Most Poles no longer trust the US as a reliable ally, according to the latest poll.
In a survey conducted by the SW Research agency published by the daily Rzeczpospolita on January 31 respondents were asked: “Do you consider today’s US to be a trustworthy ally of Poland?”
Only 30 per cent of respondents answered “yes” and 53 per cent responded in the negative, while 17 per cent expressed no view.
The research was carried out on January 27 and 28 at the end of a month that saw a US attack on Venezuela, US President Donald Trump’s campaign to take over Greenland and his comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos in which he belittled the contribution NATO countries on the US’ behalf in Afghanistan.
Polish attitudes toward the US had been largely positive since the fall of Communism, with widespread public support for the presence of the approximately 10,000 US troops in the country.
Warsaw is regarded as a model ally by Washington because of its rearmament drive. That has seen Polish defence spending rise to almost 5 per cent of the country’s GDP, which led the Trump administration to assure Poland it would not reduce its military commitment to Poland.
Polling now shows, though, that unease about the alliance with the US is growing. Apart from the SW Research survey, another conducted by the IBP agency and published by Portal Obronny yesterday showed that 58 per cent took a negative view of Trump’s international and security policies with 23 per cent expressing a positive view.
The trend has been negative for some time. Back in June of last year a Pew Research Centre survey showed that confidence in a US President doing the right thing on international matters fell from 75 per cent to 35 per cent in just one year.
In the autumn of last year a United Surveys poll for the Wirtualna Polska news portal found that 39 per cent thought Trump was a guarantor of Polish security and 51 per cent took the opposite view.
In a survey by the IBP agency for newspaper Super Express published in January, 45 per cent of Poles said they believe that the US under Trump’s leadership is no longer a “friend of Poland” with 37 per cent believing that he was.
In another recent survey conducted by the state-owned CBOS agency for daily Dziennik Gazeta Prawna, 32 per cent viewed US foreign policy to be positive for Poland with 58 per cent taking the opposite view.
Still, according to a Eurobazooka survey for French magazine Le Grand Continent, Poles are still less negative in their view of Trump than other Europeans.
Among seven countries surveyed by Eurobazooka, Poland had the lowest proportion of people regarding Trump as being an enemy of Europe (28 per cent) whereas in Spain, Denmark, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy that figure was more than 50 per cent.
The changing public view of the US in Poland comes in the context of a shift in political attitudes towards the US of the Polish centre-left and large parts of the mainstream media.
While declaring that he is a believer in a close relationship between Europe and the US, Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who heads the present centre-left government in Poland, has repeatedly criticised Trump’s stance on the war in Ukraine and his rhetoric.
The opposition Conservatives-allied President Karol Nawrocki, though, remains a close ally of the present US administration. He has refused to denounce Trump over Greenland and has said the US President remains the only hope of peace being secured in the Ukraine war.
Conservative leader Jarosław Kaczyński said recently that Poland has to stick closely to the US as there is no other guarantor of its security.
Politicians from the centre-left have of late, though, been pointing to a need for the European Union to be ready to take a pro-active line given what they see as the uncertainty in US intentions towards the old continent.
