Poland’s View From the Frontline of Europe

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Radek, thank you for joining me. It’s a busy week in New York, where we are having this conversation, and I imagine it’s been a particularly interesting time to be in your job.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Yes, indeed. Important shifts happening—not only wars like in Sudan, in Ukraine, in Gaza, but also the future of [the] UN itself [is] at stake.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

By way of preface, I should say that we’re having this conversation the morning of Wednesday, September 24. That’s particularly important to mention in this case because Donald Trump radically changed his position on Ukraine and related questions, particularly close to Polish interests, in the hours before we started recording this. And for all we know, he may change them again in the hours after we start recording, so just for listeners’ awareness. But Radek, you’ve long warned, including in a Foreign Affairs essay a couple of years ago, that [Russian President Vladimir Putin] would, in the absence of a much stronger deterrent by NATO, start to test NATO countries in increasingly aggressive ways.

Earlier this month, as you of course know very well, 20-odd Russian drones entered Polish airspace. That was followed by Russian fighter jets violating Estonian airspace and overflying some Polish oil platforms in the Baltic Sea. The Kremlin has its own story about the drones in Poland. What’s your understanding of what happened? What were the Russians up to and why?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, we think it was a deliberate provocation because we tracked those drones from the moment of launch, and the place of launch was different from the launches at Ukraine. Had it been part of the Ukraine operation, you would expect the mix of drones, armed and unarmed, to be similar. Yet they were all unarmed, and they had extra fuel tanks instead. And the assault lasted seven hours, so between the first entry into Poland’s airspace and the last shooting down. So it was a firefight, not a mistake.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Were you surprised that it happened?

RADEK SIKORSKI

We saw it as part of Putin’s spectrum of hybrid means to test NATO, and those include disinformation obviously, espionage, but also arsons. We’ve caught people trying to set fire to a factory, and a huge shopping center was burnt in Warsaw; assassinations, as you know, in England, in Berlin, in other places; and the sending of these flammable parcels by DHL. And this is just the latest. Russia [is] trying to test our public, our command systems, the solidarity of our allies.

We feel that we’ve stood the test, but we’ve also learned something: that we need a Ukraine-like system to address this particular threat, namely drones, because it’s not really cost-efficient to be dealing [with] them with F-35s. We need cheaper ways of doing it, so we need more combat helicopters with Gatling guns, and we need probably turboprops with machine guns on board.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The response from most observers watching the NATO reaction, especially Trump’s relative non-response in the days after the attack, if this was a test, if Putin was testing NATO, that NATO did not fare especially well and that Putin comes away from this feeling emboldened. Do you think that’s right?

RADEK SIKORSKI

We were pleased. We called for Article 4, which is urgent consultations when you feel threatened. It was immediately granted, and allies, particularly in Europe, rallied around. Several countries sent extra antiair assets and fighters. And planners need to address this gap in our defenses. So yet another disappointment for Putin, I think, because he’s increased our sense of being threatened and therefore given us a chance to do something about it.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And Trump’s response?

RADEK SIKORSKI

I wonder what his response would be if 21 Cuban drones flew over Florida. But distance doesn’t matter. He has now declared that if Russian fighters breached NATO airspace, we would be in our right to take them down, which states the obvious, but nevertheless, it’s welcome that he said it.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And you felt the need to state that relatively sharply at the Security Council on Monday?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Because you need to draw the line somewhere. And if the wreckage of a Russian plane fell on our territory—so we had proof that they breached our airspace—we have procedures for this. You get told what to do by ground control. If you don’t follow that, you get intercepted by planes on duty. And if you still don’t obey, well, that’s the next stage.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Trump’s comments about NATO yesterday and about endorsing your right to shoot down anything that came into your airspace followed his 57, 56-minute speech to the general assembly. You were sitting there watching that speech. What did you make of it?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, it was definitely memorable. I shall remember it for many years. And only he could have made such a speech. As a result of the speech and of his meeting with President Zelensky, he sounded more forthright in backing Ukraine. So far, so good.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The speech, though, did suggest a fairly dramatic shift in America’s role in the world, America’s view of global order, even a more radical change than we saw when Trump one. Surely that changes Poland’s sense of how it approaches—

RADEK SIKORSKI

But you and I were not surprised.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Fair enough. But I imagine you’re shifting strategy in certain key ways in response to that change, even if the speech itself is not the problem.

