Poland, the U.S., and NATO: Key Security Allies

By Piotr Buras

Piotr Buras is Head of the Eurpean Council on Foreign Relations Warsaw office. He is a journalist, author, and expert in German and European politics. Between 2008 and 2012, he worked as a columnist and Berlin correspondent for Gazeta Wyborcza, the biggest Polish daily. He started his professional career in the late 1990s at the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, one of the first Polish think-tanks. He continued his career at the Institute for German Studies at the University of Birmingham and at the University of Wroclaw (Poland). He was also visiting fellow at the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik in Berlin. His recent book Moslems and the other Germans: The Reinvention of the Berlin Republic was published in Polish in 2011.

Poland’s democratic institutions are under pressure from the ruling right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS). PiS efforts to control the judiciary and media risk alienating its Western allies, which it relies on for defense and national security. The Cipher Brief spoke with Piotr Buras, Head of the European Council on Foreign Relations Warsaw office, about why PiS – even with all of its anti-Europe political rhetoric – should want to to keep its European neighbors and the U.S. close.

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