Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski is not a man to shy away from a confrontation. When US billionaire Elon Musk stressed on Sunday how crucial his Starlink satellite service is for Ukraine, posting on X that the country's "entire front line would collapse if I turned it [Starlink] off," Sikorski didn't let the grass grow under his feet.

Sikorski promptly took to X and posted that "Starlinks for Ukraine are paid for by the Polish Digitization Ministry at the cost of about $50 million per year. The ethics of threatening the victim of aggression apart, if SpaceX proves to be an unreliable provider, we will be forced to look for other suppliers."

This earned Sikorski a swift rebuke from across the Atlantic. "Be quiet, small man," retorted Musk. "You pay a tiny fraction of the cost. And there is no substitute for Starlink."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio also weighed in on the spat, saying "without Starlink, Ukraine would have lost this war long ago and Russians would be on the border with Poland right now."

On Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk entered the fray, urging restraint in the United States. 

"True leadership means respect for partners and allies. Even for the smaller and weaker ones," he wrote on X. "Never arrogance. Dear friends, think about it."

Such a war of words between Poland and the US is unprecedented.

Although Tusk's center-left government is rattled by and in despair about President Donald Trump's criticism of Ukraine and his courting of Russia, Poland is on the front line and knows that it depends on its alliance with the US — no matter who sits in the White House.

Instead of openly criticizing the US president, Poland is focused on strengthening its own military capabilities and preparedness for war.

This was evident from Tusk's parliamentary address last Friday. To the surprise of many, he announced that his country would launch a new military training program by the end of the year "so that every adult man in Poland is trained in case of war."

He said the scheme would be modeled on the Swiss system, which involves a relatively short period of basic training lasting 21 weeks and regular training courses. According to Tusk, the training will be voluntary and would not mean a return to universal compulsory military service. He later clarified that women could also participate in the training.

Tusk told lawmakers that his government aims to prepare an army of half a million soldiers, including reservists. He also would recommend "a positive opinion for Poland to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention and possibly from the Dublin Convention," which prohibit the use of anti-personnel land mines and cluster munitions, respectively.

He added that every Polish citizen will soon be provided with a guide on how to behave in the event of war, and announced that his government would discuss France's nuclear umbrella with the government in Paris.

Tusk even got backup support from Polish President Andrzej Duda, a political rival. Duda almost simultaneously suggested that the constitution should be amended to include a permanent defense spending target of at least 4% of GDP. Poland aims to spend 4.7% of its GDP on defense this year.

Although Poland's previously rock-solid faith in the US alliance as a cornerstone of its security has been shaken to the core, both the Polish government and the opposition continue to hope the US will not abandon its close ally.

"Our attitude to the trans-Atlantic relationship and to NATO must remain indisputable," Tusk told parliament.

Foreign Minister Sikorski agreed. "Poland has two life insurance policies: NATO with America and Europe," he said during the parliamentary debate.

Tusk went on to emphasize that "every responsible politician must today aim for an armed, self-assured, trustworthy Europe." Poland considers the most essential task to be to bring both these guarantees into line.

Solidarity between the government and the opposition would be valuable in the current crisis, especially as politicians in the opposition national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party are on very good terms with Trump's MAGA movement.

But PiS is hoping for support from the US hardliners in its fight against Tusk and his Civic Platform (PO) party. It feels vindicated by a report recently published by the Hudson Institute, a conservative American think tank, that claims the current Polish government used undemocratic methods to restore the rule of law.

While Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of PiS, supports the idea of military training for all, he feels it will not do any good as long as a leftist "educational theory of fear" is being taught in Poland. He said that a "return to the chivalric ethos" is needed.

The situation is made even more difficult by growing anti-Ukrainian sentiment in Poland.

Although Poland's 200-year love affair with America has cooled slightly recently, there would appear to be no place in Poland for the kind of ideological anti-Americanism sometimes found in Western Europe.

According to a survey conducted by the polling institute CBOS in February, 58% of Poles like Americans; only 10% do not.

This means Americans are second only to Italians in the national popularity stakes in Poland. That being said, their popularity has dropped seven percentage points within the space of a year.

Just under 44% of those polled said they consider it possible that the US will leave NATO. Only 30% said this would not happen.

Poland has in recent weeks been involved in every initiative that seeks to increase Europe's ability to defend itself, with Tusk, a former European Council president, playing an active role in recent conferences in both Paris and London.

In his address in the Polish parliament, he spoke of a "watershed moment" in the way the European Union thinks because the plan now is that European money will be invested directly in defense.

Poland is above all hoping for support for its model project "East Shield," which aims to secure the country's borders with Belarus and Russia. There is also talk of a joint air defense system.

Despite differences of opinion in Berlin and Warsaw on the strategic sovereignty of Europe, the Trump administration's confrontational course could in fact lead to greater rapprochement between Germany and Poland.

The Polish daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita even suggested on Monday that "Poland and Germany could develop an atomic bomb together." Such a project would, wrote Jedrzej Bielecki, "finally complete the reconciliation between Poles and Germans."

This article was originally written in German.