Politico: Poland in lobbying campaign ahead of US election. It may change Trump’s perspective

If in 2016, some European leaders openly expressed their support for Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, before the US elections, in 2024 European politicians are more restrained, even trying to approach Donald Trump, who is trying to win second term.

In 2016, Sigmar Gabriel, a minister in Angela Merkel’s cabinet, said a Trump victory was a threat to peace and prosperity.

Radosław Sikorski, the Polish Minister of Foreign Affairs, says today, in an interview given to the German press trust Axel Springer, that “Donald Trump was right when he urged all of us in Europe to spend more on defense”.

To those who fear that the former president, back in the White House, could stop aid to Ukraine and fall into a deal with Putin, Sikorksi says that the situation is much more nuanced, and that Trump sent anti-tank missiles to Ukraine before the war, when others did not they were doing it. Sikorski also noted that Donald Trump did not address the topic after the vote in Congress, did not protest the $60 billion aid package for Ukraine, which suggests that the former president’s attitude towards the situation in Eastern Europe is changing.

Warsaw has launched a broad diplomatic initiative to try to convince Trump of the dangers posed by Putin’s regime, Politico analysts believe. Cutting US aid to Ukraine or NATO is an existential threat to Poland, a state that has been dismembered twice in history, by both Tsarist and Communist Russia. “At the end of the war we could have either a defeated Russian army outside the borders of Ukraine, or a victorious Russian army on the border of Poland, Sikorski warned. And what Putin would do then would be what Hitler did with Czechoslovakia: he would take Ukraine’s industry and people and use these resources to attack further,” the minister said.

The former US president has threatened not to defend European countries that don’t spend enough on defense in his next term, Politico notes, and Poland’s position on this is exactly what Trump wants to hear. Warsaw spends about 4 percent of gross domestic product on defense – twice the NATO target – and is asking the Alliance to raise its bar to 3 percent of GDP.

Politico analysts believe Polish efforts could sway Donald Trump’s outlook. After meeting with President Andrzej Duda in New York earlier this month, Trump noted that both Ukraine’s “survival and strength” were important to the US and that he was “with Poland to the end,” notes Politico.

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