RADEK SIKORSKI

But President Trump told us in his first term that we need to spend more on defense. We actually listened, and I was one of the first to give him credit for doing it in his inimitable style, so that people would actually sit up and listen. And we’ve doubled our spending since then. And at the Hague NATO summit, we’ve declared doubling yet again, which if fulfilled—Poland is already fulfilling—would mean that the European pillar of NATO will be spending as much on defense as the United States. And then we’ll be able to deter Putin on our end and thereby get ourselves more respect both in Moscow and Washington. So I think that the correct path is just to do what we’ve pledged and then it’ll be fine.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Are there other shifts in Poland’s own national security strategy that you think are still work left undone, that you still need to focus on?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, we have not delegated our sovereignty to anybody. So if somebody crosses our border with a tank, or a ship, or a plane, in the end our army will do what our constitution says we need to do. But it’s nice to feel allies feel our pain, and we are glad to have 10,000 American troops on our soil. We were glad to hear at the White House two weeks ago that if we want, we can have them and even more.

We contributed $15,000 per annum to every U.S soldier. You have a very good status of forces agreement. It’s cheaper to keep them in Poland than in the United States. We have some good exercise grounds. It’s cheaper to exercise them too, and they are where the threat is.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And I imagine you remind Trump of that any chance you get?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, it costs us. He knows about costs, so sure, we think we are giving him a good deal. And so every time he’s asked about Poland, he says, “Yeah, Poland is solid. I will stick up for Poland.” Good.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

There’s been lots of speculation in the foreign policy crowd about the possibility that Poland would someday decide to acquire its own nuclear weapons. Is there any scenario where you can imagine taking that step?

RADEK SIKORSKI

No.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

No shift in NATO, no uncertainty that the alliance would prompt it?

I want to go back to the essay that you wrote in Foreign Affairs in 2023. You were in the European Parliament, not in your current job, but you’d been working on these issues for a long time. It was at the time a fairly scathing assessment of Europe’s, I would say, lack of seriousness on national security and on defense spending, its failure to really step up even a year after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine had started. I will quote you directly, because you put it memorably: Europe “still lacks a strong defense capability and a common approach to security. As long as that is the case, the bloc will remain … a toothless superpower—which is to say, not a superpower at all.” To what extent has that changed, and what needs to happen to really fully overcome that judgment from you?

RADEK SIKORSKI

I think we’ve done better on defense. Germany, as you know, has changed its own constitution to generate a trillion euros—half of it for infrastructure, half of it for defense. And the European Union has passed a [Security Action for Europe] mechanism under which we will be spending 150 billion euros on defense, including on collaborations with Ukraine. Unfortunately, Europe’s defense budget, wonderfully called the European Peace Facility, is still blocked by a veto from Hungary. And we are still a confederation, which means that we don’t have unity of command.

So on defense, we’ve geared up. Where we’ve done worse, I think, is on trade, because on trade at that time I was assuming we are a trade power equal to the United States. And actually Europe, unlike China, cracked under Donald Trump’s pressure, and we’ve allowed ourselves to agree to have one-sided tariffs imposed on us.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The deal that Europe struck after years of talking about at least building up some capability to engage in this kind of economic competition was rather astonishing. It was 15 percent tariffs on European goods and basically nothing on American. How did that happen? It just seems kind of remarkable.

RADEK SIKORSKI

I wish I knew because I think—I’m not an expert in this field—but I think the original commission proposal that we go to zero and zero, which I think would’ve been mutually advantageous, didn’t take into account President Trump’s forthright views on tariffs and in particular on VAT. So we’ve allowed the argument to prevail that VAT is somehow a discriminatory tax against Americans.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

