In the decades after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Poland became perhaps the most pro-American country in Europe. It joined NATO in 1999, hosts some 10,000 American troops and has benefited hugely from U.S. political and military support.
Now, in just a dizzying few months, Poland has begun confronting a new era, with new anxieties. President Trump has threatened to abandon the longtime U.S. commitment to European security and is implementing tariffs that imperil the global economy. Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, wants NATO troops out of Poland and has threatened further aggression beyond the war in Ukraine, Poland’s neighbor to the east.
Poland has responded forcefully. It is taking more of a leadership role in the European Union, increasing its already significant military spending and organizing a Swiss-style program of training ordinary citizens in civil defense. It is also cautioning countries in the rest of Europe that they, too, must pay more for their own security because the United States under Mr. Trump is no longer willing to foot so much of the bill.
Security is perhaps the one issue that unites Poland ahead of a presidential election that begins in three weeks. More broadly, Poland’s location on NATO’s eastern edge makes it a crucial bulwark against Russian encroachment on Europe.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland declared in March that given “the profound change of American geopolitics,” Europe “would be safer if we had our own nuclear arsenal.” The statement shocked many because it implied that Poland and Europe could no longer rely on the American nuclear umbrella for protection.
“We see the architecture of global security and the global economy trembling under our feet, and we are a country that has benefited hugely from both globalization and Western solidarity,” Radoslaw Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister and former defense minister, said in an interview.
A New Era of Insecurity
The most sustained answer to Poland’s long history of warfare with Russia has been its membership in NATO, and the U.S. military backing it brings. Poles broadly view American military commitments as securing their freedoms, said Mark Brzezinski, a former American ambassador to Poland.
Now, countries like Poland, which is especially vulnerable through its long borders with Ukraine and Belarus, “have new challenges that make us nervous,” Mr. Sikorski said.
Central to Polish anxiety is Mr. Trump, who has talked of reducing the presence of American troops in Europe. The cohort in Poland is part of roughly 85,000 U.S. troops in Europe altogether.
Poland’s concerns were heightened last month when the U.S. Army announced that it would reposition some troops from a base in southeastern Poland, close to Ukraine, as “part of a broader strategy to optimize U.S. military operations.”
European leaders understand that some U.S. troops may be rotated elsewhere, but they fear that too large a reduction will convey a message of weakness to Moscow. The Kremlin has demanded that NATO pull its troops out of countries that joined after 1997, including Poland, but despite threats to do so, Russia has not dared to attack even those bases used to support Ukraine.
The departure of American troops “would send a signal to Russia that this is a gray zone for Washington,” said Michal Baranowski, a top official working on defense industrial strategy at Poland’s ministry of economic development and technology. “And we Poles will not live in a gray zone ever again. And there should be no gray zones in the European Union, either.”
Poles see the U.S.-Europe relationship as mutually beneficial and are puzzled by the Trump administration’s stated contempt for Europe, which can feel to some like betrayal. For decades, the U.S. helped protect Europe from Russia, and in return, Europe deferred to American leadership on security and bought weapons from U.S. manufacturers.
“That’s a deal that works both ways,” Mr. Sikorski said.
Under former President Joe Biden, the United States established a permanent military presence in Poland in March 2023. The forward headquarters for the U.S. Army’s V Corps is at what is called Camp Kosciuszko, named after a Polish general who fought for American independence against Britain.
Another U.S. base in Poland, an Aegis antimissile defense installation that serves as part of America’s own defense against ballistic missiles, was transferred last July to NATO command as part of the alliance’s missile defense shield. That move was another effort at shifting the burden for Europe’s defense away from the United States, even before Mr. Trump took office.
Karolina Wigura, a Polish historian and philosopher, put it bluntly: “Poles are anxious,” she said, particularly after Mr. Trump praised Mr. Putin and humiliated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in late February in the Oval Office.
“You feel insecure, you feel one step from Yalta,” she said, referring to the infamous 1945 conference where the dying American president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, handed over Eastern Europe to Russia’s dictator, Joseph Stalin.
“The old angst re-emerges,” Ms. Wigura said, “that Russia will attack us and the West will betray us.”
Poland’s Response
Mr. Tusk, a former president of the European Council in Brussels, has been a loud advocate of more military spending by E.U. member nations, both collectively and individually, to support Ukraine and strengthen Europe’s own military capacity.
Poland is already spending 4.5 percent of its gross domestic product on defense — the highest among major European nations — and is aiming at 5 percent, Mr. Trump’s demand for NATO countries. The United States is spending 3.4 percent.
Mr. Tusk is trying to form a coalition of European countries that understands the deep threat to European security from Mr. Putin’s Russia and is willing to spend more to build a European deterrence less reliant on Washington. The likely candidates, Mr. Baranowski said, are Poland, France, Britain, Italy; the Nordic and Baltic nations, which are also geographically close to Russia; and most important, the biggest economy in Europe — Germany. Its new conservative chancellor, Friedrich Merz, planned to visit Poland directly from his first foreign visit, to France.
Poland has already identified military projects worth as much as 40 billion euros, or $46 billion, that could be funded as part of a new €150 billion E.U. loan program for defense, Mr. Baranowski said.
In Poland, Mr. Tusk has advocated a rapid increase in training for civil defense. He called for military training for a month, with salary, for any citizen who wants it. Informed by the combat lessons taken from Ukraine, the program is expected to handle 100,000 volunteers a year by 2027. Mr. Tusk also proposed legislation to streamline military investment and construction.
Unified on Security
Poland is facing a crucial presidential election, with the first round in three weeks. The country remains polarized between Mr. Tusk’s party, Civic Platform, and that of the former government, the right-wing nationalist Law and Justice party.
But on military spending and defense, the country is largely united, experts said.
The number of Poles who believe that the U.S. would come to their rescue is declining, said Wojciech Przybylski, chief editor of Visegrad Insight, an independent think tank focusing on Central Europe. “So we’re at a pivotal moment for our own security,” he added.
In a sign of Poland’s eagerness to solidify ties to America, the government has endorsed a previous deal made by Law and Justice with Westinghouse and Bechtel, two major American companies, to build Poland’s first nuclear-power station.
The invasion of Ukraine shows that Europe, 10 times richer than Russia, must spend on its own security to deter Moscow from risking “a similarly irrational attack” elsewhere in Europe, Mr. Sikorski said.
“Europe cannot build what the U.S. has, which is the capacity to strike any target anywhere in the world,” he said. “But we don’t need that. We don’t need to be as good as the United States. We only need to be better than Russia.”
Steven Erlanger is the chief diplomatic correspondent in Europe and is based in Berlin. He has reported from over 120 countries, including Thailand, France, Israel, Germany and the former Soviet Union.
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