WARSAW—Poland has one of the strongest economies in Europe, one of NATO’s highest rates of military spending and a nearly unmatched understanding of Russia’s threat to the continent. Yet the country punches below its weight on the world stage.
The reason? A divided political system that has paralyzed both sides for years and complicated Warsaw’s relationships with both President Trump and some of Europe’s biggest powers.
The divisions broke into the open late last month, when Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s centrist government ordered police to surround one of the country’s top judicial bodies in a new crisis point in a decadelong power struggle with its right-wing rivals. The police’s arrival triggered physical confrontations between top officials and protests that lasted late into the night. Last month, senior U.S., Ukrainian and European officials convened in Oslo for high-level discussions on the war. Days later, a phone call took place between Russian President Vladimir Putin and the leaders of Norway and Finland, both of which share a border with Russia. The fierce rivalry between the centrist prime minister’s Civic Platform and right-wing President Karol Nawrocki, aligned with the opposition party Law and Justice, has led both sides to use foreign policy to play to their bases back home. “Now Tusk is unable to reach the White House. Nawrocki is unable to reach Kyiv.
Poland, which also shares a more than 100-mile border with Russia, was left on the sidelines.
Tusk, who held a top European Union post a decade ago, and Sikorski have tangled with the Trump administration and its allies, including Elon Musk, who once told the Polish minister in a continuing online feud to “be quiet, small man. “To have room for maneuvering on the national stage on Ukraine and Russia, you at least need to have open access to Kyiv and to the White House,” said Slawomir Debski, former government adviser and now a professor of international relations at the College of Europe in Natolin, Poland. “We do not seem to be able to undertake a more ambitious, and nuanced foreign policy right now,” said Tomasz Szatkowski, who was fired as Poland’s ambassador to NATO shortly after Tusk won power. Tusk’s justice minister, Waldemar Zurek, who has led the push to ensure the new judges elected by Poland’s parliament are able to take their seats at the Constitutional Tribunal, said he hopes Nawrocki and Tusk can reach an agreement to cool heads on both sides.
Some officials now said clashes may erupt around Poland’s Independence Day marches on Wednesday.
