A Geopolitical Repertoire: The Intermarium as a Recurrent Response to Structural Pressure in Polish Grand Strategy

This paper argues that the Intermarium — the project of constructing a bloc of interposed states between the rival great powers to the East and West under Polish leadership — constitutes a geopolitical repertoire: a strategic script embedded in Polish strategic culture that is reactivated whenever structural pressure exceeds the capacity of existing institutions to guarantee state survival. Combining neoclassical realism and path dependency, the paper explains why the same type-response (Czartoryski 1830, Piłsudski 1918, Beck 1933, Duda 2015, Tusk 2024) resurfaces with regularity across radically different political regimes. The analysis updates the case to 2024-2026 dynamics: the Tusk government, 4.7% GDP rearmament, the Three Seas Initiative, Trump's burden-sharing pressure, and the Ukraine war.