Unconquerable: Poland as the New Anchor in the Transatlantic Alliance

No invader has ever conquered the heart of Poland, that spirit which is the inheritance of sons and daughters, the private passion of families and the ancient, unbreakable tie to all those who came before. ---James A. Michener

On Wednesday, September 3, during his meeting with the new Polish President, Karol Nawrocki, President Donald Trump described the U.S.-Polish relationship as “better than ever.” Asked if he would continue to station U.S. troops in Poland, Trump said “we’ll put more there if they want.” Nawrocki said, “I'm historian and this is the first time in Polish history in 20th century and the 21st century that the Poles are happy that we have foreign soldiers in Poland. So the American soldiers are the part of our society nowadays. We have almost 10,000 soldiers and this is the signal to all world and also to the Russian Federation that we are together.” At a time when there is great trepidation in Europe about the future of the transatlantic alliance, Poland is emerging as the new anchor for the United States on the Continent. But this is not a new development. The U.S.–Poland relationship was a priority for President Trump during his first term as he chose Warsaw for his first visit to Europe. The foreword for the Polish language edition of Battlegrounds provides historical context for the strong alliance between Washington and Warsaw.

5 July 2017, Washington, District of Columbia. I got to the White House around 5 am to drop my bag and read intelligence prior to the short helicopter flight with the President to Andrews Air Force Base. Despite a North Korean intercontinental ballistic missile test that interrupted Independence Day weekend, President Donald Trump was in good spirits. I told him that, he would receive a warm welcome from Polish leaders and the leaders of twelve other European Union Member States attending The Three Seas Conference because those countries, situated along the Baltic, Adriatic, and Black seas felt very directly the threat from an increasingly aggressive Russia.

As we arrived at The Royal Castle (Zamek Królewski) on Thursday, 6 July, I thought of Poland’s resilience and tortured history. King Sigismund III (Zygmunt III) and subsequent Kings expanded and remodeled the castle across the two centuries preceding the accession of Poland’s last King, Stanislaw August Poniatowski, who came to power in 1764. Between 1772 and 1795, Poland suffered three partitions by Prussia, Russia, and Astria after which it was eliminated as a sovereign state until the end of World War I. The castle, like Poland itself, was severely damaged in 1939 after the Nazi and Soviet invasions. It was almost completely destroyed in the cataclysmic battles between German forces and their erstwhile Soviet co-conspirators in 1945. Poles did not begin to rebuild the castle until 1971 and the effort served as a reminder of the horrors Poland had suffered.

I had told Trump that, unlike many European nations that had largely disarmed under the assumption that Russia was no longer a threat, the Poles’ memory of brutal attack, dismemberment, and traumatic occupation at the hands of the Nazis and the Soviets during World War II as well as subjugation to the USSR during the Cold War, inspired an appreciation for strong defense. I noted that President Andrzej Duda and other leaders in his government were born in the early 1970s, when the ruling Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) started to rebuild the castle and the communist authoritarian state began to crumble. I reminded Trump that a large strike in 1970 sparked opposition that grew stronger as the PZPR tried to maintain control with tools of repression and control of state media. I pointed out the importance of Pope John Paul II and the Catholic Church in catalyzing the freedom movements as parish priests sheltered anti-government activists and published underground newspapers. Facing growing opposition from the Solidarity movement, the Communist government allowed semi-free elections in 1989. Solidarity candidates won. Communist rule in Poland ended.

As a crowd assembled at the Warsaw Uprising Monument at Krasiński Square to hear Trump speak, our delegation met with Duda and his team. The Prime Minister focused on the threat from Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin, reinforcing what Trump had heard from other leaders of nations along Russia’s frontier. Duda took out a map to highlight the proximity of Russian forces in the city of Kaliningrad. He requested that Trump permanently station U.S. troops on Polish soil and suggested the formation of joint U.S.- Polish battalions with long range precision strike capabilities – the U.S. HIMARS rockets that would, years later, prove invaluable to Ukraine’s defense. I had told Trump that the request was coming and that, given Putin’s messianic drive to restore the Russian empire, a U.S. permanent military presence in Poland made sense. I had also explained disappointed Polish leaders had been in 2012 when President Obama traded missile defenses. Obama had made the mistake of thinking that the best way to preserve peace in Europe was to placate Putin. A little more than a year later, Putin’s “little green men” illegally annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine. “Mr. President,”, I told him, “now is the time to deepen defense cooperation with Warsaw. What provokes Putin is the perception of weakness.” I hoped that Duda and other leaders would disabuse Trump of the idea that had afflicted his two predecessors: that reassuring Putin would convince him to abandon his revanchist agenda.

