Next week, European leaders will gather in Washington for a summit marking the 75th anniversary of NATO, the world’s biggest military alliance. The mood will be especially fraught given the subpar showing by U.S. President Joe Biden in a televised debate on June 27 against his rival, former U.S. President Donald Trump. Trump, after all, has suggested he could pull the United States out of NATO—an outcome that would revoke a security umbrella Europe has enjoyed for more than seven decades.
The question of how Europe can fend for itself is the subject of Foreign Policy’s Summer 2024 print issue. One of the contributors in the magazine, Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, argues that while military deterrence is a costly endeavor, it is far cheaper than waging war. Warsaw would know: Poland shares more than 300 miles of border with Ukraine and is leading the way in military contributions to NATO as a percentage of its annual GDP.
I spoke with Sikorski on FP Live and discussed Poland’s expectations for next week’s NATO summit. Subscribers can watch the full discussion on the video box atop this page or follow the FP Live podcast. What follows is a condensed and lightly edited transcript.
Ravi Agrawal: What are the main things you are hoping to achieve at the NATO summit next week?
Radek Sikorski: Well, NATO has been around for 75 years, but it’s also 25 years of our [Poland’s] membership. We have a new secretary-general, whom we like [Mark Rutte, the outgoing Dutch prime minister]. Poland will be highlighting its defense spending in proportion to GDP, which is the highest in NATO—including the United States—at 4 percent. And we will be bringing a freshly signed agreement with Ukraine on long-term security collaboration. So I hope we show unity and we show potential adversaries, primarily Vladimir Putin’s Russia, that we’re reinvigorated and we are not to be messed with.
RA: Reports suggest that Ukraine is only going to get a “bridge” to eventual membership in NATO, rather than any real commitments or pathways. Will Kyiv be disappointed by that?
RS: Let’s make the best of what we are doing. We are helping Ukraine to the tune of a quarter trillion dollars so far. Not bad. And Ukraine is getting the means to inflict real costs on Russia. If Russia eventually gives up, Ukraine would become a very valuable ally.
RA: But if I were Putin, I’d be looking at this summit from afar and thinking, “Well, in real, tangible terms, not much changes. I still need to just wait out the West.”
RS: Well, that wouldn’t be his first miscalculation. His original one—his assault on Ukraine—was based on fantasy. But it’s true that he fundamentally misunderstands the psychology of democracies. He doesn’t seem to get that once we are convinced that someone is a bad egg, like him, we can be pretty determined to deter him.
RA: I was struck by something you said to the Atlantic Council earlier this year. You said your base scenario for Ukraine is a long war. I think your exact words were “colonial wars usually take a decade.” Assuming that’s how long it takes, what do the next seven years look like?
RS: The reason these colonial wars take a long time is that it’s the aggressor who needs to come to the conclusion that the attack was a mistake. Possibly, the Russians are already there. But they also have to conclude that the cost in blood and treasure is not worth the objective. They’re clearly not there yet. It usually also takes a change of team, unfortunately. And we have no indications of it, which is why the war is continuing. I think we should have a base scenario of some more years. If we get a solution earlier, that would be a bonus.
RA: But it was hard enough to convince the United States to deliver this last supplemental aid package. You know about all the back-end diplomacy that went into that. How do you get Washington to keep providing aid for seven more years?
RS: Well, in Europe we are thinking in terms of years. There was a proposal from the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy to beef up Europe’s defense budget for five years actually. I think the faster we convince Putin that he cannot win this, the sooner this war will end.
RA: Yes, but how do you convince, for example, a future President Trump, that NATO is even useful for America? The mood in the United States is shifting inward. That’s been a trend line over the last 20 years or so.
RS: I’ve been hearing this for as long as I’ve been doing foreign policy. But America has a huge presence abroad with a military presence in around 100 countries. And we obviously want to have the best possible relations with whoever is in charge in Washington. We are talking to Republicans who are strategizing for the next administration. And we hear from them that President Trump doesn’t like to be a loser. He wants to be a winner. Well, losing Ukraine to Putin would not be a victory, would it?
RA: No, it wouldn’t. But on the other hand, reportedly, he has a relationship with Putin. Does it worry you when you hear him say that if Europe doesn’t up its contributions, he will ask Russia to have its way with various European countries? That must be terrifying.
RS: Every U.S. administration tries to have a reset with Russia. It usually ends the same way, with Russia doing something so outrageous as to make it impossible. And some administrations learn faster than others. Trump also talks about countries taking American business. He is unashamedly transactional, and there’s nothing wrong with that. So I hope he appreciates the fact that, both as Poland and as Europe, we’ve taken a lot of America’s defense business. And this contributes to security on both sides of the Atlantic.
RA: When you speak to Republican politicians and potential officials in a second Trump White House, what is the pitch you make for why they should keep supporting Ukraine and why NATO matters?
RS: Well, NATO matters for all of us for the same reason. It matters for our common defense. And let’s not forget on whose behalf NATO has, only once so far, invoked Article 5—on behalf of the United States when you were attacked on 9/11. Allies can be annoying, but you do need them in an emergency.
And in this particular emergency, you don’t want to send a signal to China that it is acceptable to recover what you regard as a renegade province. This is how Russia views Ukraine and, as we know, how China views Taiwan. You want to send precisely the opposite signal—that revising borders, taking countries over by force, is unacceptable.