This is a value-added tax.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Yeah, which is just not the case because everybody pays VAT. European companies pay VAT, Chinese companies. Anybody who wants to sell anything in Europe pays VAT.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I’m struck by your comments about Germany. It’s just kind of remarkable to register that a Polish foreign minister is praising the rearmament of Germany. It’s a kind of amazing historical shift.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Oh, I’ve spent the last 20 years. I had a motion to recall me when I was previously foreign minister in the Polish parliament, when, at the height of the euro crisis, I said that I fear German power less than I fear German inactivity. I’ve doubled [down] on this in my last speech, saying that as long as Germany is in the EU and NATO, I fear German pacifism more than German rearmament.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And you’re no longer censured for that position in your own country at this point?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Germany is backing up Lithuania with a tank brigade, thereby providing cover for our northern flank. And Germany has repeatedly provided Patriot batteries for Poland against the Russian threat. So I think even the Polish right is grudgingly beginning to acknowledge that Germany is an ally.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

You note in the piece that there have been several moments in the post–Cold War era when Europe has pledged to step up on defense and on security. You go back and again in the piece through several cases going back to the 1990s. You noted the pretty striking commitments that were made at the last NATO summit last summer.

RADEK SIKORSKI

But this time the combination of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump seems to be doing the trick.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So this time is different as a result of those forces?

RADEK SIKORSKI

It is because we’re spending real money. The contracts are at last being written and the factory production lines are at last being built.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And that gives you faith that there will be follow-through on all these pieces.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Yes, and if we spend the money and build the factories and buy the equipment and the ammo, then by the end of the decade we will have an army which will not be an equivalent of the United States, but it’ll be sufficient to deter Putin. You see, we don’t have to be as good as the United States.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What about the potential political backlash within European democracies? When watching from afar, that in some ways seems like the weakest part of this, when you watch skepticism, especially from far-right parties, also from far-left, in France and Germany and even in the UK.

RADEK SIKORSKI

In Poland, we have a consensus to rearm and I think people are seeing that actually it also is a way to reindustrialize Europe. And since the [war in Ukraine] is a new type [of] war, many militaries around the world will have to retool. And if we make the best drones and antidrones, then actually this will be export stuff.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And you don’t worry about the French right or the German right coming into power or coming into a coalition and hindering some of that spending? I imagine the trade-offs in terms of spending on social welfare and other demands will become acute and politically difficult.

RADEK SIKORSKI

They are already because apart from Germany and Poland, everybody else is maxed out on their credit card. But I think for the European populace, just like for [the] American populace, migration is a more important issue.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Have you seen a shift that you think will be sustained on the politics of migration in the block?

RADEK SIKORSKI

We pat ourselves on the back for winning our election in 2023 by outflanking the populists on the right. So we won on the back of scandals to do with issuing visas, and I’ve personally mopped up those bad procedures and corrupt officials. And we’ve done a whole range of things to reduce both illegal and legal migration. So I’ve doubled the price of Polish visas. We’ve made it impossible to get a fake visa as a fake student. We now verify whether people have the certificates to study in their own country, whether they can speak the languages of the tuition that they were supposed to take up. And we have beefed up consular services in those countries that have readmission treaties with us, for example, so that we can return people whose contracts have ended.

We’ve also done something that nobody else in Europe dared to do: we’ve passed a law which gives the government the right for 90 days at any one time to refuse asylum claims on our side of the border, just not even allow people to apply. You can still apply in the Polish consulate or in Minsk or Moscow, but not having crossed the border illegally. And we completed our big and beautiful fence on the border—440 kilometers, physical barrier, reinforced, underground sensors, overground camera, a technical road—and it’s now 98 percent effective. It costs us half a billion euros, plus extra units of border guards, of riot police, and the army. And so we are now down to about 80 crossings per day. It’s still too many. And we’ve literally, just [in] the last 10 days, had our border crossing with Belarus closed altogether to signal that this has to go down further.

So we are contributing to our bit of the Schengen external perimeter because in Europe, people value the fact that you can travel internally without passports, but quite naturally I think that that system can only be held if the outside border is protected.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And I imagine your advice to smaller liberal parties elsewhere would be to focus on the migration pieces?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Look, I’m of the view that you need to find the right language to talk about migration, but also you need to hear what people are saying. In the United States, in Britain, in France, in Germany, in Italy, and in Poland, they all tell us the same thing: fix migration or we will hire people who will do it for you. So it’s either us doing it in a humane way or populists doing it while dehumanizing migrants. Controlling migration is not racism. Countries have the right to decide what kind of migrants they need, at what volume, for how long, or how to make them into productive, loyal citizens. If you get it right, it can be mutually beneficial. If you get it wrong, you get fascism.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I want to focus a bit more on the Ukraine piece of this. You were recently there, I believe a couple weeks ago. You’ve been there many times. I think we’ve in fact taken the train into Kyiv together from Poland. What’s your sense of the state of the battlefield and Ukraine’s prospects at this moment?