We walked with Duda to the ballroom, the most impressive space in the Castle. Trump greeted the leaders of ​​Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, and Slovenia who were in Warsaw to attend the second summit of the Three Seas Conference. I had urged Trump to attend the conference to support the development of new energy, transportation and digital infrastructure and the reduction of dependencies on Russia that give the Kremlin coercive power over Europe.

Trump shook hands and took in the room’s columns, chandeliers, and mirrors as he sat down to applause. “Thank you. I greatly appreciate it. This is a beautiful room, I must say. I love beautiful rooms and this is one of them.” His prepared remarks expressed US support for “a new future for open, fair, and affordable energy markets that bring greater security and prosperity to all of our citizens.” Alluding to the need to break Russia’s stranglehold over the Three Seas nations, he urged them to “continue to diversify your energy sources, suppliers, and routes,” and “ensure that your infrastructure, like your commitment to freedom and rule of law, binds you to all of Europe and, indeed, to the West.”

He stated “The United States will never use energy to coerce your nations, and we cannot allow others to do so. You don’t want to have a monopoly or a monopolistic situation. The United States is firmly committed to open, fair, and competitive markets for global energy trade.” Trump correctly portrayed the United States as a critical part of the solution to energy insecurity and overdependence on Moscow pledging to support “a common-sense approach to protecting natural resources — one that responsibly balances economic growth, job creation, and energy security.” In retrospect, after Russia’s massive reinvasion of Ukraine in 2022, it is obvious that Trump’s counsel was prescient and should have been heeded with a greater sense of urgency.

The Three Seas leaders made short remarks—all of which highlighted threats from Putin’s Russia. President Kersti Kaljulaid of Estonia highlighted the cyber threat. President Dalia Grybauskaitė of Lithuania described Russia’s subversion of Belarus’ sovereignty. Latvian President Raimonds Vējonis told Trump that Putin had no regard for international law. And President of Croatia Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović cited Russia’s effort to stoke Serbian nationalism and undermine peace in Southeastern Europe. The United States was, in the view of these leaders, indispensable to their security.

As we left the ballroom and walked to Krasiński Square, I thought that Trump’s speech was well-suited to the moment. The theme fit the location: the need to fight for freedom. Trump warned Russia to stop its global destabilizing activities and affirmed America’s commitment to NATO’s collective defense. The lines that I fought hardest to get into the speech were meant to strengthen the trans-Atlantic relationship and allay concerns that Trump viewed the European Union as a competitor that should be broken up: “A strong Europe is a blessing to the West and to the world. One hundred years after the entry of American forces into World War I, the transatlantic bond between the United States and Europe is as strong as ever.” The speech went on to celebrate the cultures and principles that bind America to Poland, Europe, and the West.

We write symphonies. We pursue innovation. [...] We reward brilliance. We strive for excellence, and cherish inspiring works of art that honor God. We treasure the rule of law and protect the right to free speech and free expression.

We empower women as pillars of our society and of our success. We put faith in family, not government and bureaucracy, at the center of our lives. And we debate everything. We challenge everything. We seek to know everything so that we can better know ourselves. And above all, we value the dignity of every human life, protect the rights of every person, and share the hope of every soul to live in freedom.

It was a clear celebration of universal values and rights that transcend geography or ethnicity, but Trump’s critics could not resist the urge to cast his speech as “racist” and “an alt-right manifesto.” It was predictable but disappointing that Trump’s echoes of President John F. Kennedy’s 1963 Ich bin ein Berliner speech or Ronald Reagan’s 1987 Tear Down This Wall speech became, for these critics, when delivered by Trump, “a dog whistle for White Nationalists.”¹ If Putin was concerned about Trump’s strong counter to his specious claims that Russian illiberal nationalism was the best defense of the West, he could find comfort in the vitriol and divisions apparent in those criticisms.

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The trip to Warsaw convinced me of the urgency of strengthening our defenses against the external threat from Russia and other hostile authoritarian regimes as well as improving the cohesion of our own societies across the free world. Sadly, in the ensuing years, the axis of aggressors perceived weakness in Western resolve and precipitated a series of cascading crises across the Black Sea region and the Middle East as well as looming crises from the South China Sea to the Taiwan strait to the Senkakus and Ryukyus Islands to the Korean Peninsula.

The uneven response to the COVID-19 pandemic that spread from China in 2020 and the disastrous self-defeat and withdraw from Afghanistan in 2021 contributed to the perception of weakness. Divisions within Western nations and between them in the early 2020s bolstered further the confidence of the axis of aggressors from the violent aftermath to George Floyd’s murder and the mob assault on the Capital in the United States to the judicial reform controversy between Poland and the European Union to uproar over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s parties at Number 10 Downing Street that violated his own policies to general strikes and protests in France to a contentious election in Germany that resulted in what appeared to be a weak “stop light coalition” government under a political party that had been sympathetic to Moscow.

