Torsti Siren

State Agent, Identity and the ?new World Order?: Reconstructing Polish Defence Identity After the Cold War Era Torsti Siren

This research argues that it is not the case that corporate Poland?s foreign and defence policy orientation is ?instinctively Atlanticist? by nature, as has been argued. Rather, it has been the State?s rational project to overcome a habituated and reified fear of becoming geopolitically ?sandwiched? between Russian and German Others by leaning on the USA; among the Polish nation, support for the USA has been declining since 2004. It is not corporate Poland either that has turned into a ?constructive European?, as has been argued, but rather the Polish nation that has, at least partly, managed to emancipate itself from its habituation to a ?betrayal by Europe? narrative, since it favours the EU as much as it favours NATO. It seems that in the Polish case a truly ?common? European CFSP vis-à-vis Russia may offer a solution that will emancipate the Polish State from its habituated EU-sceptic role identity and corporate Poland from its narrated borders of Otherness towards Russia and Germany, but even then one cannot be sure whether any other perspective than the Polish one on a common stand towards Russia would satisfy the Poles themselves.