Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has appealed for continued political and military engagement by the United States in Europe to ensure the continent’s security and democracy. He also repeated Polish calls for former Soviet states such as Georgia and Ukraine to be admitted to the EU and NATO.
“America and Europe must work together, must remain a community based on democratic values,” said Duda, speaking at this week’s Warsaw Security Forum, a leading regional security platform co-organised by the Casimir Pulaski Foundation and German Marshall Fund of the United States.
“We need an America that is politically and militarily engaged in the security of Europe and active in NATO,” continued the president. “This is a guarantee that the democratic world will be able to cope with numerous challenges, both at our borders and in remote parts of the globe.”
Poland, particularly under the current national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) government, has long been one of Europe’s most Atlanticist countries. It has sought to forge close economic and military ties with Washington.
However, PiS has itself been accused by a number of international bodies of undermining democracy. That has included the European Commission, which has brought a number of rule-of-law cases against Warsaw, and Joe Biden, who last year named Poland as a country that has moved in a concerning direction.
During his speech, Duda called for a “strong EU, shaping security in its environment to a greater extent than it is today”. This should involve working in close harmony with NATO, rather than duplicating its functions, he said.
The president also warned of “new security challenges appearing on the horizon, the most serious of which is China’s multidimensional influence in the technological, economic, financial and cyberspace fields”.
He called for partnerships with countries in the Asia-Pacific region that “share our values”, such as Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. He said he hoped that this would be the case with the recently announced agreement between Australia, the UK and US, which has caused tensions with France.
Duda noted that Russia remains a threat, and pointed to current “hybrid aggression” towards Poland through Belarus’s orchestration of mass crossings by Middle Eastern and African migrants over the border.
He also repeated Poland’s longstanding opposition to the recently completed Nord Stream 2 pipeline that will bring gas from Russia to Germany. It is a “strategic error for the entire transatlantic community” that could create “political, energy and military threats”, warned Duda.
The president repeated Poland’s calls for former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, to be “included in the community of free and democratic Western countries”, including through EU and NATO membership.
Main image credit: Jakub Szymczyk/Prezydent.pl
Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.
