Unlike many Western European countries, where politicians hem and haw over raising their military budgets, hoping the United States will forever provide a security blanket, Poland has proactively pushed to increase its defense spending and readiness. Thomas Grove reports in The Wall Street Journal on Poland’s preparations for possible war with Russia, and the Trump administration’s pleasure with Poland as an ally. He writes:

Poland’s military spending has endeared it to both its neighbors on NATO’s eastern flank and to President Trump, who wants to see Europe take care of more of its own security needs. In a meeting with new Polish President Karol Nawrocki, Trump extended his backing to Poland in a way he has offered few other European countries.

“We are with Poland all the way and we will help Poland protect itself,” he said.

In a trip to the Polish capital earlier this year, U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Warsaw is “a model ally.”

Russia is ambiguous about its intentions toward NATO. Late last year, Russia’s Defense Minister Andrei Belousov said Moscow’s military must be ready for a conflict with the alliance. At the same defense ministry meeting, Putin poured cold water on the idea and said the West was scaring its own population with fears that Russia was ready to attack. Earlier this month, he said the idea of Russia attacking NATO was nonsense and that Europe should deal with its own problems of migration and violence before picking a fight with Russia.

The Kremlin, though, has asked Trump to withdraw NATO troops and weapons from Central and Eastern Europe back to where they stood before the bloc’s eastward expansion began in 1999. It made a similar demand of former President Joe Biden before the invasion of Ukraine, Western intelligence officials say.

“Russia’s strategy is to resurrect the Soviet Union,” said Polish Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz. And that would put Poland in the crosshairs.

The country resolved to prepare itself for the possibility of a new conflict after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014 and launched a proxy war for control of the Donbas region.

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