Poland to US: Help Ukraine now or pay the price later

Monitor Breakfast

If the United States does not provide more military aid to Ukraine, it could end up paying in other ways – including, eventually, by having to deploy more troops in Europe.

That’s the view of Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski, speaking to reporters at a breakfast Tuesday hosted by The Christian Science Monitor. Minister Sikorski was in town with both the president and prime minister of Poland – a rare joint visit to Washington to meet with President Joe Biden.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s two-year-old invasion of neighboring Ukraine has put NATO-member Poland in tough straits. The Poles have bulked up defense spending dramatically, absorbed more than 1 million Ukrainian refugees, and gone on a diplomatic offensive. 

“If we have Putin not in eastern Ukraine but on the border of Poland, then guess what will happen?” Mr. Sikorski said at the Monitor Breakfast. “If NATO is to remain credible, you will need more foreign troops in Poland, including American troops. So if you don’t want to send your people to Europe, the best thing is to defeat [Russia] in Ukraine.”

President Biden invited the top Polish leaders to Washington to mark the 25th anniversary of Poland’s accession to NATO membership on March 12, 1999. The expansion of NATO, following the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, heralded a new era of mutual Western defense aimed at keeping the peace in Europe.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 turned that calculus on its head, leading Finland and then Sweden – just last week – to join NATO, now an alliance of 32 countries. 

A stalemate in the closely divided U.S. House has held up a $95 billion foreign aid package, including some $61 billion for Ukraine. Mr. Sikorski and Poland’s two top leaders – President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk – were due to meet Tuesday afternoon with congressional leaders as well as Mr. Biden.

In addition, the U.S. was expected to announce a new military aid package for Ukraine worth up to $300 million. 

Mr. Sikorski is an experienced hand at navigating Washington, having served before as both foreign and defense minister of Poland, and as chair of the European Parliament’s committee on U.S. relations. At the breakfast, he fielded questions on a range of topics, largely focused on Ukraine. 

Here is a video of our breakfast session with Mr. Sikorski.

The following excerpts are lightly edited for clarity.

Last week, you said that the presence of NATO forces in Ukraine was “not unthinkable.” Previously, French President Emmanuel Macron said he could not rule out the possibility of Western troops being sent to Ukraine. What do these controversial assertions accomplish? 

I think President Macron’s idea was to get President Putin wondering what our next move would be, to flip the logic if you like. I think President Macron feels that we’ve been deterring ourselves, that we’ve been a little too helpful to President Putin in saying what we will not do, leaving him in the security to proceed with his genocidal war. 

The French no longer have an empire, but they do have a global outlook – and they do think strategically, which I appreciate. And when you have this determined and vicious adversary, I think it’s useful to occasionally put him on the back foot. 

Does Mr. Putin waving the nuclear option concern you? 

As a country that is signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and doesn’t actually have nukes, of course it bothers me. But it has a history. When I was negotiating the missile defense agreement with the Bush administration, they were threatening us every other day, literally. So when I went to Moscow, I had to ask on live radio, “Russian generals, please threaten us with nuclear annihilation no more than once a quarter.” And you know what? They listened. 

The truth is that President Putin has found that nuclear weapons are actually very hard to use. I suspect China and India have read him the riot act to stop these threats. 

Pope Francis sparked outrage recently by suggesting that Ukraine have “the courage of the white flag” and negotiate an end to the war with Russia. Do the pope’s comments help or hurt the cause of a solution? 

I personally suggested to His Holiness that perhaps he should suggest that Putin should have the courage to withdraw from Ukraine, because that would end the war more surely. And it wouldn’t even require negotiation. 

How is Europe preparing for an America that is likely to be less oriented toward Europe? 

It’s only natural that Europe should take a bigger part of the burden of defending the West upon itself. And it should be done on both a national basis and on a European basis. The latest figures are that 18 out of the 32 NATO allies are now spending 2% of GDP [on defense]. Poland is spending well over 3% of GDP.