Polish Foreign Minister brings Ukraine rallying cry to Southeast Asia

UN member states had voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russia in its invasion of Ukraine. However, deepening the support for Ukraine has proven a tougher sell outside of Europe and North America, as international attention was diverted by the Middle East crisis and intensifying US-China competition.

Clement Tan

Clement Tan

The Straits Times

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Poland's Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski has been drawing sharp parallels between Russian authoritarianism and colonialism. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES

September 4, 2024

SINGAPORE – Two-and-a-half years after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Poland’s Foreign Affairs Minister Radek Sikorski’s exasperation is unmistakable.

“My frustration is that in some parts of the world, people don’t see this Russian aggression for what it is, which is a colonial attempt to regain its… former ‘colony’,” Mr Sikorski told The Straits Times in an interview on Sept 2, during his first official visit to Singapore in his second stint as his country’s chief diplomat.

United Nations member states had voted overwhelmingly to condemn Russia in the immediate aftermath of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. However, deepening the support for Ukraine has proven a tougher sell outside of Europe and North America, as international attention was diverted by the Middle East crisis and intensifying US-China competition.

With their shared history of Russian control, Poland has been among Ukraine’s loudest and biggest advocates. If Mr Putin succeeds in Ukraine, the existential fear is that he would go on to invade and retake Poland and other former Soviet territories such as Estonia, Georgia and Latvia.

Mr Sikorski has been drawing sharp parallels between Russian authoritarianism and colonialism, and is taking his message on what he calls “a fact-finding mission” to South-east Asia this week.

In Singapore, his first stop, he spoke about confronting 21st-century imperialism to an audience of policymakers, academics and diplomats in a lecture organised by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) on Sept 2.

“When I hear some leaders in the so-called Global South – and I know what a difficult concept that is – I sometimes am surprised by the lack of empathy for the victim of colonialism,” he said. “Somehow, they have a soft spot for a colonial power doing that. This, I don’t get.”

One reason could be the contentious history of some major European nations as colonial masters outside of Europe.

“Because the West supports Ukraine, and because the West was once a colonial power in the south, some people think, therefore, the enemy of Ukraine must have a point,” Mr Sikorski surmised.

“But colonialism wasn’t only Europeans going overseas to colonise. There was plenty of colonialism within Europe, in Ireland, in my part of Europe too,” he added. “Poland was a victim of colonialism in Europe, as was Ukraine.”

Ukraine gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the same year Poland – which in 1989 had negotiated its transition from communist rule to democracy – held its first parliamentary elections since the fall of communism.

Poland’s growing clout

Mr Sikorski’s trip – with Kuala Lumpur and Manila as his next stops – comes amid Poland’s rising leadership and policy influence in the European Union, where Warsaw’s strong convictions set it apart from the relative ambivalence of France and Germany, the bloc’s largest economies.

His own experience and force of personality are amplifying Poland’s voice on the world stage, and arguably underpinned his reappointment as foreign minister following elections in October 2023.

A one-time war correspondent in Afghanistan and Angola and resident fellow at conservative think-tank American Enterprise Institute in Washington, Mr Sikorski was also previously a defence minister, the leader of the Polish Lower House, and a member of the European Parliament working on EU foreign affairs and defence matters.

He appealed to an American audience at a recent Atlantic Council meeting, invoking his Polish-American journalist wife Anne Applebaum and his two American sons, one of whom is currently serving in the US Army.

Reiterating previous comments, Mr Sikorski warned that Poland has the right to shoot down Russian missiles that stray into its airspace, and is considering doing the same to missiles that are in “imminent danger” of crossing into Polish airspace.

This was despite Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg objecting to the possibility of Poland shooting down Russian missiles over Ukrainian territory, for fear of a broader conflagration.

Pressed on this, Mr Sikorski said: “Look, we have no desire to get into a direct confrontation with Russia, but Russia has no right to send missiles into our airspace. Nato is a military alliance, but a military alliance doesn’t trump our own Constitution, which says that the Polish army has a duty to defend Poland’s territory.

“One Russian cruise missile last year travelled over two-thirds of Poland and ended up in western Poland, 10km from my own house.”

Poland is the sixth-largest economy in the EU by nominal gross domestic product and the fifth-largest in terms of purchasing power parity.

But Mr Sikorski said Warsaw has solidified its political standing in another way.

“We are not only an indispensable logistical hub for the humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine, but also a political hub, because we were the ones telling West Europeans that Putin was not a peace-loving person, that he was not exactly a democrat.

“We were warning them that the potential for violence was there and, unfortunately, we were vindicated. So, I hope that gains us some political credibility, and therefore there is a greater willingness to listen to what we have to say now.”

Mr Sikorski’s trip follows Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s surprise visit to Singapore in June, when he spoke at the annual Shangri-la Dialogue security forum.

Mr Zelensky had hoped to garner Asian support for a peace summit in Switzerland that eventually lacked the participation of Russia and its biggest ally, China.

The China conundrum

China’s global position will be enhanced if Beijing were to spearhead the end of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine without requiring its capitulation, Mr Sikorski suggested.

“China, uniquely, can actually force the end of this war… because Russia would not be able to continue it without claiming China (support),” he said, in response to a question from the audience at the IISS lecture, held at Raffles Hotel.

While friendly with Russia, China is also one of Poland and the EU’s largest trading partners.

In a previous EU role, Mr Sikorski helped author the bloc’s policy towards China, calling for “cooperation where possible, competition when needed, and confrontation when necessary”.

Still, China is where Mr Sikorski’s anti-imperialist argument has its limits. “This is a tough one,” he said in response to an audience question on applying the principles derived from the Russian case on China and its treatment of Tibet, Xinjiang and “arguably” Taiwan.

Mr Putin had, among his various justifications, argued it was an extension of Russia’s sovereign rights to attack Ukraine in order to protect Russian minorities.

“I have to tell you that we respect China’s culture, history, civilisation, and we recognise that they have a different experience with communism,” Mr Sikorski said, while reiterating Poland’s “one China” policy.

While communism was a “foreign imposition” and made Poland poorer, Mr Sikorski pointed out that China was modernised under the rule of the Communist Party, so it may have a different view.

“China is not a democracy, and respect for the rule of human rights in China is something that we criticise, but this is a culture of humanity, and we need to recognise the limits of our power.”

He added: “Foreign policy, in a sense, is a series of anticipations and bets with the future.”

He proceeded to lament the litany of “lost bets” the West has placed in recent memory, including China’s admission into the World Trade Organisation, which failed to lead to the economic liberalisation of what is now the world’s second-largest economy.

The failed attempt at “Europeanising” Russia and the failure of the Arab Spring to catalyse democratisation in North Africa and the Middle East the way the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 did for Central Europe were other examples.

His message for the West: “We’ve lost too many bets. We need to win Ukraine.”

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