You have this great opportunity in the fact that the Ukrainians are fighting themselves. All we need to do is to enable them to do what they want to do anyway, without the engagement of a single American soldier. We should appreciate this because, at the cost of a few percent of an annual American defense budget, we are sending a powerful signal to all and sundry that certain rules still apply.
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RA: No matter who wins in the United States, if America ends up retrenching a little bit more, does Europe need to start thinking about what a nuclear deterrence umbrella might look like without the United States?
RS: We have two nuclear states in Europe, of course, in NATO. But we are being encouraged by the Pentagon to develop autonomous military capabilities for the lower-order emergencies. You have trouble on your southern border. We have trouble on both our southern and eastern border. Trouble that is short of war. We have nation-states pushing migrants across the border and also mercenary groups and people smugglers using ports in Libya and elsewhere for the dirty, nasty business.
We shouldn’t have to call on the United States to deal with every problem that we have on our periphery. There are some problems, say another war in the Balkans, that we should be capable of taking care of ourselves, thus relieving the United States for more important duties given your global responsibilities.
RA: Let’s talk about European unity. How are you processing the fact that Hungary is taking over the rotating EU presidency? Are there fears that they will just become a spoiler on every agenda item for the EU and NATO?
RS: Well, their duty during the presidency is to be a fair chair and to take care, even more than usual, of the interests of the community as a whole and not only of their own national interest. European integration has not only abolished national interest, but you need to fight for them, taking into account the good of the community as a whole as well.
We are a confederation, just as you were between the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. And confederations are difficult to manage. So Hungary has a special duty, and I hope they rise up to it.
RA: Will long-term European support for Ukraine wane given the success of far-right parties in the European Parliament and fears of a resurgence in national elections in France or Austria? How are you seeing that trend from where you are?
RS: This concern is founded. But we had that concern before, with the previous Italian elections. And Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has actually been very helpful on Ukraine. So I hope that others will also reevaluate their positions. Ukraine is now officially a candidate to be a member of the EU, and we have actually now started membership negotiations.
Remember, the security guarantees in the EU treaties are actually more explicit than in NATO. So nobody can now say that the security of Ukraine is irrelevant to member states of the European Union. They are going to be a member, and therefore their security is a duty and a concern for all of us.
RA: Your country, like Hungary, had until recently been seen as backsliding from democratic values and liberalism under the right-wing Law and Justice party. Are there lessons there in Poland’s journey?
RS: Yes, there are. There are lessons for the EU. As a result of those breaches of rule of law, Europe has instituted a peer review of one another’s constitutional practices. And that’s a good thing. We have peer review on financial policy, and now we have peer review on democracy, which means that not only do you have to fulfill all the criteria before becoming a member but also after you become a member. And that’s good, because we are a family of democracies.
But there are political lessons in the victory of the forces of democracy for others. We would not have won without unprecedented mobilization of pro-democracy voters. We had a record turnout. You also need to pay attention to your electoral system and to organize your political coalitions in light of your election system. That has obvious implications for the United States.
And you also have to take advantage of the mistakes that the authoritarians make. In Poland, one of the biggest mistakes was that they tightened the abortion law beyond what many people thought was reasonable. The previous ruling party made abortion illegal even when the fetus was terminally damaged, which meant that women started dying because of complications. Young people, young women, said, “Enough is enough.” And also the fact that Poland, which had previously been one of the five or six more important members in the EU, suddenly was on the margin of political processes? Most people didn’t like that. European integration is still supported by an overwhelming majority of Polish people. And they wanted us to be back in the mainstream, which I think helped to create a pro-democracy consensus.
RA: Your country made a dramatic increase in defense spending in the last few years. To jump from 2 to 3 to 4 percent sounds like small increments, but it’s actually huge in absolute terms. How does that transform your country’s economy?
RS: Yes, it’s a huge rise. But remember, we’ve been spending a solid 2 percent of GDP on defense for the last 20 years. We had a super law that guaranteed the military 2 percent for 20 years, unlike most European countries. So we’ve built a base of equipment and of capabilities. And 3 to 4 percent sounds a lot, by comparison with recent decades when it seemed as if conventional conflicts were a thing of the past, but it was the norm during the Cold War for most Western European countries.
And since Russia is again a threat, I’m afraid the time of consuming the peace dividend is over. I understand that the great majority of NATO members will be spending 2 percent by the time of the summit next month.
RA: There’s been a lot of reporting recently on the failed 2022 attempts to reach a negotiated settlement in Ukraine. What’s your sense of the chances of talks restarting in some form in the future?
RS: Well, my preferred scenario would be no talks at all. Putin can end this war in five minutes by making one phone call to his defense minister. “Get the hell out of Ukraine,” and then the war is over. Unfortunately, Ukraine doesn’t have that option.
But we should not be telling the Ukrainians what to do before they recover the occupied territories. What the Russians do in those occupied territories we would not tolerate in our own countries.
Look, Ukraine has a border treaty with Russia, and a signatory of the treaty on Russia’s side in 2004 was Putin. So he’s in breach of his own treaty. When you say we should have talks, you’re actually saying that we should allow Putin to abrogate his own treaty and then we should believe him when he says, “I will make a new treaty.” This doesn’t sound very credible to me.