Poland’s rearmament (including nuclear)

Brussels – In the continental arms race, Warsaw takes the fast lane. Poland, already the NATO member with the highest defense spending relative to GDP, now intends to equip itself with nuclear warheads and enlarge its army. At stake, argues Premier Donald Tusk, is the hold of the eastern front of the Alliance, and thus the security of the entire continent. Meanwhile, his leadership clashes with Elon Musk, who threatens a stop to Starlink for Kyiv.

Atomic Arsenal

The Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has clear ideas about what his country needs now. Before Parliament, the premier has claimed last Friday (March 7) the need for a quantum leap in the national war effort. Up to the point of equipping the armed forces with nuclear warheads. “Poland must achieve the most modern capabilities even in nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons,” he remarked in the House, stressing that “this is a race for security, not war.”

As an example of the risks of not taking adequate precautions, Tusk cited the Ukrainian case: in 1994, Kyiv had signed the Budapest Memorandum with Moscow, by which it gave up its Soviet-era atomic arsenal in exchange for Russian recognition of its territorial integrity. Twenty years later, the Kremlin annexed Crimea, and three years ago launched the large-scale invasion.

Warsaw does not want to be the next one on Vladimir Putin‘s menu, which is also why the premier informed the chamber of the impending withdrawal from international treaties banning the use of anti-personnel mines and cluster bombs. At stake, he says, is the resilience of NATO’s eastern flank.

Conventional Forces

At the same time, Tusk announced his intention to substantially increase the army’s manpower to reach 500,000 personnel. “By the end of the year, we want to have a model ready so that every adult male in Poland is trained for war and that this reserve is adequate for possible threats,” he explained to deputies.

For the East-European country’s armed forces, which currently number around 200 thousand (thus placing it third in NATO in size, after the United States and Turkey, and first among the Alliance’s European members), this would be a 250 per cent increase. According to figures provided by the Polish premier, the Ukrainian army has 800,000 military personnel and the Russian army has 1.3 million.

“Every healthy man should want to train to be able to defend the homeland in case of need,” Tusk argued, according to which women will also be able to volunteer but “war is still, to a greater extent, the domain of men.” The premier was keen to specify that this is not a return of compulsory conscription, which was abolished in 2008.

Europe tries to make do

The decision, unprecedented in history, comes as Donald Trump is shaking from the foundations the certainties of Europeans, who suddenly no longer feel they can count on the security umbrella offered by the United States. It is a bitter realisation that is rapidly making its way across the Old Continent, starting in Paris, London, Berlin, and now Warsaw.

After the U.S. president’s latest firings, his transalpine counterpart Emmanuel Macron made himself available to extend French nuclear deterrence to neighbouring countries, to at least partially compensate for that of the stars and stripes if it should no longer be available in the immediate future. This is a proposal in which Tusk is interested, so much so that he would be “talking seriously” about it with the Elysée Palace tenant. In contrast, the Polish premier opposes another idea on which Macron is working (along with Britain’s Prime Minister Keir Starmer), namely sending ground troops to Ukraine to monitor a possible ceasefire between Moscow and Kyiv.

For his part, Germany’s forthcoming Bundeskanzler Friedrich Merz—universally recognized as one of the most Atlanticist politicians of his generation—recently stressed the need for Europe to make itself “independent” from Washington on defence. A need, the latter, also espoused by Ursula von der Leyen, who has presented last week her ReArm Europe plan to enable the EU to meet the strategic challenges it faces, approved by leaders of the Twenty-seven at the last extraordinary summit on March 6.

The centrality of NATO

As much as he insisted again on the concept of European “power” (“our deficit is the lack of willingness to act, lack of confidence and sometimes even cowardice,” he said, but “Russia will be powerless in the face of a united Europe”), Tusk nonetheless reiterated that he does not intend to move away from the North Atlantic Alliance. “Poland is not changing its opinion on the absolutely fundamental need to maintain the closest possible ties with the United States and NATO,” he said, stressing that the country’s participation in the organisation is “unquestionable.”

Warsaw already has the highest defense budget among NATO members. Today it spends 4.1 per cent of its GDP, while the target for 2025 is 4.7 per cent. It buys most of its weapons systems right from Uncle Sam: from Abrams tanks to F-35 fighter jets, via Patriot anti-aircraft, much to the chagrin of those who push for a “European preference” in the Old Continent military purchases.

Sikorski vs Musk (and Rubio)

However, the Atlantic is getting wider and wider. Diplomatic rifts between Washington on the one hand and Kyiv, Brussels, and other European chancelleries on the other are now everyday occurrences. Following last week’s tensions between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, yesterday (March 9) took place a three-way clash between the Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, the U.S. Marco Rubio and Elon Musk, the New Yorker tycoon’s right-hand man.

The latter had shared remarks on X (which he owns) that seemed to indicate an impending suspension of the provision of the services of Starlink—the satellite network of SpaceX, another company owned by the South African billionaire—to the Ukrainian military, without which it would find itself in serious difficulty in the field especially now that the White House has stopped its intelligence information sharing.

For now, it is Warsaw paying on behalf of Kyiv for the Starlink service, so Sikorski felt compelled to warn that “if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider we will be forced to look for another one.” At that point, Musk called Sikorski a “little man” and suggested he “shut up.” From there an unseemly online altercation ensued between bigwigs in the administrations of two technically allied countries. Until Rubio jumped in accusing his Polish counterpart of “inventing things” and calling him ungrateful, adding that “without Starlink Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and right now the Russians would be on the border with Poland.”

Today, Tusk has dampened the flames with another post on the social networking site that was once Twitter: “True leadership means respect for partners and allies, even the smallest and weakest ones. Never arrogance, dear friends, think about it,” he wrote. The European Commission declined to comment on the vitriolic exchanges of the past few hours. “We remain committed and ready to support Ukraine with GovSatCom until Iris2 is fully operational,” Berlaymont spokesmen simply noted, referring to the EU satellite systems.

The former is a sharing platform among the agencies of Italy, France, Germany, Spain, and Luxembourg, while the latter will go into operation in 2030 and is expected to put nearly 300 satellites into orbit, becoming at least on paper an alternative network to Starlink. However, Brussels could hardly replace the services offered by SpaceX (if the need really arose) while maintaining the same level of efficiency.