efficient and productive if more powerful states do not use the same strategy against Poland.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the participants of the SWE-NET-FPA workshop in Lund, Sweden, on 19–20 April 2018 for valuable feedback on this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work did not receive any funding.

Notes on contributors

Fredrik Doeser

Fredrik Doeser is Associate Professor in War Studies at the Department of Security, Strategy and Leadership, Swedish Defense University. His previous research focuses on domestic-foreign policy linkages, impact of individual decision-makers, and the influence of strategic culture on participation in military operations. He has recently published articles in Contemporary Security Policy, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Peacekeeping, and International Political Science Review.

Notes

1. The author applies a similar definition of strategic culture in previous works (Doeser 2016b, 2017, Doeser and Eidenfalk 2018).

2. The combination of a strong belief in territorial defense and a strong belief in reliable security guarantees distinguishes Poland from many other surrounding states. In Poland, we can observe an almost dogmatic obsession with territorial defense, in contrast with, for example, the Nordic states, which have attempted to balance territorial with expeditionary defense. The exception is Finland, which is more similar to Poland as regards territorial defense. A similar belief in reliable security guarantees exists in Denmark and Norway, but not in Finland and Sweden, in which cultures of military non-alignment have been difficult to escape from.

3. Although these historical experiences, based on painful memories from the late 18^th century and World War II (see below), existed in Polish society during the Cold War, they had little impact on the behavior of the Polish communist governments, which followed the dictates of the Soviet Union. After the Cold War, the strategic behavior of Poland has been heavily influenced by these historical experiences (Longhurst 2013, p. 364).

4. The collapse in 1795 (the Third Partition of Poland) has its immediate roots in the Second Partition of Poland in 1793, which was mainly orchestrated by Russia and Prussia. Shortly after, Polish military officer Tadeusz Kościuszko led a national uprising, and Russia and Prussia intervened to suppress the Poles. On 24 October 1795, the two major powers reached an agreement with Austria, which divided Poland between themselves. The collapse in 1939 refers to the division of Poland between Germany and the Soviet Union following the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

5. The Katyn massacre was a series of mass executions of Polish military and police officers as well as of members of the Polish intelligentsia carried out by the Soviet secret police in April–May 1940. Although the killings occurred at different places, the massacre is named after the Katyn Forest, where some of the mass graves were first discovered. The total number of victims is estimated to about 22,000.

6. In 2014, the Polish strategic leadership believed that the formal guarantees of NATO could protect Poland against a large-scale attack involving the territories of several NATO members. If many allies were involved, the probability that Poland would receive assistance increases, due to the practical resonance of the collective self-defense principle. However, the risk lies in the case of a small-scale conflict, where it would be more difficult to receive NATO support, for instance, if a single bomb is dropped somewhere in Poland, attacks against critical Polish infrastructure, or the use of “green men”, like in Ukraine. In such cases, NATO may not reach a timely consensus to come to Poland’s help (Koziej 2014).

7. NATO’s RAP, initiated in May 2014, involves increased military activity on the part of the alliance in Central and Eastern Europe. The assurance measures are a series of land, sea and air activities in this region, and, from December 2015, tailored measures for Turkey.

8. As of 18 May 2018, there are 75 coalition states, among which about 40 contribute military resources, including fighter jets, advisors, weapons and ammunition (Global Coalition, http://theglobalcoalition.org/en/home/).

9. Obama’s “reset” policy was an attempt to improve relations between the United States and Russia, starting in 2009. This created some fear in Poland that the United States might become less willing to consider Polish security concerns (Longhurst 2013, pp. 368–369).

10. The European Reassurance Initiative is an American program, initiated in June 2014 as a response to the annexation of Crimea, with the purpose of increasing the presence of the United States in Europe.

11. In this case, Poland did not follow the typical strategic behavior of modernize territorial defense capabilities. As noted earlier, the Poles have become more skeptical about using military operations as a means for modernizing territorial defense.