One day after Polish President Karol Nawrocki held a high-profile meeting with President Donald Trump marked by pledges of U.S. military presence and U.S. fighter jets piercing the skies over Washington, D.C., the rising European nation’s deputy premier and top diplomat sat down with Newsweek for an exclusive interview covering the state of U.S.-Polish ties, Russia’s war in Ukraine and Europe’s rearmament—in which Warsaw is playing a leading role.
Poland, once at the helm of one of the largest European powers centuries ago, has a long history of being swallowed up, occupied and partitioned by neighboring rivals. The simultaneous invasions by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II in 1939 nearly led to the erasure of Poland, which went on to survive after the conflict as a Soviet satellite state until transitioning to democracy in 1989 and joining NATO a decade later.
Today, Poland’s outlook is unrecognizable from its past era of decline. The country now hosts the third-largest army in NATO—behind only the U.S. and Turkey—and spends the most on defense in terms of percentage of GDP, which also constitutes one of the fastest rising economies in Europe.
Polish Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski says the decision to invest so much of his nation’s newfound prosperity in defense is a choice rooted in painful lessons from history.
“In Poland, we have a saying,” Sikorski tells Newsweek. “Every country has an army. Either your own or a foreign one. And to our cost we have learned many times that your own is cheaper.”
“All we need to do in Europe is to spend the money that we promised President Trump we would spend on defense,” Sikorski says.
No Longer ‘Pathetic’
In this vein, Sikorski believes “President Trump was right that Europeans had disarmed themselves for too long.” The U.S. leader has repeatedly called on NATO members to ramp up defense spending: to 2 percent of GDP during his first term, and, earlier this year, up again to 5 percent.
“If we do this, then by the end of this decade, Russia will be in no position to threaten us,” Sikorski says. “Russia is a country with the economy of Italy. Russia is destroying its future by repeating the roots of the Soviet Union.”
“The Soviet Union bankrupted itself by spending all of its national wealth on defense,” he adds. “[Russian President Vladimir] Putin promised his people that he would not do that, and he’s doing exactly that now.”
While many other allies have shown reluctance in inflating their military budgets, Poland has exceeded Trump’s NATO spending targets, allocating some 4.2 percent to defense last year and projected to spend 4.7 percent this year.
“I believe it’s in America’s interests for Europe to cease to be so pathetic in the defense area,” Sikorski says. “And when we are spending about the same as the United States spends, then we will be more secure as the West as a whole.”
The Polish Miracle
It’s not just Poland’s standing army that sets it apart from other nations in the former Soviet sphere of influence. Sikorksi argues that the nation’s resilient and rising economy serves as the basis for mounting such an impressive military.
As the Iron Curtain began to unravel in the late 1980s, many newly independent nations and members of the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact—the collective defense treaty signed in the Polish capital—underwent a radical wave of neoliberal reforms that came to be known as “shock therapy.” Poland opted for a strategic series of stabilization measures that managed to avoid crushing hyperinflation or the rise of oligarchs that have come to dominate some neighboring states to this day.
In fact, Poland long managed to avoid recessions altogether, even throughout the 2008-2009 financial crisis, experiencing a downturn only during the outbreak of COVID-19 some three decades after instituting vast market privatization. Yearly growth is now projected to again exceed three percent, with income per capita set to surpass that of Japan.
Some observers call it the “Polish miracle.”
“When communism collapsed—and we did a lot to bring that about—we were the poorest in our history by comparison with Western Europe,” Sikorski says. “And so, we had a generation of people who were willing to work really hard to change that, and we are now richer than some of our neighbors in the European Union.”
“What I think is the strength of our economy is that the growth that was generated is pretty evenly spread, so we don’t have these oligarchs who own half the country, and we don’t have areas of extreme wealth and extreme poverty,” he adds. “It’s a very broadly based, steady growth. A steady three and a half percent over a decade or two gives you results.”
Sikorski also credits the role of the U.S. in forgiving debts and investing heavily in Poland’s budding free market economy. Now, he says, “we are paying back the dividend.”
On the Frontlines Again
Yet this success story is tested by the realities of geography. Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has once again brought war to Poland’s doorstep, the deadliest of its kind in Europe since World War II. Poland shares borders with not only Ukraine and Russian ally Belarus but also neighbors Russia’s exclave Kaliningrad region in the Baltics.
The prospect of spillover is not hypothetical. There have been several instances of missiles, drones and aircraft involved in the conflict crossing into Polish airspace or territory. One incident in November 2022 proved deadly as two Polish citizens were killed when a projectile determined to be a Ukrainian air defense missile landed in a border village.
Sikorski draws comparisons to the events that led up to World War II and the build-up to the Russia-Ukraine war, describing Russia’s 2014 seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula as “the Anschluss of Crimea,” referencing Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation of Austria.
And at a time when the prospect of Ukraine ceding territory as part of a peace agreement is being discussed by Trump as he maneuvers between Putin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders, Sikorski cautions about any moves that could be viewed as channeling the appeasement policy of then-U.K. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain in the face of Nazi Germany’s calls for the annexation of Czechoslovakia just months after seizing Austria in 1938.
Poland lost some 6 million people in the war that would ensue the following year, behind only the Soviet Union, China and Nazi Germany, and the highest of any nation by percentage of population. It was also home to the notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, considered to be the site of the largest mass murder in history as part of Nazi Germany’s systematic extermination campaign targeting Jews and other prisoners.
“Remember at Munich, outsiders forced Czechoslovakia into making concessions, and it didn’t work. And we don’t want to be the Chamberlains of today, do we?” Sikorski says. “So, we need to pressure Putin into ceasing to murder Ukrainians, and then Ukrainians and Russians have to negotiate peace, and Russia will have to make concessions, too.”
