Landscapes of Paradox: Public Discourses and Policies in Poland's Relationship With the Nord Stream Pipeline

The announcement that the Russian state-owned gas monopoly Gazprom and two German energy companies intend to construct a new undersea Baltic pipeline that will bypass Poland has raised a fierce political storm in that country. In this paper, we aim to shed further light onto the forces that govern the proposed pipeline's interaction with Poland's energy, economic and geopolitical landscapes, by examining some of the public discourses and state policies that have been associated with the country's reaction to it. One of our key findings is that the new gas link - recently named Nord Stream - is creating interlocking webs of socio-spatial paradoxes and contradictions that reverberate across the entire Baltic space. In the process, they simultaneously bind together and tear apart the territorial and political fabric of the region.