Welcomed at White House, Polish leaders push a spending boost for NATO

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Polish President Andrzej Duda’s recent call for NATO members to devote 3% of their gross domestic product to national defense isn’t an outrageous request, even though many of the alliance’s 32 members have yet to meet the 2% benchmark agreed to a decade ago, Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said Tuesday.

European countries were generally spending that amount on national defense during the Cold War, Mr. Sikorski told a breakfast briefing hosted by the Christian Science Monitor, offering the perspective of a NATO country with a front-row seat to the war next door between Ukraine and Russia.

“This is just an acknowledgment that the continental peace has ended. We clearly have a revisionist part attacking its neighbors,” Mr. Sikorski said. “Our disarmament and deindustrialization in the defense field have gone too far.”

The veteran diplomat spoke just hours before he, Mr. Duda and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with President Biden at the White House to discuss the Ukrainian crisis and the need to support Kyiv. The invitation also marked the 25th anniversary of Poland’s entry into NATO, just a decade after the collapse of the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe.

Mr. Biden did not immediately endorse Warsaw’s call for a higher NATO defense spending target but joined with the Polish leaders in pressing Congress to pass a stalled $60 billion military aid package for Ukraine.

“When we stand together, no force on earth is more powerful,” Mr. Biden said in the meeting. ”I believe that then and I believe that now. And we see it with Polish and American troops serving side by side with NATO in the eastern flank, including in Poland.”

State Department spokesman Matt Miller was also cautious about the proposed 3% spending target, telling reporters, “I think the first step is to get every country meeting the 2% threshold … before we start talking about an additional proposal.”

Poland itself is in the midst of a mammoth military spending spree, signing deals to purchase hundreds of M1 Abrams tanks, F-35 fighter jets, and artillery systems like HIMARS, the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, which has been used to devastating effect in Ukraine.

Mr. Sikorski called Poland “a consumer of security” when it joined the NATO alliance in 1999, just a decade after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“We are now a contributor and an exporter of security,” he said. “We were with you in Iraq and we were with you in Afghanistan. Today, we are the main front-line state in the current emergency.”

Poland’s defense budget was about $6 billion in the late 2000s, of which about a quarter was reserved for buying new weapons. Today, the budget is $40 billion and half is spent on procurement, Mr. Sikorski said.

“We physically don’t have the weapons that are needed at the front. You have the weapons,” he said. “Europe is crucial on the financial side [and] the United States is crucial on the military side.”

Mr. Duda echoed the appeal for Ukrainian military backing on a visit to Capitol Hill before his trip to the White House, telling lawmakers, “Financial support for Ukraine is cheap if you take into account what other forms of support would be needed if it comes to war and to an attack on NATO countries.”

French President Emmanuel Macron’s suggestion that NATO troops could deploy inside Ukraine sparked a furor in Europe in recent days, but it might have been a bit of subterfuge to keep Russian President Vladimir Putin guessing about allied intentions, Mr. Sikorski said.

“I think President Macron feels we’ve been deterring ourselves. We’ve been a bit too helpful to President Putin in saying what we will ‘not’ do,” he said. “When you have this determined and vicious an adversary, I think it’s useful to occasionally put him on the back foot.”

Before the invasion of Russia, European defense spending was often focused on more logistical programs such as military mobility — ensuring that bridges were strong enough to support the weight of a NATO main battle tank — or eliminating legal barriers that could stop an allied armored unit from moving from one European country to another.

“It’ll take us decades to stand on our feet and become more strategically responsible,” Mr. Sikorski said. “But when we’re threatened by the leader of Russia, we should trust them on that. Because they’ve done it so many times before.”

Mr. Tusk and Mr. Duda traveled together to Washington despite being bitter political rivals back home, a sign of the importance of the Ukraine war and the need for more U.S. support is seen in Warsaw, Polish officials said.

• This article was based in part on wire service reports.