RADEK SIKORSKI

I was impressed by Ukraine’s confidence. You know, from afar, when you see these dramatic pictures of drones going into dwellings, into these blocks of flats, it looks like the Blitz in London. But actually, Kyiv is a huge city—three and a half million. And when a drone kills one or two people, it doesn’t really affect the rest of the city. So I think the Russians made a psychological error, just like the Germans bombing London. It actually consolidates Ukrainians around the defense of their country. They seem to think that these Pyrrhic victories and incremental gains by Putin are not actually bringing Russia closer to victory, but rather drain Russia’s resources and give them more time to find new ways of striking Russia. When we were there two weeks ago, the incremental gains in Donbas had just stopped, in fact. Since then, Ukrainians have gone, locally, on [the] counteroffensive. And the campaign to hit Russian refineries seems to be effective. They seem to have already hit up to half of Russian refineries.

Of course, you and I don’t know how permanent the damage is, but there are reports of petrol queues all over Russia. These are legitimate military targets. The Ukrainians seem to have new ways of hitting them with long-range drones, possibly ballistic missiles. And so this battle of who will first run out of resources seems to be more equal than we had perhaps anticipated.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And if you project that forward, what’s a plausible theory of victory for Ukraine over the next years?

RADEK SIKORSKI

What impressed me also in my conversations with Ukrainian leadership, and I saw the president, defense minister, foreign minister and so on, head of the military intelligence: they didn’t buy this Western chatter about a cease-fire being around the corner and a peace operation needing to be—sure, I mean, they think it’s important to do contingency planning, but they’re actually planning for the war with a three-year horizon, which I think is the prudent thing to do.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Do you worry about Trump getting frustrated with the lack of a cease-fire and turning on Ukraine again?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, I hope he gets frustrated that his friend Vladimir is mocking him. And then I hope President Trump does what he promised already in August of this year, namely new sanctions on Russia. Because when you make a threat, when you draw a red line, as we learned under some previous administrations, you should come through.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

How important is American support to the war effort at this point? That Trump has not withdrawn as much support as—

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, as you know, the Ukrainians are getting the fag end of the Biden-era supplemental, but it’s drying up. All the support for the Ukrainian state to function—pensions being paid, salaries being paid, traffic lights working—that comes from Europe. And actually the majority of weapons deliveries also now come from Europe. And in addition, we’ve just created a fund for paying for American weapons to deliver to Ukraine. And we are just now finally, I hope, finding a way of using frozen Russian assets to fund the war for the next three years. And if we do that, I think sooner or later Putin will have to conclude that he can’t win this. American help is still important. Starlink, for which Poland pays and which I hope [Elon Musk] doesn’t again switch off at crucial moments, plus U.S. targeting data, are useful.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Are you more assured that Musk will in fact comply with your wishes now than—

RADEK SIKORSKI

I had a lively exchange with Mr. Musk on Twitter. He appeared to threaten that if he switched off Starlink, the front would collapse. And I took him up on that. I’m told that that tweet cost him 1.5 billion euros because the Italian government was considering going over to Starlink in its global communications. And they looked at the fact that Mr. Musk did stop some terminals working during the Ukrainian counteroffensive, and they seem to have started looking for more reliable supplies. We are paying for 25,000 terminals, and since we’re paying, we demand reliable service.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

So you went head to head with Musk on his own terrain, his own platform, and you feel pretty good about how you came out?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, I didn’t respond to him initially. He said, “Be quiet, little man. Starlink is irreplaceable.” I waited three months until he got chucked out from the White House and I responded, “See, great man, politics is harder than you thought.”

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Fair enough.

RADEK SIKORSKI

I could add, “But I wish you luck in your trip to Mars.”

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The other central piece of the Ukraine debate in the last month or so has been the question of security guarantees. And there’s the sense that a strong European security guarantee is somehow key to getting us to a ceasefire.

