By Thomas Grove and Karolina Jeznach

WARSAW -- A row broke out between the U.S. and one of its most important NATO partners this week after it emerged that a leading Polish official refused to sign up to a lobbying effort to get President Trump awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

The speaker of Poland's lower house, Wlodzimierz Czarzasty, had fobbed off a joint U.S. and Israeli initiative to secure a wave of nominations from around the world for Trump to be awarded the 2026 prize later this year, calling the American leader a destabilizing force in international politics.

The U.S. ambassador to Poland, Thomas Rose, hit back on X, writing that the embassy would cut ties with Czarzasty, accusing him of firing "outrageous and unprovoked insults" against Trump, and provoking a vociferous backlash in Poland. Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who presides over a center-left coalition government, responded to the post on X, saying: "Mr. Ambassador Rose, allies should respect, not lecture, each other. At least this is how we, here in Poland, understand partnership."

Poland has long counted itself one of the U.S.'s staunchest allies since the end of the Cold War. In recent years, Warsaw has raised military spending in line with Trump's vision of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and become one of the world's biggest buyers of U.S. arms. A statue of Ronald Reagan today stands opposite the U.S. Embassy. Poland also has one the bloc's largest armies.

This week's dispute, though, puts Poland on a growing list of countries to attract the ire of the U.S. administration as Trump publicly strives for the award.

Trump blamed Norway earlier this year after the Nobel Committee, based in Norway, gave the peace prize to a Venezuelan political activist. He then linked his attempts to gain the semiautonomous Danish territory of Greenland to his failure to clinch the prize, telling the Norwegian prime minister that he no longer needed to think "purely of peace."

The ambassador's words are also adding to growing anger in Poland over Trump's contention that the U.S. didn't need NATO and that its allies didn't participate on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq. More than 70 Poles died serving in those conflicts, and hundreds were injured.

The row isn't likely to lead to rupture in relations. But it does demonstrate how Trump's personal involvement in U.S. foreign policy, coupled with his growing antagonism to other NATO countries, has affected Washington's relations with some of its closest allies in Europe.

"We were dominated by the U.S.S.R., that's why we fled to the West and want to be part of that value system. One might be concerned that something similar [to Soviet domination] is taking place within Trump's administration," said Poland's former special forces commander, Gen. Roman Polko, who served in Afghanistan.

Opinion polls indicate that around a third of Poles currently approve of Trump's presidency, stirring concern about the U.S.'s future security commitment to Poland. That commitment is seen by many in Warsaw as the backbone of the U.S.-Polish relationship. Approval of the U.S. has likewise dropped from its traditionally first-place spot with 70%-80% approval to current levels around 49%.

Following his original comments, Rose asked, in a post now deleted, if the U.S. should take its soldiers and equipment out of the country, after a Polish law student criticized the ambassador, said Poland respects its sovereignty and told him to "go home."

A U.S. Republican lawmaker, Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, wrote on X that it was "Time for a new Ambassador."

Some Polish right-wing politicians took advantage of the feud between Rose and Tusk, accusing the prime minister of endangering relations with Poland's biggest trans-Atlantic partner, but anger over the state of relations has spread across both sides of the political spectrum.

Right-wing parliamentarian Roman Giertych said he wasn't aligned with Czarzasty politically, but said he would stand by him.

"The times when ambassadors dictated to Poles who should hold what office in Poland are over and will never return," he wrote on X. "We want good relations with the United States, but your representatives will not choose the authorities of the Republic of Poland for us."

The risk now is that more Poles will question the U.S.'s role as the senior partner in the relationship between the two countries -- something that had largely been unquestioned as long as American security guarantees were in place, particularly with regard to Poland's centuries-old rival, Russia, said Marcin Duma, founder of Warsaw-based pollster IBRiS.

"If you're questioning the Danish right to Greenland, if you are using a picture with Vladimir Putin as a kind of official decoration in the White House, it doesn't signal that these U.S. security guarantees are ironclad," said Duma.

Write to Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 06, 2026 14:23 ET (19:23 GMT)

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