It's been no secret that US and Poland ties, particularly on the level of military coordination, have greatly accelerated in recent years. This has been especially on display since the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Poland's prime minister on Thursday lashed out at French President Emmanuel Macron's controversial China comments which came just after his visit with Xi Jinping. Mateusz Morawiecki openly mocked the French leader's call for European 'strategic autonomy', which included follow-up comments about not being Washington's "vassals".
"European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn't it? But it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing the ties with the US," Morawiecki said in response.
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| Twitter/@EmmanuelMacron |
"Short-sightedly they look to China to be able to sell more EU products there at huge geopolitical costs, making us more dependent on China and not less," the Polish prime minister continued while on a visit to Washington.
"Some European countries are trying to make with China the same mistake which was made with Russia -- this dramatic mistake," he added. His scathing critique of Macron's words, which we reviewed previously, were given before the NATO-linked Atlantic Council think tank in D.C.
According to more from Morawiecki's speech:
Paraphrasing Macron's remarks without naming him, Morawiecki said, "You cannot protect Ukraine today and tomorrow by saying Taiwan is not your business."
"I think that, God forbid, if Ukraine falls, if Ukraine gets conquered, the next day China may attack -- can attack -- Taiwan," he said.
Alluding to Macron's comments alongside President Xi Jinping about a more multipolar role, Morawiecki scoffed
"European autonomy sounds fancy, doesn't it? But it means shifting the center of European gravity towards China and severing the ties with the US," he said.
"I do not quite understand the concept of strategic autonomy if it means de facto shooting into our own knee."
During the remarks Morawiecki also took swipes at lukewarm European support to Ukraine when compared to the United States, in statements which seemed implicitly directed at Germany and France, per AFP:
Western European nations have grown accustomed to a model based on cheap energy from Russia, high-margin trade with China, low-cost labor from Eastern Europe and "security for free from the United States," Morawiecki said.
"Now their modus vivendi collapsed in ruins so what do they do? They want a quick ceasefire, armistice, in Ukraine, almost at any price," he said.
Some politicians in Western Europe are thinking, "'Ukraine, why are you fighting so bravely?'" he said.
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| Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, via Reuters. |
Despite pressure from allies, Macron has made no apologies, but in fact has doubled-down. "Being an ally does not mean being a vassal … [or] mean that we don’t have the right to think for ourselves," he said in follow-up during a Wednesday visit to Amsterdam.
As a reminder, while speaking with reporters aboard COTAM Unité (France’s Air Force One) over the weekend immediately following his time spent with Xi, the French President said that the "great risk" facing Europe right now is that it "gets caught up in crises that are not ours, which prevents it from building its strategic autonomy."
Macron's articulating a concept of strategic autonomy for Europe was 'enthusiastically endorsed' by Xi and the CCP, who have been focusing on the notion that the West is in decline while China rises, and that weakening the transatlantic relationship will accelerate this trend. "The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers," said Macron. "The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction."
And this: "If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up … we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals," Macron said.