Anne Applebaum

They have a similar view of the world and they work together in new ways.

And you're seeing that emerging.

I mean, there's also a Polish-German relationship that's really important.

Actually, the Polish government, I'm not sure they're still there today, but as we're speaking, they were there yesterday.

Several senior Polish ministers, including the prime minister, were all in Germany.

You know, there was a kind of big...

you know, multi-leveled, multi-layered conference was held in which they, you know, there's still endless historical issues to work out, but in which they're looking at ways of working together economically and in security.

I mean, you can see those kinds of links developing and becoming more important.

You know, it's almost as if in the past, a lot of stuff went kind of through NATO, like through America, right?

You know, there was a Polish-America-German link, and now everybody's looking around and saying, wait, you know, is going through America or through NATO, is that safe?

You know, we need to have much stronger country-to-country links that don't depend on, you know, some assumption of permanent American presence in Europe.

So, yeah, I think Poland is also a country that is doing well economically.

And it looked at over the span of 30 years, has been doing well the whole time.

I mean, it's caught up to Western Europe.

It's still not as rich as Germany.

But if I recall this, you'd have to...

I'd have to check.

I think it's richer than Greece per capita, and I think it's richer than Portugal per capita.

And so if you're looking at Western European countries, so it's caught up to Western Europe faster than it has ever before at any time in history and continues to develop and grow in a way that…

You would not have guessed or imagined a couple of decades ago.