Normative Contractual of Poland's Foreign Policy Toward Ukraine

<ns3:p>This paper presents a counterfactual of Poland’s foreign policy toward Ukraine since it became a sovereign state. This thought experiment states an alternative history of Poland’s foreign policy toward Ukraine and starts with the question, ‘What if Poland’s foreign policy toward Ukraine was strategically aimed at buck-passing the costs of our common security and possibly even bloodletting our neighbor through the conflict with Russia?’. The argument starts with the examination of normative theory and analyticism as the meta-theoretical underpinnings of the analysis. Then, the concepts of thought experiment and counterfactual will be introduced, showing how they can be helpful in understanding this particular nexus of causal and normative concerns. The national interests of Poland, Ukraine, and Russia will be reconstructed and used as the backdrop for normative analysis. Furthermore, buck-passing, bait, blead, and bloodletting foreign policy strategies are introduced to structure the proposed counterfactual. Finally, the counterfactual is constructed and its normative and empirical/causal consequences are assessed in the conclusion of the paper.</ns3:p>