One day after Polish President Karol Nawrocki held a high-profile meeting with President Donald Trump marked by pledges of U.S. military presence and U.S. fighter jets piercing the skies over Washington, D.C., the rising European nation's deputy premier and top diplomat sat down with Newsweek for an exclusive interview covering the state of U.S.-Polish ties, Russia's war in Ukraine and Europe's rearmament—in which Warsaw is playing a leading role.

Poland, once at the helm of one of the largest European powers centuries ago, has a long history of being swallowed up, occupied and partitioned by neighboring rivals. The simultaneous invasions by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union at the beginning of World War II in 1939 nearly led to the erasure of Poland, which went on to survive after

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