RADEK SIKORSKI

That discussion I find peculiar because I think it is based on an unusual definition of security guarantee. A security guarantee is “I pledge that if you get attacked, I will join you in your war.” If we want those kinds of security guarantees, assurances if you like, Ukraine already has, and they have not been acted upon. And if you want to make it for Ukraine now, then it’s confusing, because the idea seems to be that we’ll give them security guarantees when there is peace. So if next time Russia attacks, then, “Ho, ho, ho, we will join the war.” Well, if you want to join the war against Russia, you can do it now. But I don’t see any takers, any volunteers. So actually what people mean is not security guarantees, but such beefing up of Ukrainian capacities that Russia wouldn’t dare do it again.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

A Ukrainian deterrent, an indigenous Ukrainian deterrent.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Yes.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And the notion of putting European troops, whether Polish or otherwise?

RADEK SIKORSKI

We won’t do it for historical reasons. There’s a lot of history between us. We were the same country for 400 years. It would be like the British going to Ireland, but we would do everything else to make such an operation successful.

As you saw with the drones, we need to protect the hub. We need to protect the communication lines, which are under espionage and assault. And I can imagine us doing an operation in the air from Polish airfields, but also remember that Ukraine has 110 brigades on their arms, and western Europe could probably put up five or six. So this could help, but only when fighting has ceased. And what I find odd about this discussion is that, to my mind, the hypothetical creation of a peacekeeping operation is not as urgent as sustaining Ukraine in the fight today.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What about a no-fly zone? What about that either in the near term or as part of a reassurance force?

RADEK SIKORSKI

When I flagged the idea a year ago, it was controversial. Today, 59 [percent] of Polish people, I think, would be in favor of us shooting down drones and unmanned missiles over Ukraine. Because you see when they fly over Poland, then even the defense operation can cause damage. And if as a bonus of doing that, we were able to protect the westernmost Ukrainian airport and Ukraine could restart flights, it would be materially useful to the function of the Ukrainian state.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

And you don’t imagine that would risk uncontrollable escalation with Russia?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, the Russians have no business sending these drones or cruise missiles into Ukraine. If one of them gets shot down, no Russian gets harmed, I mean, we can pick up the wreckage and send it back to Russia if they want their property back.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

That’s thoughtful of you, yeah. I’m curious for your view of the Chinese role here. I think in the U.S. discussion there’s a lot of focus on the Sino-Russian relationship and Chinese support for not exactly the Russian war effort but for the Russian war economy. You, again in that piece you wrote in Foreign Affairs a couple of years ago, were very focused on the risk that the United States would shift its focus to the Indo-Pacific, and Europe would not be ready to step up on its own, especially in the event of a crisis in Taiwan. But just focusing on the China dimension of Ukraine, how do you see that? And Poland has a slightly, I think, different view of it than many other Europeans.

RADEK SIKORSKI

I think the war suits China just fine. They are making a lot of money selling all the dual-use stuff and other stuff to Russia. So they’ve taken over Russia’s market for automobiles. They’ve taken over, at the West’s expense, Russia’s market for domestic white goods. Russians apparently now use Chinese apps and smartphones. And Russia has become much more dependent on China. So China have got themselves a vassal, not just on the cheap, while making money. What’s not to like? And China probably wouldn’t like the precedent of Putin losing power as a result of a lost war because of the rivalry with the United States. Pretty understandable. China doesn’t want to be left alone. And since I wrote that piece for you, there was this fantasy in Washington about a reverse Kissinger, which I never took very seriously because—

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

This is the notion that we would make Putin an ally against [Chinese President Xi Jinping].

RADEK SIKORSKI

Yeah. I mean, if you were Putin, would you trust the West when you have a reliable partner in Beijing who has backed you in your war and who is a fellow authoritarian? Kissinger-Nixon in China happened because Russia and China were at war with each other—I mean, a shooting war on the Ussuri River, and even then it took years of patient diplomacy and building up trust. So I think this is partly unrealistic and partly maybe an excuse for a great economic reset with Russia just for the money.

But there are precedents there. I think if we allowed Putin to conquer Ukraine and Russia got away with it, then I think Chinese leadership would understandably conclude that it’s okay to recover what you regard as a renegade province.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

When you talk to your Chinese counterpart, [Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi] about Ukraine, do you get anything constructive out of him? What are those conversations like?

