Vienna Poland’s President Andrzej Duda is actually not a particularly conspicuous figure. The 50-year-old always seems accurate, even a bit stuffy. In contrast to other government politicians in Warsaw, the former boy scout lacks the habit of the clutter. That’s why it attracts attention when he compares Putin to Hitler in an interview, all the more so when he harshly criticizes the dialogue between Berlin, Paris and Moscow almost in the same breath. “These talks are useless,” the Kraków native told the “Bild” newspaper, they only gave the war criminal Putin additional legitimacy.
These are clear words to Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, who, despite the officially declared turning point, continue to struggle with the contradictions in their Russia policy. Poland, on the other hand, sees Putin’s attack on Ukraine as confirmation of its tough stance – and suddenly acts as a role model within the EU. The country has temporarily taken in almost four million people from the neighboring country, has been supplying heavy weapons since the beginning of the war and is promoting ever tougher sanctions. Other capitals remain secretly more skeptical – publicly, a more cautious policy is currently struggling.
Duda earned respect by setting a good example. In mid-April, for example, he visited embattled Kyiv, when this was not yet part of the routine program for top foreign politicians. This is one of the reasons why Duda was allowed to speak in person before the Ukrainian parliament in May.
Close cooperation and defense of the neighboring country against the Russian invasion is a reason of state for Poland: as early as 2008, then-President Lech Kaczynski and his brother Jaroslaw warned that the invasion of Georgia was the first step in Russia’s imperial plans. Poland has always called for its Eastern European neighbors to be integrated into Western alliances and believes that Moscow would not have dared to annex Crimea or carry out the February invasion.
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The worldview of the Kaczynskis was formative for Duda. The scion of a well-known Kraków family, whose grandfather fought as a cavalryman in two wars against Russia and Germany, owes the twins a breathtaking career within the Law and Justice Party (PiS). After their election victory in 2005, he became Undersecretary in the President’s Chancellery, and after Lech Kaczynski’s death in the Smolensk air disaster, he became a member of the Sejm and the European Parliament. But he left no lasting impression there.
Duda’s popularity ratings are below 50 percent
The lawyer’s narrow victory in the 2015 presidential election was all the more surprising. Five years later, Duda narrowly won again. Today he is the most popular politician in the country, but his ratings are below 50 percent. Poland remains polarised, politics is shaped by hostile camps and the contrasts between town and country, progressives and conservatives. Duda rarely used the theoretically far-reaching powers of his office. Critics saw him as a mere accomplice of Kaczynski’s conservative revolution.
However, Duda was never a reactionary like many others in the PiS, his participation in the Kulturkampf seems more opportunistic than convinced. In 2020, for example, he did not comment on the virtual ban on abortions, while his daughter Kinga clearly criticized it. In 2020, he only took part in the hustle and bustle against sexual minorities in the final phase of the election campaign. His commitment to family and social policy was more consistent.
In those moments when Duda jumped over his own shadow and emancipated himself from his former party, his driving force was pragmatism in foreign policy. He celebrated his ideological closeness to Donald Trump and flattered him with the promise to build a “Fort Trump”. After Biden’s election victory, he took an infuriating amount of time to congratulate him. However, when the zealots in his own camp wanted to force the American owners of the anti-government television station TVN to sell their majority stake, he vetoed the move to prevent tensions with their most important ally from escalating.
With similar intentions, in 2017 he objected to the most controversial parts of the judiciary reform to defuse the conflict with Brussels. In recent months, he has been working with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on a precarious compromise that, in exchange for the abolition of the disciplinary chamber, is intended to release the blocked Corona development funds.
Poland’s security depends on strong partners
Duda’s attempt to act as a guarantor of reason in other countries and at the same time to make a name for himself as a staunch patriot among Poland’s conservatives is not without contradictions. In addition, it remains unclear whether his will and influence are sufficient to push through more than cosmetic changes in the judicial reform.
And yet, in his second term in office, he is demonstrating a realpolitik approach that derives from historical experience that Poland’s security depends on strong partners. The Americans are clearly in first place among these, and Poland cultivates friendship with armaments deals worth billions and the assumption of costs for the stationing of well over 10,000 American soldiers. During the Ukraine war, the country became a hub for Western military aid.
The relationship with Germany, which the PiS views with distrust and often even hostility, is more fraught with conflict. Duda, on the other hand, presented himself as a bridge builder: he is married to a Germanist, and the couple maintains good personal relations in the neighboring country. An economically and militarily strong Germany is in Poland’s interest, he said after his first election victory, “because we need strong allies”. He even praised Chancellor Merkel, who is unloved in Poland, for her “very determined” policy towards Russia.
Berlin’s reluctance to deliver arms is now testing the relationship again, with the stakes being significantly higher for Poland. At the end of May, Duda accused Berlin of breaching its word, since Warsaw, relying on supplies from Berlin, had handed over almost all of its 240 Soviet T-72 tanks to the Ukraine.
Even if the drastic words contain a dash of negotiating tactics: maintaining the relationship of trust between Berlin and Warsaw will be crucial for the Europeans to be able to maintain their united front against Russia. The man in the presidency continues to play the key role.
More: Why Poland doesn’t want to abolish the rule of law after all