Caught in a quagmire

How Polish politics is changing after Trump’s return to the White House

The results of the presidential election in the USA have dealt a significant blow to the elites in Poland, who likely did not anticipate such an outcome. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk has already begun to ponder the prospects of war and peace in Ukraine, as well as the fate of Europe in the coming years. These thoughts clearly reflect the chaos in the minds of the representatives of official Warsaw.

Unexpected Joker

As the next election year — when the fate of the presidential seat in Poland will be decided — approaches, there is a prevailing impression within Donald Tusk’s ruling party that the choice of their candidate is a settled matter. Donald Tusk himself, due to high disapproval ratings, announced back in the spring that he would not be seeking the presidency. Against this backdrop, most experts agreed that the candidate from the Civic Coalition would be the tested Mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, who had previously run in the 2020 election. He lost in the first round to the incumbent president, Andrzej Duda. He then attempted to contest the victory, but was unsuccessful. 
Rafał Trzaskowski is primarily interesting for his comprehensive support of LGBT ideology, which delights Polish liberals on the one hand, but greatly irritates their opponents on the other. His backing of sexual minorities, exemplified by the installation of rainbow-coloured benches in the streets of Warsaw and the opening of the Queer Museum, tends to annoy Poles rather than garner him additional votes.
He has also called out to clean Warsaw’s streets from the ‘Belarusian spirit’, which he interprets as the vast number of buildings designed and constructed after the war by our architects and builders as a gift to a recovering and neighbourly Poland.

Tusk versus Trump? 

Recently, a primary took place in Donald Tusk’s party. Rafał Trzaskowski and Minister of Foreign Affairs Radosław Sikorski entered the fray. Despite limited powers, the president in Poland is still responsible for foreign policy. Therefore, in the context of the existing unspoken conflict between Trump and the EU bureaucracy — which Tusk’s party is so fervently aligned with — the presidential election in Poland becomes crucial due to Warsaw’s need to navigate the currents from Washington and Brussels. Judging by the candidates, Donald Tusk has clearly opted not for ‘maintaining neutrality’. 
The fact is that Trump supporters do not particularly share, to put it mildly, the LGBT values, which Trzaskowski, in turn, so vigorously promotes. However, Poland’s Foreign Minister is not particularly suited for establishing working relations with Trump, either. Sikorski’s spouse, journalist and historian Anne Applebaum, a US citizen, has already referred to Trump as a second Hitler. One of their sons (also a political activist), who is a US citizen and served in the US army, does not hide his sexual orientation and has even made it his political slogan. In this case, two American citizens from the Sikorski family clearly hold Trump in contempt.

Choice of war 

For instance, in what way is Tusk ready to alter national policy in the event of the Ukrainian conflict resolution? So far, he has reasonably acknowledged that we can expect peaceful initiatives from Trump in the near future, yet he later added that it is not a fact that Poland will agree with them. What do such statements mean? Does Warsaw want the war to continue and the opportunity to profit from the transportation of Western aid to Ukraine? In reality, this leads to enormous losses due to the closure of many transit routes, rising energy costs, and the loss of Eastern markets for its goods.  
In this context, Tusk’s call to German Chancellor Scholz following his conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin is also noteworthy. The Polish Prime Minister’s insistence on avoiding negotiations with Moscow appeared very staged, especially in light of the collapse of the ruling coalition in Germany.  
It is evident that the Polish government finds itself in a kind of political vacuum and is unsure how to respond to the current geopolitical situation.  
Adding fuel to the fire is the completely hostile policy of Andrzej Duda’s office towards Tusk; the outgoing Polish President flew off to meet Trump without even informing the government.
The breakdown of familiar Western frameworks has led to a situation where one structure of the Polish political machine is unaware of what another is doing. This has resulted in increased chaos and unpredictability, with local citizens becoming the hostages of this turmoil. 

It is clear that budgetary losses fall heavily on the shoulders of ordinary Poles and future generations. However, the examples of Hungary and Slovakia demonstrate that even in such a complex situation, there is a way out, known as pragmatism. 

The question arises: is the Polish leadership ready to move away from a dogmatic belief in the West and adopt a broader perspective on the world? Moreover, Minsk always keeps the door open for predictable, mutually respectful, and beneficial relations with Warsaw, provided there is a willingness and understanding on the part of the country to the west of the Bug River.

By Piotr Petrovsky, political expert