Putin also frequently evokes imagery of World War II, known in Russia as the “Great Patriotic War,” sparked for the Soviets by a 1941 Nazi German invasion that would march to the gates of Moscow before a dramatic, costly comeback campaign ultimately conquered Berlin. The German capital’s post-war division once marked the frontlines of the NATO-Warsaw Pact boundary, but the post-Cold War decades saw the Western alliance grow closer to Russia’s borders.
Channeling history, Putin has staked a key part of his pretext for invading Ukraine on the claim that neo-Nazi ideology was gaining ground in the neighboring state also viewed as the next potential frontier for NATO expansion. The Russian leader has framed the conflict as a “special military operation” devoted to the “demilitarization” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine, along with recognition of the Kremlin’s unilateral annexation of five Ukrainian provinces, including Crimea and much of eastern Ukraine.
This narrative is rejected by Western officials, including Sikorski, who argues that Ukraine was constitutionally neutral at the time of the initial 2014 Russian incursion, and even today still stood little chance of joining the alliance. Sikorski also recalls how past security guarantees from both Russia and the U.S. in exchange for newly independent Ukraine’s forfeiture of Soviet nuclear weapons in the 1990s ultimately proved toothless.
Now, Sikorski argues, “if Ukraine is to survive as an independent nation and accept sacrifices, she needs to know that the sacrifices will be the last ones, and this time the guarantees will be effective.”
‘Contingency Planning’
The nature of such security guarantees is still being debated among all parties currently participating in peace talks. Some European leaders have suggested going as far as to send peacekeeping troops to enforce a post-war deterrence in Ukraine, while Russia wants a broader set of agreements that offer Moscow a greater say in the regional security landscape.
Hours before Newsweek‘s interview with Sikorski, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk participated in a so-called “coalition of the willing” meeting among European leaders that also involved a call with Trump. After the call, Tusk reiterated his position that he did “not foresee sending Polish soldiers to Ukraine, even after the war ends.”
Sikorski, for his part, says such discussions constitute “contingency planning for a time when Putin might stop attacking Ukraine and we have a ceasefire.”
“But first we have to get a ceasefire,” Sikorski says. “Our chiefs of staff are thinking about scenarios, about forces, about how to assure Ukraine by training their army, how to maintain logistical lines through Poland.”
“We see a role in that, maybe how to keep the skies over Ukraine open, so that, for example, civilian air traffic can restart. That will be important,” he adds. “But first we have to get a ceasefire.”
But here there is some dissonance in where Washington and Warsaw stand. While Trump has hardened his rhetoric against Putin in recent months following public spats with Zelensky, the U.S. leader remains committed to engaging with his Russian counterpart despite skepticism from European allies.
“I’m amazed at President Trump’s patience with this guy,” Sikorski says. “He’s stringing him along, promising to meet Zelensky, telling him lies about how Russia didn’t really invade and that Russia never invades anybody. We’ve lived alongside them for 500 years. We know a thing or two about that.”
“So, President Trump gave him a chance to save face and end this bloody war, but he’s not taking that chance, and therefore we need to change policy,” he adds. “We need to increase sanctions and increase assistance to Ukraine.”
Europe’s Rising Right
While Sikorski applauds what he believes to be the recalibration of the continent’s outlook on security, saying “Europe has woken up,” there is another tide rising that has the potential to effect even greater change across the region.
A wave of right-wing populism that doubts both aid to Ukraine and the EU project as a whole is spreading throughout Europe, including a number of movements that have been embraced directly by the Trump administration.
Recent elections in Austria, Germany and France have produced historic turnouts for nationalist parties once at the fringe of their respective countries’ political spectrums. Hungary and Slovakia’s right-wing leaders have challenged the EU consensus on Ukraine, while Italy currently hosts one of its most right-wing administrations since World War II.
Last year, Romania controversially canceled the turnout of a presidential election that produced a victory for a far-right independent, arguing his campaign was backed by Russian interference and disqualifying his candidacy. A follow-up vote led to victory for a pro-Western candidate.
In Poland, this trend was signaled by Nawrocki’s surprise election in August, which earned him a spot at the White House less than a month later. Tusk, a staunch pro-Europeanist, was not invited, and later stated, “I won’t talk to anyone on my knees,” as tensions over the meeting exacerbated the existing political split within Poland’s highest offices.
Sikorski argues that, much like the left-wing populism that emerged during the Cold War, right-wing populism “proposes simple solutions to complex problems.” At the same time, he says the growth of such movements is rooted in “real grievances” that need to be addressed.
One such issue is that of migration, where Poland has taken drastic measures, including the construction of what Sikorski calls a “big, beautiful fence” on the border with Belarus, which “has been waging a hybrid war against us by forcing migrants” into the country. Some 1.5 million Ukrainians have also entered Poland since the beginning of the war, offering economic opportunities while also putting a strain on social services.
“You have advantages and disadvantages,” Sikorski says. “We need to manage the issues and not attack the persons or dehumanize them.”
What Poland cannot afford to do, he argues, is neglect altogether the root causes of the rightward shift.
“These radical movements come to the fore when the established parties ignore an issue that people care about, and a wise establishment takes whatever is the rational core of that demand and solves the issue,” Sikorski says.
“It’s no good to pretend the issue doesn’t exist, because migration, if it exists as an issue in the United States, in Spain, in Britain, in Germany, in Poland, in France and many other countries,” he adds, “you know it’s not a figment of imagination.”
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