Until very recently it was hard to find more stalwart allies of America in Europe than the Poles. Poland was an early supporter of Washington’s policy to expand Nato and actively pushed for a stronger US role in central and eastern Europe. The Poles also stood up as an enthusiastic member of every US-led military coalition, taking leading roles in Afghanistan and Iraq. It was to Warsaw that US President Joe Biden travelled – twice – in the wake of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to give barnstorming speeches affirming that America would stand by Kyiv. 

All the more surprising, then, that the recently appointed US ambassador to Warsaw chose to pick a diplomatic fight that threatens to snowball into a profound rupture between the two onetime allies. Earlier this week, ambassador Tom Rose announced that the embassy would have ‘no further dealings, contacts, or communications’ with the speaker of Poland’s parliament – known as the ‘Marshal of the Sejm’ – Włodzimierz Czarzasty. The speaker’s crime? To suggest that Trump did not deserve a Nobel peace prize because, as Czarzasty put it, ‘in my view [Trump] conducts transactional politics through the use of force.’ These comments, according to Ambassador Rose, constituted:

Outrageous and unprovoked insults directed against President Trump … we will not permit anyone to harm U.S.–Polish relations, nor disrespect @realDonaldTrump, who has done so much for Poland and the Polish people.

When America becomes........

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