“Informed by its history, Poland understands that it must retain its independence and avoid foreign occupation—an issue that transcends all others psychologically and practically.”
President Trump’s visit to Poland and his speech, which was delivered in front of the monument to the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against Nazi occupation, has already been compared by Poland’s press to John F. Kennedy’s historic 1963 visit to West Berlin.
The enthusiasm in Poland about the visit of the president of the United States recently was palpable. The defense minister, Antoni Macierewicz, said it showed “how much Poland’s place in geopolitics and world politics has changed.”
Poland is a serious country with a deep history. To begin thinking about Poland’s strategy and geopolitical importance, we must consider that between the end of World War I and the beginning of World War II, it was sovereign for roughly two decades. It lost its sovereignty to Germany in 1939; its statehood was formalized in 1945, but it was dominated by the Soviets and regained sovereignty 50 years later after the Soviet occupation ended.
The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 presented Poland with a new chance to be an independent actor in Europe. After more than 50 years of communist rule, Poland experienced a so-called “velvet revolution” that marked a new page in its history—relatively bloodless reform.
Poland then launched an aggressive reconstruction of its political structure, institutional framework, and economic and developmental structure, and, to the surprise of many, it has flourished in the 28 years since Russia’s control of Central and Eastern Europe was relinquished.
In 1994, I was part of an international delegation to Poland. The communist system had been cast into the junkyard of history, and the urgent question for Poles had become how to guarantee their newfound independence against a feared resurgence by Russia, which Poles calculated had invaded their country more than 20 times over the centuries.
Informed by its history, Poland understands that it must retain its independence and avoid foreign occupation—an issue that transcends all others psychologically and practically. Economic, institutional, and cultural issues are important, but the analysis of its position must always return to this root issue.
Increasing Leadership
In this context, Poland’s rise to regional leadership is a major strategic advantage for Washington. The US and Poland have shared interests, particularly when it comes to Russia. But while their approach to Moscow brought the United States and Poland closer together, Poland will be looking for reassurances from Trump that the US commitment to collective security, so crucial to the future of their own country and all of Europe, remains solid.
While Russian desires to regain lost ground over the last decade have challenged US interests in Central and Eastern Europe, Poland has increasingly become a formidable ally of the US in the region and taken a leading role as a counterbalance to Russian interests. Importantly, this has included not only economic means but concrete military efforts that give Poland weight in relation to the major western EU states that favor amicable relations with Russia.
In particular, Poland proved willing and able to support US interests in the region, both within and outside of the NATO framework; military cooperation between Washington and Warsaw increased. Beginning with the controversial 2013 missile defense shield, then expanding to F16 sales, and Special Forces training, Poland has become America’s chief partner in Eastern Europe. Poland is one of the five NATO members that spend the expected two percent of gross domestic product on its military.
The Poland-US security relationship has also gotten a boost this year with the deployment of some 5,000 US troops to Poland as part of two separate American and NATO missions. The deployments are meant to reassure allies on NATO’s eastern flank that the alliance is serious about protecting them from Russian aggression.
Energy Ties
During President Trump’s visit to Warsaw, he also attended a summit devoted to the Three Seas Initiative, an effort to expand and modernize energy and trade links among 12 countries located between the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black seas. One driving purpose of the initiative is to make the region less dependent on Russian energy. Under the project, US exports of liquefied natural gas (LNG), which began arriving in Poland in early June, would have the potential to supply more of the region.
Speaking to the attendees, President Trump said:
The Three Seas Initiative will transform and rebuild the entire region and ensure that your infrastructure, like your commitment to freedom and rule of law, binds you to all of Europe and, indeed, to the West. The Three Seas Initiative will not only empower your people to prosper, but it will ensure that your nations remain sovereign, secure, and free from foreign coercion.
The Three Seas nations will stand stronger than they have stood before. When your nations are strong, all the free nations of Europe are stronger, and the West becomes stronger as well. Together, our nation and yours can bring greater peace, prosperity, and safety to all of our people.
A Direction for Poland
In addition to conventional diplomatic objectives concerning the recent deployment of American troops to Poland and the US administration’s desire to expand its supply to Europe of liquid natural gas, Trump is likely to endorse Poland’s continuing commitment to spending 2% of GDP on defense and—more controversially—its rejection of Muslim immigration.
It’s undeniable that some members of the Polish government also see the Trump visit—his first stop on only his second time overseas since assuming office—as both an implicit endorsement and a chance to thumb their noses at the European elites based in Brussels and other capitals of Western Europe (the visit comes less than a month after the EU launched legal proceedings against three member states—Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic—over their unwillingness to accept refugees).
After the Manchester bombing in May, Poland’s prime minister, Beata Szydło, decried the “madness of the Brussels elite” who wanted to create a “utopia of open borders.” The interior minister, Mariusz Błaszczak, has blamed terrorism in Western Europe on a drift away from Christianity across the continent.
Poles consider that their “Christian values” make them more European than anyone else on the continent. That is why, even though many Poles feel entitled to accuse the EU of encouraging atheism, individualism, and immorality, an amazing 75% of them want to stay in the EU.
There is also concern that Trump’s visit could embolden the Polish government and encourage what the EU sees as an erosion of the rule of law in Poland. Some critics worry that President Trump may be seen as endorsing a government that is clashing with the EU over democracy and migrants.
Some political observers are uneasy that the visit could further deepen divisions between Poland and its Western European partners and has prompted concerns over a presidential strategy that threatens not to unite Europe but to divide it.
Piotr Buras, director of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said, “For the Polish government, Trump’s visit is an opportunity to show that Warsaw’s much-discussed isolation is a myth, making the visit a success before it has even started.”
Today, Poland has emerged as a leading European power, despite its less-than-advantageous position between Russia and Germany; however, it will need to continue to make smart strategic decisions to maintain its freedom of action in the future. Nevertheless, changes in government in either country could jeopardize this relationship, as Germany’s more leftist parties favor closer ties with Russia, whereas Poland’s conservatives harbor deep suspicions of Germany.
On the security front, Poland’s position has been greatly strengthened by its membership in NATO and the European Union. As a NATO member, it now enjoys the military support of the United States and its European allies, a massive deterrent to any Russian ambitions in Poland.
Poland needed a security guarantor. The United States obliged. The US needed a location from which to station its troops to contain Russia (although this deployment was formally a NATO undertaking, it was actually under American control). Poland obliged.
As a result, Poland must maintain strong ties with both the United States and its European allies in order to guarantee its future security and allow its ongoing economic expansion to continue. If it can do this, Poland will have the brightest future of any country in Central Europe—something that few predicted when Communism fell in the late 1980s.
