Polish Prime Minister Tusk recently declared that “We must be aware that Poland must reach for the most modern capabilities also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons.” This followed French President Macron proposal to extend his country’s nuclear umbrella over its continental allies. The unmistakable innuendo is that Poland’s historic French ally might help Poland develop its own such weapons in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Poland’s ruling liberal-globalist coalition earlier criticized the outgoing conservative president’s request to host US nukes on the basis that their country would be unable to independently use them, yet now the leader of this same coalition wants to go even further by developing nukes. Tusk indirectly addressed their reversal on the nuclear issue by mentioning how much has recently changed in an allusion to Trump suspending military and intelligence aid to Ukraine, which prompted panic among the EU elite.
Tusk’s talk about Poland obtaining nukes is likely a misguided negotiation tactic with the US, however, for the reasons that’ll now be explained. For starters, it was proposed in response to newfound speculation that the US might no longer abide by NATO’s Article 5, which doesn’t make sense in Poland’s case since it already hosts 10,000 troops who the US would certainly protect if need be. These forces should therefore already function as psychological reassurance to Poles that Article 5 still applies to them.
Nevertheless, so much of the population exhibits symptoms of political Russophobia for reasons beyond the scope of this analysis to explain that they might not feel fully comfortable unless the US deploys even more troops to Poland, which segues into the second point. The outgoing conservative president recently suggested that the US could redeploy some of its troops from Germany to Poland, and this might be precisely what the Prime Minister hopes to achieve by talking about developing nukes.
“Poland Is Once Again Poised To Become The US’ Top Partner In Europe” if it plays its cards right as explained in the preceding hyperlinked analysis so there objectively isn’t any reason to flirt with developing nukes as a negotiation tactic for making this even more likely than it already is. That said, Tusk and his team might truly believe that Trump is a Russian agent like he previously accused him of being, ergo why there’s a possibility that they might genuinely expect him to sell Poland out to Russia.
If that’s really the case, then they might have convinced themselves that threatening to develop nukes if the US doesn’t deploy more troops to Poland is the only way to get Trump to consider complying with their request, but this is probably a bluff since they don’t have the means to go through with it. This moves everything along to the third point since Tusk’s plan would be extraordinarily costly, require expertise and equipment that Poland lacks, and be practically impossible to pull off in secret.
France also has no reason to risk the global opprobrium that would accompany its support of Poland’s proposed nuclear weapons program either since it doesn’t need the cash nor does it have any reason to cede its role as the EU’s only nuclear-armed member along with the prestige that this entails. The most that it might do is base some of its nukes in Poland, but that would be no different than hosting American ones, which Tusk’s coalition earlier criticized. It also wouldn’t move the needle on US troops.
Putting everything together, Poland’s talk about obtaining nukes is indeed likely nothing but a negotiating tactic with the US, albeit a completely misguided one since it risks getting on the US’ bad side more so than encouraging it to comply with Poland’s request to base more troops on its soil. Trump doesn’t want any serious unpredictability in Europe after the US’ “Pivot (back) to Asia”, which necessitates redeploying some of its troops there, especially if this raises the risk of war with Russia.
He wants to end their proxy war in Ukraine, have the Europeans to decide among themselves how best to ensure their own security amid the US’ consequent military downscaling, and then focus on more muscularly containing China. If Poland were to obtain nukes, however, then it might feel emboldened to cross Russia’s red lines in Ukraine just like the US did before it in provoking the special operation. The worst-case scenario is that Poland also saber-rattles along its border with Kaliningrad and/or Belarus.
The last thing that Trump wants is for the US to be drawn back into another war with Russia, let alone a direct one instead of the proxy war that they’ve recently resolved to end, but the chances of this happening would spike if Poland obtained its own nukes. That could abruptly ruin his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” and is therefore why he might actually be upset at Tusk for talking about this. He probably knows that it’s a bluff, or was at least informed of this by experts, but that might not make a difference.
Tusk’s nuclear plans pose a challenge to Trump’s geopolitical plans, plus they imply that Trump can’t be trusted to abide by Article 5, perhaps due to him supposedly really being a Russian agent. That makes them offensive and infuriating, which could lead to Trump either delaying what might have already been his hitherto unannounced decision to redeploy some US troops from Germany to Poland or sending them to another regional country like Hungary instead, all to teach Tusk a lesson.
Of course, he might also go through with what Poland wants without any problems since this aligns with the US’ own interests, but it could then be sold as preventing Poland from obtaining nukes at the cost of creating unprecedented unpredictability in Russian-European relations after the Ukrainian Conflict ends. That improvised narrative could reinforce Trump’s desired international perception as a peacemaker and would thus turn an otherwise scandalous affair in US-Polish relations into a huge soft power opportunity.