RADEK SIKORSKI

He says forcefully that they’re in favor of an immediate ceasefire, but China is the only country that could force the end of this war. If they told the Russians, “Stop this war or we close the border, we stop trading with you,” the Russians would have to obey that, I think. But they’re not willing to do that.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

It seems like it would be an amazing boon to the Chinese relationship with the rest of Europe that that would be a strategic opportunity for them.

RADEK SIKORSKI

It would place China in the position that the United States played itself when Teddy Roosevelt forced the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War. It was that that launched the United States from a hemispheric power to a global power.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

The other dimension of these dynamics that have gotten some attention in recent weeks is what should we call the global South dimension. People in many cases don’t like that term, but you know what I mean. There’s been lots of complaints about hypocrisy, about different responses to Ukraine and Gaza. China has seen an opening here. Do you see that as an important part of these dynamics?

RADEK SIKORSKI

I think Ukraine has more or less won the information war in the West and probably lost it in the global South. I find receptive ears in the global South when as a Pole, I tell them, “Look, colonialism wasn’t just white and black. It was also white on white.” The Irish were colonized in the nineteenth century. We Poles were also colonized in the nineteenth century, and the Ukrainians were colonized. And so think of it as a colonial war, and then you can see gears shifting, and perhaps greater sympathy. But the United States is in the process of dissolving its outreach apparatus.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I was surprised to learn this week that Poland had recognized a Palestinian state since 1988, I believe.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Yes.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

As you watch the push for recognition and moves by some of your European counterparts, do you see that as meaningful, as potentially constructive?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, in practice it will mean that there will be, just like there is in Poland, a properly accredited Palestinian ambassador. I mean, nice for that guy and for the pride of the Palestinian people. But in practice, it’s Hamas that has destroyed the peace party and Yasir Arafat before them. My view is that if the Palestinians for the last 50 years had gone the way of Mahatma Gandhi rather than of Arab machismo, they would’ve got their state already. But unfortunately, they’ve gone the path of Jewish uprisings against the Romans, and we know how those ended.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Before we close, I am hoping to end on a somewhat more personal note. You’ve in a really striking way kind of lived the story of the post–Cold War. You saw the fall of communism and the hopes of that post–Cold War period. You were foreign minister and defense minister in an earlier era, and here you are back in this job at a much grimmer time, when many of the hopes and expectations that were pretty prevalent in the 1990s have at least been delayed, if not permanently ended. As you’ve watched this transition and make sense of this moment, so you’ve lived that period, how do you understand where we are? How do you understand how we got here?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, we liked the end of history, when liberal democracy was supposed to have won the argument, because we hugely benefited from it. We are now preparing for rougher times. Poland is a remarkable story—in a generation and a half from rags to riches—and I just feel very grateful for having been able to participate in it.

As the West, we made some terrible mistakes. Foreign policy is a series of predictions and bets with the future. And if you get your bets wrong, you lose. So we bet that if we admit China into [the World Trade Organization], China would liberalize their economy and maybe more. We lost that bet. China became an economic superpower without liberalizing. We bet that if we treat Russia generously, she will become a normal nation-state, constructive, and live in peace with others. We lost that. We bet that if the Arab Spring is like 1989, that there would be these more civilized, more pluralist, more democratic forms of government in the Arab Spring. We lost that. And we bet that if we invade Afghanistan, Iraq, those countries will become beacons for their regions.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

What bet do you think we’re making now?

RADEK SIKORSKI

Well, the United States is betting a bet that if you withdraw from the world, you’ll be safer and you’ll rebuild your economy. And I wonder whether that’s true.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

Do you worry about the United States at this point?

RADEK SIKORSKI

We’ve certainly had a transatlantic bargain, which we feel worked for both sides. The bargain was, as we said, you protect us from Russia, and we defer to you on security issues, and we buy American, at least American arms. And if that bargain is off, it’ll be off altogether.

DAN KURTZ-PHELAN

I will look forward to someday having you pick up that question and evaluate that bet in our pages, but for now, thank you so much for doing this in a busy week and a busy time.

RADEK SIKORSKI

Thanks.