Poland

In 2017, the Polish government set out to build one of the largest airports in Europe on the outskirts of Warsaw. The project, known as the Central Communication Port, or CPK, was meant to combine a new international airport with a high speed railway network, connecting the Polish capital and the country’s peripheral regions. With the austerity of the communist era fading from memory, the CPK has come to symbolise the rapid development of Poland, a nation which has risen from political obscurity to become the EU’s sixth largest economy and one of Nato’s strongest military powers. Following last year’s parliamentary elections, and the subsequent change of government, conflicting visions for Poland’s future have brought the entire project to a standstill.

For decades, the European Union was dominated by a combination of French élan and German economic clout. By the late 2010s, a conservative Budapest-Warsaw alliance seemed poised to challenge this arrangement. The ideological firepower was supplied by Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who emerged as an unlikely spokesman for the international right, while Poland’s booming economy and large population lent the partnership some much needed heft. The Polish elections in mid-October not only marked the end of the Law and Justice party’s near-decade of conservative rule; they offered another blow to a Polish-Hungarian relationship already fraying over the war in Ukraine.

Another day, another spat between Warsaw and Brussels. This time, Poland has declined to participate in the European Union’s latest plan to relocate migrants and asylum seekers within the bloc, with countries who refuse being expected to pay €20,000 per refugee. Hungary has also voted against the pact, while Malta, Lithuania, Slovakia, Bulgaria have quietly abstained.  On 15 June, the Polish parliament (the Sejm) went further and passed a resolution opposing the plan, with the ruling conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) announcing a national referendum on the matter. The referendum will take place on the same day as the general election in either October or November this year.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki is finishing up his three-day trip to the United States on Thursday, almost two months after President Biden’s trip to Poland. The visit is a good opportunity to showcase the solidity of the US-Poland alliance, which, as Morawiecki said, is “an absolute foundation of our [Poland’s] security.” The Poles are truly enamored with the United States, with 91 percent of the populace viewing the US positively. Contrast that with the United Kingdom at 64 percent, and the scale of Poland’s affinity for America becomes clear. Warsaw also has one of the highest levels of confidence in American reliability as a partner at 86 percent, more than any other European country except for the Netherlands.

Once again, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has crushed the hopes of NATO allies and, most of all, the millions of Ukrainians suffering under Russia’s assault. Originally, he refused to send tanks to Ukraine for fear that Russia would escalate the war. More recently, Scholz has said he'd only consider sending tanks if it was part of a coalition, not just Germany acting alone. Last week, the United Kingdom announced it would be sending Challenger 2 main battle tanks (MBT) to Ukraine, making it the first nation to supply modern, Western MBTs to Kyiv. Poland, Finland, and Denmark have also indicated that they would be willing to send their own Leopard 2 tanks. Those are German-origin weapons, so they first require a nod of approval from Berlin in order to export.

As Russia’s war in Ukraine rages into its eleventh month, there is one country that can truly be said to have learned its lesson: Poland. By the mid-2030s, when the majority of its equipment purchases have been delivered, Warsaw will command one of the most modern, well-equipped armies in Europe. It’s not cheap, but Poland is taking decisive action to be able to face the threats of tomorrow. Poland's $20.5 billion 2023 defense budget is a huge increase over the previous year, and is over 3 percent of gross domestic product (well above the NATO-suggested 2 percent). Aside from equipment, this money will be used to help expand the manpower that Poland can bring to bear, upping its active-duty forces from 140,000 to 300,000 troops.

Few countries know Russia’s brutal imperialism better than Poland and the Baltic states. These nations are among a handful in the West to have responded to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with the decisiveness and clarity of vision that the security environment demands. This is why the United States, as it faces a dual threat of China and Russia, should look to Eastern Europe for inspiration. Poland has undergone the most dramatic transformation of the bunch, increasing its defense budget and boosting the size of its military, in addition to supplying Ukraine with a vast array of materiel. Warsaw has pledged to raise defense spending to 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) within a year, up from 2.2 percent, which will be nearly on par with the United States.

Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees have already streamed into Slovakia, Hungary and the Czech Republic. Head north to Poland, and the numbers go from the unprecedented to the jaw-dropping: two and a half million refugees have entered the country with a total population of 38 million since the war in Ukraine began. In the Czech Republic, where I live, official estimates put the current number of refugees at over 300,000, a figure expected to rise to between 500,000 and 600,000 in the coming months. In a country of less than eleven million, that’s five percent of the population. In Poland, a proportion closer to ten percent is possible. At the moment, most of the Czech Republic’s refugees are concentrated in Prague.