Emboldened, the axis of aggressors acted to advance their common objective of tearing down the existing international order and replacing it with a new one sympathetic to their interests. China inflicted economic punishment on nations that had the temerity to call for an investigation into COVID-19s origins, added insult to injury with “Wolf Warrior” diplomacy as it persecuted the doctors and journalists that tried to ring alarm bells about the pandemic, conducted massive cyber attacks on medical research facilities and used the over of the pandemic to advance the Chinese Communist Party’s technologically-enabled police state, extend its repression into Hong Kong, and continue its campaign of slow genocide against the Uighurs in Xinjiang. The People’s Liberation Army bludgeoned Indian soldiers to death along the Himalayan Frontier, and menaced Japan’s Senkakus Islands, Taiwan, and the Philippines with its aircraft and naval vessels as it laid claim to the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Russia effectively annexed Belarus after helping the fraudulently elected President, Alexander Lukashenko, suppress protests through abductions, torture, and attacks on human rights defenders.

Although Poland and other nations along Russia’s frontier were sounding alarm bells, other nations remained complacent. In August 2020, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany announced “shocking information” that showed “beyond a doubt” that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny (who was murdered in 2024 in a Russian prison) was “an attempted murder with nerve agent,” but Germany continued to build the NORDSTREAM II pipeline and cede coercive power over its and Europe’s economy to the Kremlin. Then, in 2021, in a forlorn effort to placate Putin, the new administration of President Joe Biden in the United States would lift sanctions on NORDSTREAM II, suspend lethal assistance to Ukraine, and pull U.S. naval vessels out of the Black Sea.

Unsurprisingly, displays of weakness emboldened the axis of aggressors. Just before the Beijing Olympics and Russia’s unprovoked reinvasion of Ukraine in February 2022 that would follow the games, Putin and Xi Jinping of China issued a joint statement celebrating their “partnership with no limits” and announcing a “new era of international relations.” The failure of Russia’s invasion and the sanctions imposed on Russia increased Moscow’s dependence on Beijing for purchases of oil and gas necessary for the cash needed to fund its increasingly expensive war and for the hardware and components necessary to sustain its warmaking machine. In addition to financial and material support, Beijing diplomats and wolf warriors have amplified the Kremlin’s propaganda and misinformation to justify its ‘special military operation’ as somehow a war against NATO aggression or a war to denazify a country led by a Russian-speaking Jewish president. Although the combination of Russian atrocities and Ukrainian valor inspired support for the Ukrainian people, the interruption of U.S. military and economic support for Ukraine in 2024 and a rigged election in which he received over eighty-seven percent of the vote seemed to revive Putin’s confidence after suffering massive losses in Ukraine and enduring a humiliating revolt from the Wagner Group of state-sponsored mercenaries. Poland, in its words and actions, remained consistent in its support for Ukraine and call to strengthen collective defense to prevent Russian aggression from spreading. Polish President Donald Tusk declared in 2024 that Europe had entered a "pre-war era," predicting that if Ukraine is defeated by Russia, nobody in Europe will be able to feel safe.

Connections between threats from the hostile regimes covered in this book are growing far beyond Moscow-Beijing cooperation on Ukraine. The Russian-Iranian-Syrian axis continues to enable serial episodes of mass homicide in the Syrian Civil War. Russia has helped Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps perpetuate the civil war in Syria and other sectarian civil wars across the Middle East to keep the Arab world weak, establish a land bridge to the Mediterranean, and threaten Israel with destruction. Tehran returned Moscow’s favor with drones and missiles needed to continue the onslaught against Ukraine’s people and its infrastructure. And not to be left out, North Korea provided Russia with munitions including over one million artillery rounds. Moscow reciprocated with military assistance to improve Pyongyang’s conventional military capabilities such as fighter aircraft and surface to air missiles as well as for its ballistic missile and satellite programs. It is not unreasonable to assume that Russians are helping North Korean leader Kim Jong Un with his nuclear program as well as Pyongyang steps up cruise missile tests and resumes testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Mutual support among the axis of aggressors was apparent in the aftermath of Hamas’ mass murder attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023 which included heinous acts of infanticide, rape, torture, and kidnapping. Iran helped Hamas, an organization that shares Tehran’s professed intention to destroy Israel and kill all the Jews, build its terrorist infrastructure and capabilities as well as plan and prepare its assault. Russian support for Hamas went beyond Russian arms such as Kornet missiles. Putin seemed to take October 7th as a present for his 71st birthday as he used the crisis to intensify his missile and drone attacks on Ukraine, launch a new propaganda campaign against the United States, and curry favor with other nations through a pro-Palestinian stance after having supported the organization that diverted international assistance into terrorism, used the Palestinian people as human shields, and provoked a war they knew would result in the death and displacement of the Palestinian population in Gaza. As it called for a cease fire in Gaza, Mocow assumed the dual roles that it has been playing alongside Iran in Syria: arsonist and fireman. Moscow-the-arsonist enables Tehran as it activates its so-called ‘Axis of Resistance.’ That axis is really an offensive network of proxy armies and terrorist organizations from Iraq to Yemen to Syria to Lebanon to the West Bank to Gaza. Iran’s cynical strategy is to expend Arab lives in pursuit of its ambitions to push the United States out of the Middle East, subjugate its Arab neighbors, and destroy Israel. As the arsonist helps Iran keep the Middle East in flames, Moscow-the-fireman offers to help put out the fires through mediation and moderation of Tehran’s ambitions.

