Jo Harper
23 January 2026•Update: 23 January 2026
WARSAW
Poland’s defense minister on Friday pushed back against remarks by US President Donald Trump questioning the commitment of NATO allies, while avoiding direct mention of the US leader.
In a post on US social media platform X, Defense Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz rejected Trump’s recent claim made on Fox News that allied forces “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines” in Afghanistan.
“The Polish Army, shoulder to shoulder with its allies, participated in missions in Afghanistan and Iraq,” Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote. He stressed that Polish soldiers had paid “the ultimate price” for international security, adding that their sacrifice “will never be forgotten and cannot be diminished.”
The minister did not name Trump directly – an omission that reflects a broader pattern in Warsaw’s approach to the US president. While Polish officials have increasingly pushed back against American rhetoric on NATO, Greenland and global security, they have done so by avoiding explicit criticism of Trump himself.
Trump’s latest comments, questioning whether allies would defend the US in a future conflict and whether Washington has needed them in the past, have unsettled NATO capitals, particularly on the alliance’s eastern flank. For Poland, which relies heavily on US military presence and political guarantees, the remarks strike at the core of its security doctrine.
Yet Warsaw’s response has remained carefully calibrated. Prime Minister Donald Tusk has spoken in recent weeks about the need to “strengthen European responsibility” and “protect the unity of the alliance” without portraying the US as an unreliable or adversarial actor.
"American leadership of the transatlantic community was based on mutual trust, common values and interests, not on domination and coercion. That is why it was accepted by all of us,” Tusk wrote on X Friday. “Let’s not lose it, dear friends. For me this is the main message from yesterday’s EU meeting."
Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski has similarly emphasized diplomacy and transatlantic cohesion, even as tensions have grown over issues ranging from Trump’s Greenland ambitions to the war in Gaza and Washington’s shifting stance on global conflict management.
Polish officials privately acknowledge that openly confronting Trump risks antagonizing the country’s most important security partner, while remaining silent risks normalizing rhetoric that could undermine NATO’s collective credibility.
