Mister Applebaum marches to war

Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw “Radek” Sikorsky raised eyebrows last week by tweeting, “The presence of #NATO forces in Ukraine is not unthinkable. I appreciate the President Emmanuel Macron’s initiative, because it is about Putin being afraid, not us being afraid of Putin.”

Sikorski is also Mr. Anne Applebaum, the husband of the Atlantic writer and neo-conservative publicist.

Sikorski added that “NATO soldiers are already in Ukraine,” but would not disclose which countries had sent them – “unlike some politicians.” That was a dig at German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who rejects the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine as a possible detonator for a wider European war with Russia.

Senior German Air Force officers earlier this month discussed sending German missile technicians to Ukraine to operate the long-range Taurus cruise missile – a weapon that Chancellor Scholz has emphatically refused to deliver to Ukraine, either directly or via sale to a third party. A recording of that discussion was released by Russian media and verified by the German defense ministry.

Meanwhile, Poland’s Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz ruled out the deployment of Polish troops in Ukraine. Poland has denied any connection to the Polish Volunteer Corps, consisting of Polish mercenaries fighting for Ukraine against Russia.

Sikorsky is a standout among European hawks, with an ideological chip on his shoulder consistent with his domestic circumstances.

In a 2020 book – or rather an Atlantic essay inflated into a book with large type and wide margins – Applebaum denounced as “authoritarian personalities” every politician who cast doubt on the inevitable march of democracy, including “the old Hungarian right, the Spanish right, the French