The Beijing – Moscow – Tehran – Pyongyang axis members are already working together, and it is reasonable to assume, at the very least, that they will take advantage of the world’s preoccupation with crises in Europe and the Middle East to accelerate their objectives elsewhere, such as the Indo-Pacific region. As Xi Jinping has said “the most important characteristic of the world is, in a word, chaos.” But Beijing seems to have concluded that chaos redounds to its benefit and is consistent with Xi’s belief that “the times and trends are on our side.”

China’s call to integrate the China dream and the world dream are not just words. In 2023 the CCP published a white paper that describes how the party intends to achieve that vision through four programs, the Belt and Road, Global Development Initiative, Global Security Initiative, and Global Civilization Initiative. Xi Jinping’s statements, the massive buildup of the People’s Liberation Army, and acts of aggression against Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and India all indicate that the Xi is prepared to use force to achieve his dream to subsume Taiwan, follow through on his claim to the South China Sea, and create an exclusionary area of primacy in the Indo-Pacific region.

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Defeating Russia in Ukraine and Iran’s terrorist network across the Middle East are important objectives on their own; they are also vital to preventing another disastrous war. The perception of Russia’s success in Ukraine or Iran’s in the Middle East would encourage aggression by the two other members of the axis -- Beijing and Pyongyang. Xi Jinping might conclude that is time to lash out against what he has called the “all around containment, encirclement and suppression against us” which sounds like an echo of Putin’s claims that NATO or Ukrainian Nazis posed a threat to Russia. That is why following Poland’s example and supporting Ukraine’s efforts to defeat the Russian invaders, reestablish security, rebuild, and develop a long-term ability to defend its sovereignty against future attacks is vital to security in the Indo-Pacific region. And defeating Hamas and other members of Iran’s terrorist network is also important to convincing Xi Jinping that the United States and its partners possess the will and the capability to respond to aggression and support those attacked by members of the axis. The failure to support Ukraine and Israel would encourage Xi to pursue his Marxist vision as he put it of “seizing the historical initiative and continuing to move in the right direction revealed by history” and intensify efforts to “better integrate the China dream and the world dream.” The perception of weakness would also encourage Kim Jong Un to take more provocative actions such as ICBM tests, artillery or gunfire across the 38th parallel, a nuclear test, or a combination of the above.

What I had concluded when I finished writing this book in 2020 is even more urgent today. America, Poland, and the free world must improve our strategic competence and bolster our confidence because rivals sense weakness and the perception of weakness is provocative. There are reasons to be confident. Our free and open societies appear weak and divided but democracies are resilient. Authoritarian regimes appear strong but are brittle. In May of 2022, the Kremlin leadership watched a well-choreographed military parade even as its poorly-led, ill-trained, and undisciplined military was failing in Ukraine. Meanwhile the CCP was doubling down on its self-destructive Zero Covid policy and continuing its crackdown on the tech sector as it scrambled to contain real estate and debt crises. Iran’s intensification of its proxy wars in 2024 belied profound weakness and growing internal opposition to its theocratic dictatorship. And North Korea remains economically weak and as it continues to consume its meager resources in pursuit of military capabilities.

Thanks in large measure to the strong relationship between Poland and the United States, the Trump Administration is recognizing that Russia and its partners in the axis of aggressors are a grave threat to American as well as European interests. Poland, in setting the example for shared responsibility in collective defense and initiatives critical to the prosperity of European and American citizens, is forging the path toward positive transatlantic security and economic agendas.

1. Jonathan Capehart, “Trump’s White-nationalist Dog Whistles in Warsaw,” Washington Post, July 6, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/07/06/trumps-white-nationalist-dog-whistles-in-warsaw/