Polish President Andrzej Duda (right) and his American counterpart Joe Biden by the pre-presidential palace in Warsaw, February 21, 2023.
Warsaw – Polish President Andrzej Duda acts as a “forerunner” before he put American President Joe Biden in a humiliating situation with his speech on Tuesday: he spoke only after the American ambassador and at a time when Biden was not even there, Polish server Onet wrote in today's commentary. He also asked himself whether this was American retaliation for previous missteps by the ruling Polish conservative right and Duda personally towards Biden after his election as US president.
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“That Poland is dependent on the United States for security is absolutely obvious. That this causes a fundamental and irremediable imbalance in the relations between Warsaw and Washington is also obvious. So it was, is and will be regardless of whether Poland was ruled, is ruled or will be ruled by Law and Justice, the Civic Platform or the Left,” writes the commentator. “But the situation that occurred yesterday (Tuesday – ČTK note) was simply humiliating,” he added.
Due to the geographical location of the country, Polish foreign policy has no alternative, which Washington is perfectly aware of and also uses to a lesser or greater extent. And the US is a country that – to put it mildly – quite assertively uses the imbalances that exist between Warsaw and Washington. “However, we know from history that this imbalance and American assertiveness does not have to lead to humiliating the partner,” says the author.
According to him, the Americans play very hard for their interests, but at the same time – and unlike the Russians – they show a certain amount of respect to other countries as a matter of principle. It is a norm in diplomacy, in which, especially between states in good relations and in a deep imbalance, all the more care is taken to emphasize their equality, at least on protocol.
But the situation that occurred was, according to the commentator, humiliating for the Polish state. The US ambassador spoke first, followed by the Polish president. And to make it even more shameful, President Duda spoke in the absence of the US President, who arrived at the venue only after his performance. Protocol-wise, it looked like the counterpart of President Duda was the ambassador, and not the US president. And the fact that the ambassador spoke before Duda also meant that he was more important. For Biden, Duda fulfilled the role that little-known groups have before a headliner's concert. The president was a “forerunner” on Tuesday, wrote a commentator.
Onet wonders if this happened, for example, because Americans still remember Duda's insulting “pseudocongratulations” after Biden's election victory. Or perhaps it is retaliation for the incident from Biden's previous visit to Poland, when Duda was delayed on his way to Rzeszów, which was officially explained by a malfunction of the plane, although according to the Americans there was no malfunction. . Poland was humiliated with the consent of Andrzej Duda, who accepted the scenario of the event, humiliating our country and himself. So we can't even complain much about the Americans. We can and should ask how it is possible that President Duda, his advisers and the Polish right is to talk about the growth of Poland's importance and at the same time, in the sense of the protocol, to be humiliated to the level of a banana republic,” concluded the commentator.
