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Poland’s leader came to Washington with a simple message that doesn’t depend on who is in the White House: The Cold War is back.
President Andrzej Duda, who dined in New York with former President Donald Trump this spring, said he will be happy to work with whomever U.S. voters choose as their next president — as long as that person shares his goals of securing Europe from Russia.
“We have to be honest and tell ourselves that the Cold War situation is back and it’s not due to the actions of the United States, it is because of the revival of Russian imperial ambitions,” Duda told POLITICO during an interview at the Polish embassy on Tuesday as world leaders flooded into town for the annual NATO Summit.
The U.S. is hosting the summit this year against the backdrop of not just the war in Ukraine but the prospect of the reelection of Trump — who has been scornful of the alliance, opposed sending military aid to Kyiv and has favored closer relations with Vladimir Putin.
That puts Duda in a tough position as he navigates a war that has brought thousands of Ukrainian refugees to his country and served up a stark reminder of the threat posed by Putin. Poland, in short, can’t afford to take sides in U.S. politics.
“It’s the American people who decide who their president will be, and in my capacity as President of Poland, I can answer only in the following way: We are going to accept and welcome any choice that is going to be made by the American people.”
Duda had as much praise for former President Barack Obama, who sent more U.S. troops to Poland, as he did for Trump and Biden, who he also lauded for increasing the U.S. military presence in Poland and Eastern Europe.
For years, the Polish president found ways to flatter Trump. In 2018 he urged the U.S. to deploy more troops and equipment to his country and went so far as to suggest Poland build a “Fort Trump” to house U.S. and Polish troops there.
“It is my deep conviction that the [job] of the Polish president is to build as good relations as possible with the greatest ally in NATO, and that is the United States of America,” he said.
It’s part of the Polish president’s overarching message to allies in Washington this week: While America must lead, Europe can’t give up when it comes to showing strength against Moscow.
Duda’s government has been at the forefront of the rearmament push in Europe, spending almost 4 percent of its GDP on defense — doubling the NATO goal of 2 percent — and has sent everything from fighter planes and tanks to air defense systems to Kyiv.
Those moves have secured Poland a place as the alliance’s newest military powerhouse, a role that makes Warsaw a player in the alliance, and in Europe, in a way it hadn’t been in previous years.
“We can see that there is a huge deficit of security in Europe,” he said, adding that it is critical, during the annual alliance summit, that NATO send the world “a message of the unity of NATO — this has to be very clear. And the second message that is important to send is that NATO is strong, and that NATO sees a threat emanating from Russia.”
Poland, like many other Central and Eastern European nations, has long warned of the threat Vladimir Putin’s Russia poses to Europe, and while they have not welcomed the war in Ukraine, leaders from the region are somewhat heartened that the West has finally recognized the warnings.
After Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and seized Crimea in 2014, “the West did not react in the appropriate way,” Duda said, proving that sanctions and strongly-worded statements were not enough to deter Putin.
Today, “Russia has been strengthening and building up its military presence in Kaliningrad,” the Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania, “and today this is the most heavily militarized piece of land in the world. Russia is [also] openly speaking about deploying nuclear arms to Belarus,” movements that represent a new “threat against NATO, so NATO’s response today has to be adequate to the level of this threat.”
Duda came to Washington this week looking for more commitments for European air defense systems to protect the alliance from Russian missiles, and is also looking for new commitments for Ukrainian support and increased national defense spending across the alliance.
“What we expect is a very consistent and tough policy by NATO as a whole led by the United States of America [to] strengthen our defense policy” across the alliance, he said. “We have to rebuild our defense industries and we have to replenish our reserves and our stocks of ammunition, we have to do it together, and today we also have to support Ukraine without any pause.”
A major push at the summit this week will be to ink some defense procurement agreements that will increase the production of ammunition for artillery, air defense and aircraft, all of which have been depleted over the past two years of combat.
“My appeal is that we enhance the increases in defense spending to the level of 3 percent as it was through the Cold War,” Duda said, outlining a goal that is still likely years off. While 23 of the 32 alliance members will reach the 2 percent goal this year, a proposal to enshrine a 2.5 percent target at this summit was scuttled before the opening ceremony.
One goal of the Polish government — to bring Ukraine into the NATO alliance — is inching closer, as a communique expected to be released this week will declare that Ukraine’s path toward membership will be “irreversible.” It’s a phrase Duda used specifically when speaking of Ukraine, even if Kyiv’s ascension is still years away.
