Polish Foreign Minister Zbigniew Rau expressed full commitment to the dying trans-Atlantic order in an interview with the Warsaw-based Polish news outlet Nowy Swiat 24. In the interview, published in English by the Polish Foreign Ministry, Rau effectively argues that Russian imperialism is the source of all evil in the world and that the BRICS is no alternative to the U.S.-EU-G7-NATO system.
Regarding Russian imperialism, Rau claims that the world has been defined by the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of 1939 because it “introduced completely different ideas to the global policy, restored the method of armed aggression to delimit spheres of influence, and rejected democratization of international relations for the sake of the Concert of Europe and imperial practices.” Stalin, he claimed further, “forced the democratic states into acknowledging the terms of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the logic of spheres of influence. It was in Yalta that the Soviet Union received the democratic powers’ approval to move the border of its sphere of influence from the Vistula to the Elbe.” That world ended in 1989 but “The world is threatened by the return of policy based on antagonisms.” Therefore, “This is why Poland must actively remind others about the experience of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and, later on, of Yalta, to prevent the development of such standards of the new era that will endanger the peace in Europe.”
No compromise with this new authoritarianism is possible, Rau goes on. “First of all, we have to underline that one must not yield to imperialism, nor even neo-imperial tendencies. The democratic countries must not accept the standards of behavior imposed by autocratic imperialism,” he said. “Secondly, a compromise between democracy and authoritarianism is impossible because it always takes place at the expense of freedom. When democracy gives up on the defense of freedom and territorial integrity, it has nothing to do with realism. But it always endangers peace and, ultimately, also freedom and democracy.”
