Discerning Poland’s Contemporary Strategic Culture: An analysis of the 2020 National Security Strategy of the Republic of Poland

Abstract

The article analyses the Polish government’s recently published National Security Strategy in an attempt to discern the broad outlines of the strategic culture within Poland’s strategic community. The article adopts a ‘fourth generation’ approach to the conception of strategic culture, which posits that there are often rival subcultures within strategic communities, which can often result in dramatic shifts in a state’s security policies over time. There is a brief discussion of how conflicting subcultures can be identified in Poland’s foreign policies in the past before the article discusses what Poland’s current Strategy reveals about the strategic culture of today’s decision-makers. It broadly argues that there are obvious continuities in Poland’s security policies, notably in terms of how the Russian Federation is regarded as a hostile state and the degree to which NATO and the EU serve to strengthen Poland’s security. It is also possible to see more minor shifts in Poland’s security policies in recent years, such as a renewed emphasis on territorial defence and a willingness to align itself with several states which are relatively antagonistic towards the EU.