First of all, because it is physically impossible. It is impossible, e.g. in the face of arson, such as the one made by the Russians in relation to the shopping center on ul. Marywilska in Warsaw, secure a fire -fighting shopping center or an important building in Poland.
Fire protection has only a specific effectiveness in relation to the spontaneously emerging fire and will not protect every potential object of attack against intentional arson.
Secondly, the defense is much more expensive than the attack. The terrorist methods used by the Russians are in fact cheap, because the rental of one or the other who will set fire is not much, and is certainly cheaper than creating an army of bodyguards who will look after thousands of facilities that Russians may want to set fire to.
And finally, thirdly, the Russian mentality means that the Russians will not give up just because we will defend ourselves.
George Kennan in the legendary, which is the intellectual basis of the American policy of stopping communism, the so -called The long cipher from 1946 stated: “Soviet authorities, unlike Nazi Germany, does not work schematically or adventurous. resistance”.
If Kennan put a dot here, it could be considered that he suggested defense. The thing is that after the quoted fragment, a sentence follows, which clearly indicates that Kennan, when writing about resistance, meant offensive means: “If the opponent has enough strength and in a clear way demonstrates the readiness of its use, he rarely has to resort to her.”
Experience, also personal from the time when I have not yet been a journalist and worked as a diplomat behind the eastern border, teaches that the Russians (but also Belarusians and, however, paradoxically, it will not sound today – also Ukrainians) only disappear when they meet with strength. A compromise, assuming that it is our goal, and it can never be a starting point for conversation.
An example of how you should not proceed in the face of Russian aggression is the issue of disinformation that the Russians use as a weapon in relation to the West. A lot of disinformation began about 15 years ago. Since then, hundreds of different types of debates and conferences on Russian disinformation have been held in Poland.
The only measurable effect of the vast majority was the creation of other, very very theoretical studies that cataloged, described and categorized Russian methods of disinformation. In other words, people who were not her goal debated about disinformation, and the result of their work were reports addressed to other people who were also not objects of disinformation. Above all, however, we were dealing not with the fight against Russian disinformation, but rather with the attempt to her academic, purely theoretical description. A real fight, taking into account the negligible impact of both our country and more broadly the European Union on platforms such as Facebook or X (formerly: Twitter) was not de facto possible.
Do you use violence against Russia?
The question that we never asked ourselves was whether the Russians would continue disinformation, if the West in response to Russian actions answered a massive propaganda attack measured in the Kremlin. From our point of view, it would be easier because we would not really have to resort to disinformation, because Putin and his clicks are not at risk, but information.
It would only be about the fact that instead of the ever -infeded media directed to the east, attack Russia with the help of trolls and bot farms, which would incite Russians to rebel against the regime in Moscow in the social media used by the Russians.
While the above does not seem, I think, especially controversial, it is much more difficult, also morally, the question is whether to violence, such as arson, should be answered in an analogous one as in the case of disinformation, i.e. a mirror method. The mirror response would mean – clearly – the use of violence.
A month after the outbreak of the full -scale Ukrainian -Russian war in Onet in the text “Should the West set fire to the Russian Caucasus?” I publicly asked whether in order to weaken Russia it would not be a model of what the Americans did in Afghanistan in Afghanistan, began to give weapons to Islamic fundamentalists in the northern Caucasus.
The goal would be – which, moreover, suggested the title of the text – to cause a civil war in Russia, which would force Moscow to deal with its own territory, not to wage a war with Ukraine. In my article I emphasized that this idea has one, quite basic disadvantage. It would mean as much as cooperation with terrorists. The civil war, knowing the way the Russians have already pacified Chechnya once, would mean civil sacrifices.
A little later, for example, during the murder of Daria Dugina, I found that, however, we are dealing with an act of assassination, they were Ukrainians – if they did this assassination – they had the right to him.
We talk too rarely about it
In the podcast, an international report together with Zbigniew Parafianowicz several times reminded about the attacks made during the German occupation of Poland by the Home Army at two railway stations in Berlin. These acts of terror, although from a purely military and logistic point of view, were a success, they are de facto almost completely displaced from Polish consciousness. We probably do not want to remember that we also fought in a way that attracted civil victims.
The question of how far the West can go in confrontation with Russia is something that we are definitely talking about too rarely. Perhaps it is worth returning to Kennan and his statements that the Russians are retreating when their opponent has “sufficient strength and clearly shows the readiness of its use.”
Kennan, let's remind, states that in this case you rarely have to resort to the use of this force. Perhaps, in response to the arson of the shopping center in Warsaw, you do not need to set fire to (at night so that there are no civil victims) a shopping center in Moscow. Perhaps it would be enough to place flammable materials and inform the Russians about their substitute.
The ground, that next to these flammable materials lay a volume of poems by Mickiewicz or Słowacki. Or Czesław Niemen's album with the song “The burning barn”. This way of action would send two signals to the Russians. First – that we have strength and we are ready to use it. And the second – that we will refrain from it if they also stop making terrorist acts in our country.
Read: Witold Jurasz: Hidden target of the assassination of the Russian general. “Special negotiating operation”
