Poland
Rearmament deepens Poland's regional weight, but EU anchoring caps upside.
PF Score
55
▲1Authority
68
Reach
44
Under construction
Rearmament deepens Poland's regional weight, but EU anchoring caps upside.
Defense mobilization is rising without visible institutional breakdown.
Eastern-flank centrality grows, but EU dependence caps projection.
Karol Nawrocki
President of Poland
Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz
Poland's Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of National Defense
Russia's adoption of rolling daytime follow-on strikes and faster drone variants marginally improves its exercised coercive power over Ukraine without requiring major new territorial gains.
Operation Epic Fury has exposed a critical structural fault in NATO's integrated air defence architecture: simultaneous high-intensity consumption in two theaters — against Iran in the Middle East and Russia in Eastern Europe — has exhausted interceptor stocks faster than Western industrial capacity can replenish them.
The Freedom in the World 2026 report marks a qualitative shift in the assessment of global democratic decline: authoritarian cooperation is now institutionalized, not episodic, while the US — historically the anchor of democratic order — is actively contracting its role.