Bandwagoning is a term coined by the eminent American political scientist Quincy Wright in the early 1940s and popularized by Kenneth Waltz in his “Theory of International Relations”. It denotes a phenomenon of domestic politics, which refers to supporters joining a party perceived as the future winner of the elections. In international politics, this is a strategy synonymous with unreflective support and identification by smaller and weaker states with the position of a stronger state in order to accumulate political capital. It is still a very popular (sometimes even a default) doctrine of foreign policy. Also in the case of the Polish foreign policy.
The bandwagoning state does so in the hope of gaining the political sympathy of a stronger partner, and even concrete benefits in the future to ensure or improve its own security, receive material (e.g. economic) or political benefits (support in applying for membership in international organizations or gaining positions in managing bodies).
So it is about stroking, bootlicking, creeping in the hope of gaining sympathy, in order to be able to discount it at the moment of need. The strategy involves potential high costs, including in particular the risk of satelliteisation, the possibility of becoming dependent on a superpower with no real influence on its policy and decisions, as well as the risk of deteriorating relations with other countries.
Bandwagoning is a policy that expresses the inability to solve its own foreign policy problems through a sovereign decision-making process and by balancing influence. It is cynicism resulting from the conclusion (whether justified or not) of one’s own helplessness.
Bandwagoning can be practiced both towards a country that is perceived as the strongest ally (without the support of which it is impossible to guarantee one’s own security), and also towards a potential enemy (against which it is impossible to form a sufficiently strong coalition). Waltz himself treated bandwagoning as a form of subordination to a potential enemy. The bandwagoning relationship is by definition unequal, and the exchange is not equivalent. It may result from external pressure from the stronger state or it may be an act of self-resignation (preemptive, preventive). It may even assume supporting illegal or unethical actions of the stronger party. For Waltz, people go to bandwagoning either out of fear or for supposed benefit.
The greater the potential of the stronger state, the closer the partner is, the more inclined to act for the weaker state, the greater the tendency to bandwagon.
The history of modern international relations, including the post-Westphalian ones, where the sovereign equality of states is an axiom, gives countless examples.
A good illustration is often considered the pro-France behaviour of small German states: Bavaria, Baden-Wuerttemberg or Hesse-Darmstadt during the Napoleonic wars of XIXth century, encouraged by Napoleon with promises of territorial benefits.
Another example is Bulgaria’s policy towards Germany after the outbreak of World War I until its open accession to the Central Powers bloc in 1915.
The signs of bandwagoning can be found in the support of Nazi Germany by some European countries before and during World War II. Finland and Romania did so, preferring the alliance with Germany to submitting themselves to the Soviet Union, which wanted both countries to be reduced territorially, if not subordinated to the Soviets.
Poland undoubtedly practiced bandwagoning acrobatics in the 1990s, striving for the sympathy of the Washington elite, especially after our established goal was to join NATO, and the United States was not yet mature for NATO enlargement. We went on bandwagoning even when the Clinton administration became convinced of our membership, but some important European countries were still hesitating. Besides, one could not afford to give a pretext to opponents of enlargement during parliamentary ratification debates even in America. So the bandwagoning had to go on.
At the top of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, during the rule of the AWS-UW coalition in 1997-2001, this bandwagoning strategy was supervised by people who made sure that even on non-strategic issues, the Polish position did not fall on a collision course with American thinking. Clientelistic vigilance was also in force at lower levels.
I was then asked to attend a meeting with one of the directors at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (freshly appointed), who was approached by an American embassy diplomat. The diplomat came to ask about our position on a specific issue concerning European security. The mere fact that the American representative came and asked (rather than communicated the policy line) was significant. This showed that in Washington the positions of individual institutions on the issue were still getting through; there was probably a discrepancy between the Pentagon, CIA and Foggy Bottom, and the State Department hoped that it would be able to use the Polish position in the inter-institutional dispute as an argument, and perhaps the crowning one, to its advantage. The American diplomat was very disappointed when he heard from the Polish interlocutor at the outset that our position is identical to the American one. And even more than his disappointment, his face showed quite unprofessionally his astonishment, because he had not yet revealed the position of the American side, for the simple reason that it had not yet been agreed upon.
Critics of the Polish military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq after 2003, point out that our decisions at that time were also full of bandwagoning. It is not entirely possible to agree with them. Support for the US attack on Afghanistan resulted from allied solidarity. NATO members activated Article 5 for the first time in history, declaring their readiness to show support to the Americans in the face of the act of terrorism that hit them on September 11, 2001. The stabilization operation in Afghanistan was morally clean, legally sound, and politically consensual. Polish participation was part of the allied effort.
The attack on Iraq caused, on the other side, serious controversy in the international community, and also inside NATO itself, not to mention the European Union. The alliance split into a pro-American (“Anglo-Saxon”) camp and a German-French contestation line. The decision on Poland’s participation in the stabilization of Iraq was made at the highest level. Years later, President Kwaśniewski made no secret of the fact that he took the decision with incomplete knowledge and based on the misleading opinions of recognized international experts as to whether Iraq had (or not) weapons of mass destruction. The MFA’s expert and diplomatic staff was not involved in deliberations at the top of the government. When the decision was made, there were many voices in the MFA as well as in our embassies (especially in Arab countries), if not even openly critical, then highly skeptical.
As the director of the policy planning department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in the years 2003-2004, I organized discussions and brainstorming sessions about the consequences of this decision for our foreign policy, also with the participation of experts identified with then opposition circles. In fact, informal thematic debates were one of my favorite projects while I was managing the department. Each of my associates used to prepare a thematic session related to a selected aspect of our foreign policy. We invited colleagues acting as desk officers in territorial or functional departments pertinent to the topic.
