Poland diversifies its foreign policy by moving closer to Turkey and China

Poland seems to face new geopolitical challenges due to Biden administration international policy.

With the arrival of Joe Biden as President of the United States, Warsaw finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand, Brussels, Berlin and Paris, now freed from the Eurosceptic Brits, are extending interference and political and ideological pressure under the guise of “European values” and the rule of law, but in reality with the aim of moving the EU towards a quasi-federal model. On the other hand, Washington, where the new administration shares the same “European”, progressive and multiculturalist values as Emmanuel Macron or Ursula Von der Leyen, indeed favors rapprochement with Brussels, Berlin and Paris to the detriment of the continent’s most Atlanticist capitals, namely London and Warsaw.

The change in the American administration’s attitude towards London became particularly glaring when, at the beginning of June, American diplomacy sided with the EU and exerted pressure on London in the dispute between the British and the Europeans over the Northern Ireland protocol. Following Brexit, that protocol imposes customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland – that is, within the UK – to avoid land border controls between the two Irelands. Its strict application, as desired by the EU, is causing unrest in Northern Irish Unionist circles. Joe Biden’s administration even threatened the UK with consequences for the possibility of a trade deal if London did not show a little more flexibility toward the EU on this issue. It was unprecedented.