Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski is not a man to shy away from a confrontation. When US billionaire Elon Musk stressed on Sunday how crucial his Starlink satellite service is for Ukraine, posting on X that the country’s “entire front line would collapse if I turned it [Starlink] off,” Sikorski didn’t let the grass grow under his feet.
He promptly took to X and posted that “Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year. The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for other suppliers.”
This earned Sikorski a swift rebuke from across the Atlantic: “Be quiet, small man,” retorted Musk. “You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink.”
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also weighed in on the spat, saying “without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now.”
Tusk urges restraint On Monday, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk entered the fray, urging restraint in Washington: “True leadership means respect for partners and allies. Even for the smaller and weaker ones,” he wrote on X. “Never arrogance. Dear friends, think about it.”
Such a war of words between Warsaw and Washington is unprecedented.
Although Tusk’s center-left government is rattled by and in despair about President Trump’s criticism of Ukraine and his courting of Russia, Poland is on the front line and knows that it depends on its alliance with the US — no matter who is in the Oval Office.
Military training for all Polish adult males So, instead of openly criticizing the US president, Warsaw is focusing on strengthening its own military capability and preparedness for war.
This was evident from Tusk’s parliamentary address last Friday.
To the surprise of many, he announced that a new military training program would be launched by the end of the year “so that every adult man in Poland is trained in case of war.”
Poland is a top military spender within NATO and aims to spend 4.7% of its GDP on defense this yearImage: Dominika Zarzycka/ZUMA/picture alliance He said that the scheme would be modeled on the Swiss system of a relatively short period of basic training lasting 21 weeks and regular training courses.
According to Tusk, the training will be voluntary and would not mean a return to universal compulsory military service. He later clarified that women could also take part in the training, too.
Half a million soldiers Tusk told lawmakers that his government is aiming for an army of half a million soldiers, including reservists.
He also said that he would recommend “a positive opinion for Poland to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention and possibly from the Dublin Convention,” which prohibit the use of anti-personnel land mines and cluster munitions respectively.
He also said that every Polish citizen will soon be provided with a guide on how to behave in the event of war and announced that Warsaw would discuss France’s nuclear umbrella with the government in Paris.
Poland’s two ‘life insurance policies’ Tusk even got backup support from Polish President Andrzej Duda, who almost simultaneously suggested that the constitution should be amended to include a permanent defense spending target of at least 4% of GDP. Poland aims to spend 4.7% of its GDP on defense this year.
Although Poland’s previously rock-solid faith in the alliance with the US as a cornerstone of the country’s security has been shaken to the core, both the Polish government and the opposition continue to hope that the US will not abandon its close ally.
Tusk has said that ‘every responsible politician must today aim for an armed, self-assured, trustworthy Europe’Image: SERGEI GAPON/AFP/Getty Images “Our attitude to the transatlantic relationship and to NATO must remain indisputable,” Tusk told parliament.
Foreign Minister Sikorski agreed: “Poland has two life insurance policies: NATO with America and Europe,” he said during the parliamentary debate.
Tusk went on to emphasize that “every responsible politician must today aim for an armed, self-assured, trustworthy Europe.” Warsaw considers the most important task to be to bring both these guarantees into line.
Kaczynski wants ‘a return to the chivalric ethos’ Solidarity between the government and the opposition would be valuable in the current crisis, especially as politicians in the opposition national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party are on very good terms with Trump’s MAGA movement.
But PiS is hoping for support from the US hardliners in its fight against Tusk. It feels vindicated by a report recently published by the Hudson Institute, a conservative American think tank, that claims the current Polish government used undemocratic methods to restore the rule of law.
While Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of PiS, supports the idea of military training for all, he feels that it will not do any good as long as a leftist “educational theory of fear” is being taught in Poland and said that a “return to the chivalric ethos” is needed.
The situation is made even more difficult by growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland.
No significant anti-American feeling in Poland Although Poland’s 200-year love affair with America has cooled slightly in recent times, there would appear to be no place in Poland for the kind of ideological anti-Americanism sometimes found in western Europe.
Polish PM Donald Tusk (left, pictured here with French President Emmanuel Macron) has in recent weeks been involved in every initiative that seeks to increase Europe’s ability to defend itself Image: Ludovic Marin/AFP According to a survey conducted by the polling institute CBOS in February, 58% of Poles like Americans; only 10% do not.
This means that Americans are second only to Italians in the national popularity stakes in Poland. That being said, their popularity has dropped seven percentage points within the space of a year.
Just under 44% of those polled said they consider it possible that the USA will leave NATO. Only 30% said that this would not happen.
Strengthening Europe’s ability to defend itself Poland has in recent weeks been involved in every initiative that seeks to increase Europe’s ability to defend itself, with Tusk playing an active role in recent conferences in both Paris and London.
In his address in the Polish parliament, he spoke of a “watershed moment” in the way the European Union thinks because the plan now is that European money will be invested directly in defense.
Poland is above all hoping for support for its model project “East Shield,” which aims to secure the country’s borders with Belarus and Russia. There is also talk of a joint air defense system.
Despite differences of opinion in Berlin and Warsaw on the strategic sovereignty of Europe, the Trump administration’s confrontational course could in fact lead to greater rapprochement between Germany and Poland.
The Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita even suggested on Monday that “Poland and Germany could develop and atomic bomb together.” Such a project would, wrote Jedrzej Bielecki, “finally complete the reconciliation between Poles and Germans.”
This article was originally published in German.
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