US Defense Secretary Peter Hegseth has lauded Poland as a “model NATO ally” in his first visit to Warsaw on Friday, where he met with President Andrzej Duda and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz.
Pete Hegseth made his first bilateral state visit as US Defence Secretary on Friday, meeting with Polish President Andrez Duda and Deputy Prime Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz in Warsaw.
“It’s quite intentional that our first European bilateral (visit) is right here in Poland,” Hegseth said after the meeting.
“We see Poland as the model ally on the continent, willing to invest not just in their defence but in our shared defence,” he added.
Poland gets it – strong militaries deter war,” Hegseth said following the meeting with his Polish counterpart in a statement on X, where he also rereferred to Poland as “NATO’s frontline state”.
Poland is NATO’s biggest spender in relative terms, and allocated 4.2% of its GDP to defence in 2024. This year, that figure is expected to rise to 4.7%.
Defence Minister Kosiniak-Kamysz has previously said that Poland can be “the transatlantic link between this challenge set by US President Donald Trump and its implementation in Europe,” referring to Trump’s demand that all NATO member states spend 5% of their GDP on defence.
“We need a clear action plan,” he said, stressing that “a radical annual increase in defence spending to reach 5% of GDP must be the goal.”
However, Kosiniak-Kamysz also admitted that this might not be possible for all states immediately, especially for those who currently contribute just 2%.
Poland’s defence expenditure has grown rapidly since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, increasing from 1.88% of GDP in 2014 to 2.23% in 2023, with more increases expected to follow.
The United States and Poland are close military allies, with around 8,000 US troops currently stationed in Poland.
In 2019, Duda and Trump, who was then serving his first term, signed a defence agreement to station 1,000 additional troops on a rotational basis. The US has had an established military base in Poland since 2023.
The leaders of both countries will now likely hope for continued defence cooperation, particularly at a critical junction of potential negotiations regarding the war in Ukraine.
