German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius recently signed a deal for basing a tank brigade in Lithuania, which will be stationed close to the Union State’s borders and be fully deployed by 2027. One month prior, he declared that “We need a Bundeswehr that can defend itself and wage war in order to defend our security and our freedom” when revealing his country’s new military-strategic doctrine. That document builds upon Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s hegemonic manifesto from December 2022.
Shortly after this doctrine was published, NATO logistics chief Lieutenant-General Alexander Sollfrank suggested the creation of a so-called “military Schengen” for optimizing the movement of such equipment across the EU. The subsequent clinching of Germany’s tank brigade deal with Lithuania, which wasn’t a surprise development considering that it had already been discussed since early summer, provides the pretext for accelerating these plans.
It was assessed at the time that “NATO’s Proposed ‘Military Schengen’ Is A Thinly Disguised German Power Play Over Poland” aimed at taking advantage of former Polish Prime Minister and European Council President Donald Tusk’s return to the premiership to subordinate that country as a proxy. Conservative-nationalist opposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski accused him of being a “German agent” due to his close ties with that country and warned that he’s plotting to surrender Polish sovereignty to it.
Observers should note that Germany’s tank brigade deal with Lithuania wasn’t signed until after Tusk returned to office in mid-December, which suggests that Berlin didn’t want to agree to this before then since it could have given a boost to the former government during October’s elections. Kaczynski could have claimed that those 4,800 troops and 200 civilians that’ll be based there by 2027 can only efficiently be supplied via transit through Poland, the rights of which his party might have been reluctant to grant.
In order to not make these plans a lightning rod of controversy ahead of an already tense vote, Germany probably decided to push back the signing of this deal until after Tusk’s election, and it might have even renegotiated some of the details in the event that he lost. Since everything went according to plan, however, fellow German Sollfrank strategically timed his suggestion for a so-called “military Schengen” nearly one month after it was clear that Tusk would come back to power.
Germany’s military-strategic doctrine was published right before that, which was also almost certainly timed for after the Polish elections for the aforementioned reason of not giving Kaczynski yet another issue with which to rile his base up against Tusk. Now that he’s returned to office, Germany no longer has to hide its hegemonic military intentions as evidenced by that doctrine’s promulgation, fellow German Sollfrank’s suggestion, and Germany’s newly agreed tank brigade in Lithuania.
As was earlier written, the only efficient way that Germany can supply its 5,000-member team in that Baltic country is via transit through Poland, ergo the rationale behind accelerating plans for a “military Schengen”. The thought of German arms, hardware, and ammo rolling through Poland en route to Lithuania is unacceptable from the perspective of many conservative-nationalist Poles, however, who’d perceive that as a powerful symbol of German dominance over their newly subordinated country.
It’s likely with these concerns in mind as well as similarly foreseeable resistance to the EU’s new migration pact that Tusk sought to seize control of Polish state media after the conservative-nationalist opposition stacked it with their cadre over the years. Poland’s new controversial stances towards Germany and illegal immigrants, which will predictably manifest through the “military Schengen” and importing civilizationally dissimilar individuals, requires him to shape the narrative from above.
These institutions just entered into liquidation due to a dispute between liberal–globalist Tusk and conservative-nationalist President Andrzej Duda, who’ll remain in office until the next presidential elections sometime in spring 2025, but it at least deprives the opposition of their mouthpieces. The resultant scandal over Tusk’s seizure of these media also importantly distracted Poles from his government’s two new controversial stances that were detailed in the preceding paragraph.
He’s therefore pushing ahead his agenda one way or another since state media will dissolve if Duda doesn’t give him control over it, all the while civilizationally dissimilar illegal immigrants will be imported from elsewhere in the EU as Germany likely secures “military Schengen” transit rights. Unless something unexpected happens over the next year, Germany’s ideological and military dominance over Poland is expected to strengthen, which will occur at the expense of its sovereignty exactly as Kaczynski predicted.
