Polskie sojusze 1918−2018. Teoria i doświadczenia

Abstract

The poor reputation of military alliances among Poles is the result of a shallow and indeed trivial understanding of the country’s historical experience. In the realms of social perception and historical debate, Polish alliances are treated not as tools of foreign policy, which are strongly linked to the international context and interplay of interests between individual allies and actors that pose a threat to them, but as a universal solution to the country’s security, which is to remain dependable regardless of circumstances. The aim of this article is to analyse experiences derived from twelve alliances entered by Poland between 1918 and 2018, in relation to the rationale for which they were formed, the methods and effects of their functioning, as well as the reasons for which eleven of them have been terminated. The theoretical underpinning of this analysis is the so-called general theory of international alliances that has been developed for the past couple of decades by numerous authors operating within the field of strategic studies, including Andrzej Dybczynski in Poland. The establishment of this kind of paradigm allows us to convincingly characterise this specific relationship between sovereign countries, as well as differentiate the alliances from other forms of international security cooperation. The knowledge available in this field is used in the analysis of alliances entered by Poland.