Very often the debates turned into such an open exchange of views that the participants questioned the validity of the policy pursued by the ministry. So I was not surprised that even deputy ministers began to show interest in participating in these discussions. Once even three of them came to one of the debates. And it did not occur to the management of the ministry at the time to draw any consequences against the authors of the critical opinions expressed. Quite the contrary, some dissenters were even promoted. And the MFA rank-and-file colleagues were not afraid to express their thoughts also on the Iraqi issue, then very much strategic issue for our policy. Experts associated with the opposition, including my colleague at the time, and later Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, supported our participation in the Iraqi mission, sometimes using arguments of pure bandwagoning: “Poland supports Americans in the Middle East, hoping that the United States would reciprocate during an emergency in Europe”
I was a convinced supporter of our involvement in the stabilization operation in Iraq. Not that Poland had to please the Americans. Not because we could gain some economic benefits from the operation. Or increase the combat capabilities of our army by confronting a real enemy. I saw in our effort an opportunity to raise the political position of our country not only among allies, but also in the region, and even in the wider world. And I hoped that our commitment would expand the horizons of our thinking about foreign policy, that we would return to an active role in discussions about the Middle East or Asia, that we would be more ambitious in the common foreign policy of the European Union, not only on Eastern Europe, that we would throw off the label of monothematic diplomats. I dreamed of such a horizontally open foreign policy both then and today. It included both a chance and an obvious risk. Soon the risk materialized in the form of accusations against Poland of being an American Trojan horse in Europe or an American lap dog. But during the stints of Cimoszewicz and Rotfeld as foreign ministers, we never lost our freedom and elementary honesty in assessing the course of the operation. This included, in particular, our assessment of the actions of the civilian occupation authorities under the leadership of Paul Bremer.
In April 2003, Poland took command of one of the four stabilization sectors (the rest fell to the USA and Great Britain as the occupying powers). I was asked to draft a draft justification for our decision, which was to be announced in the Sejm by Prime Minister Leszek Miller. I had serious doubts about some elements of the justification, so I was very happy that the Ministry of National Defense, by Deputy Minister Andrzej Towpik, would take a leading role in finding the right words. And the whole thing was efficiently put together into a logical last touch by the speechwriters of the Prime Minister.
In 2005, when I assumed the position of Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, the operation in Iraq was included in my dossier (among others, I represented Poland in the liaison group of the participating countries headed by Stephen Hadley, US National Security Advisor). And it became a source of my many headaches. Especially when, in the spring of 2005, the governing Social Democrats decided that it would be better for their electoral chances to opt for leaving Iraq. One spring morning, the media reported that Poland had made the irrevocable decision to withdraw its contingent by the end of the year. Minister Rotfeld was outside Poland and I was entrusted with the management of the Ministry. I did not have time to read the reports, while the phone from the US Embassy was already ringing. The conversation was quite long, but the American message could be summed up in one question: “Piotr, WTF?”
Our allies had a legitimate grudge that no one had warned them, that no one had explained what was going on. We had a few hours before Washington woke up to ease the situation. Fortunately, Defence Minister Szmajdziński understood perfectly well that reassuring gestures towards Americans were needed. He efficiently organized a media opportunity when he explained that we did not mean a complete exit, but a change of the nature of the mission (from stabilization to training), that we would not do anything without allied arrangements, etc. Emotions subsided before the roosters crowed on Foggy Bottom.
As such, bandwagoning should not provoke moral repulsion. Everything is a matter of form and the ceiling bandwagoning reaches. Due to the coarseness of foreign policy during the term of President Duda and the PiS rule, since 2015 the levels of bandwagoning surged towards the USA breaching all previous records. Because it was already uncritical bandwagoning personalized towards President Trump. All the chips were placed on President Trump, and the coaxing reached stratospheric heights. Every morning, ritual arias were spreading from Krakowskie Przedmieście, Aleje Ujazdowskie and Aleja Szucha towards Washington. When Trump lost the election and the new administration had a critical eye on PiS politics, PiS’s only hope remained with Trump’s return to power. It was Putin who saved the PiS government from embarrassment by attacking Ukraine. Joe Biden put the affront into oblivion and came to Poland to demonstrate the strength of allied ties.
Even in the times of Russia’s war against Ukraine, Belarus and Armenia rose to the heights of the diplomatic bootlicking policy towards Russia. Belarus – it is known, after 2020 it lost its sovereignty. It was the only post-Soviet state to vote in the UN General Assembly together with Russia against a resolution condemning Putin’s war. In the case of Belarus, it is no longer clappering, but total satelliteism, about which in a week. But Armenia? It was the only country that stuck to Russia during the vote of the Committee of Ministers’ decision to start the procedure of depriving Russia of membership in the Council of Europe in 2022. Armenia already many years earlier was guided by the desire to please Russia at the forum of the United Nations or the Council of Europe. But it did not help at all to ensure that the so-called Lavrov’s plan contained proposals more favourable for Armenia. It didn’t help to convince Russia to stop Azerbaijan’s offensive in 2020 before Shushi fell. It didn’t help to ensure that Russia should agree to activate the collective defence mechanism when Azerbaijan moved its troops to what Armenia believed was its territory in 2021. Only when Azerbaijan struck again in September 2022 and Russia ignored again Armenia’s request to treat it as casus foederis, Armenia started sending critical signals towards Russia.
After all, it is difficult nowadays to generally condemn bandwagoning from the moral point of view. We live in the era of “softpower”, when attractiveness and sympathy influence the power of states. Seeking someone else’s favour is a natural instinct in the foreign policy of many countries. If there are reproaches, they may be primarily of an aesthetic and political nature.
