During the past decade, a period in which Germany (Europe’s largest economy) was busy committing national energy suicide and France was trying to decide whether it wanted to remain French, Poland was steadily rebuilding what is now one of the strongest and most competitive nations in Eastern Europe.
For background, following the defeat of atheistic communism, Poland returned to its religious and cultural roots, determining to rebuild its nation on competitive terms. From 1990, Gross Domestic Product (GDP) expanded sevenfold. Growth in GDP per capita was the second highest in the entire 27 country EU region (only Ireland grew faster). Within the former Soviet bloc countries, none have grown real GDP per capita faster. Purchasing power parity GDP per capita grew from 44% of the EU average to around 80%.
Since 2016 specifically, Poland has grown GDP at over three time the EU average, with purchasing power parity with the EU converging at the fastest rate in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Wage growth is also the fastest in the EU, with unemployment well below the EU average. At $31.6 billion in revenue and containing fourteen ‘unicorn’ companies, Poland is now the tech sector leader within CEE, and the regional home to hyperscalers like Microsoft and Google.
How Poland responded differently
Poland publicly and officially returned to its Christian roots. In 2016, Poland formally acknowledged Jesus Christ as King and Lord of Poland. The Act of Recognition explicitly entrusts the nation to Christ’s reign and submits to His laws. In the former land of European Christendom now long given over to secularism if not Islamic radicalism, this is the first and only modern nation (other than Vatican City) to make such a public proclamation.
Poland retained the Zloty rather than adopt the Euro, maintaining a degree of monetary independence (though still benefiting from EU funding).
It committed to spend 4.7% of GDP on defense, the highest amongst the NATO countries, a necessary step given its geographic position relative to Russia.
Poland invested heavily in domestic manufacturing and technology sectors, recently including automation, robotics and AI. The tech sector now represents 5% of GDP (up from 2.5% in 2016) and is growing rapidly.
Poland ensured that wage growth kept pace with economic growth, resulting in increasing equality and the maintenance of purchasing power for the working and middle classes (despite high inflation).
Poland now has one of the deepest pools of technically-trained workers in Europe relative to its income level. Polish developers consistently place in the top five globally on competitive coding platforms, reflecting decades of STEM instruction embedded in the national curriculum and competitive university engineering programs. Vocational programs are strong across auto, aerospace, and other critical sectors.
Despite its nearly complete reliance on imported oil and gas, Poland had diversified its import mix away from Russia to sources including the U.S., Denmark and Qatar. At the same time, Poland has maintained its robust domestic coal industry, which accounts for the majority of domestic electricity production.
Poland is food independent, and is now the fifth largest exporter of agricultural products to the EU. Copper and silver resources, along with a basket of critical minerals such as gold, lead, nickel sulfate, selenium, and rhenium, have increased Poland’s strategic importance to the West in an age of resource nationalism and shifting supply chains.
Poland invested in its own demographics, rewarding families with children and lifting many households out of poverty, while expanding educational access and quality. Income inequality has decreased and healthcare has improved, resulting in growing life expectancy and quality of life. Fertility remains too low (below replacement rate) but is improving rapidly with pro-family policies and better economic opportunities. The chaos resulting from mass immigration that is now plaguing western Europe has not touched Poland to any meaningful degree.
Why Poland Matters for the U.S. (and the EU)
Poland (and Hungary, a subject for another day) are important strategic partners for the U.S, which can no longer rely on her traditional NATO allies in England, France, and Germany. These countries have proven time and time again over the past decade to be unreliable partners, too busy dismantling their own energy, economic, and societal infrastructures to be counted on in a future conflict with global adversaries.
Poland has become NATO’s most committed and capable conventional military power in Europe, spending more on defense (as a share of GDP) than any other European ally. Poland represents NATO’s third-largest military by headcount after the U.S. and Turkey. The scale of Poland’s weapons purchases is unprecedented in modern European history, and most of those purchases are coming from U.S. defense firms and other domestic manufacturers. Poland has become the operational logistics backbone of the West’s effort in Ukraine, and has delivered more tanks to Ukraine than any other donor country.
Poland provides a key balance-of-power role in the region vis-a-vis Russia or even China. Without a strong Poland, the EU’s Eastern frontiers are dangerously vulnerable. The Suwałki Gap along the Polish-Lithuanian border is NATO’s single most consequential geographic vulnerability from the East. This is the geostrategic role Poland has played, for better or worse, across the centuries, but which it cannot do alone. Like wars before, Polish land will be the operational platform, and battlefield, of any future conflict.
In short, Poland is the linchpin between Western Europe and its eastern security perimeter, and between the commitment of the NATO treaty and the material capacity to honor it. A weak, poor, or passive Poland would make the Baltics indefensible, the Ukraine logistics corridor unworkable. NATO’s eastern flank would be a near-term liability rather than a deterrent, and the EU’s eastern security architecture largely symbolic.
The Trump administration has recognized Poland’s importance, characterizing Poland as a model ally. The United States has a direct material interest — in defense industry revenue, in burden-sharing credibility, in NATO’s functional military capability on its most important frontier — in Poland’s continued rise. Europe has an existential interest in Poland as the anchor of its eastern security architecture.