>Poland, like all Eastern states, is desperate for US military assistance to stay around to deal with Russia, so they will just reply "how high?" when asked to jump by any American administration. This is particularly true now that their executive carries a certain disdain for the legislative branch and the rule of law.

You are wrong on both points. Poland cooperated fully with EU's investigation of so called black sites (CIA "facilities") and the only thing that saved the people that used to rule Poland when those black sites were operational was lack of evidence of torture. How's that unconditional love for the American administration look in light of that? It is true that Poles want to have US troops on its territory(regardless of who currently rules the country), but let's not kid ourselves that US would "deal with Russia". All Us troops that ever were permanently stationed in Poland were always in the Western part. If Russia wanted to fuck with Poland they would sent their little green men into the North-East. Also it is common knowledge other NATO countries (perhaps including US) wouldn't respond to a Russian attack sooner than in 2 weeks so if Russia attacked Baltic countries Poland would have to respond on its own for first 2 weeks.

>This is particularly true now that their executive carries a certain disdain for the legislative branch and the rule of law.

The executive doesn't carry any disdain for the legislative branch. The main political party has absolute majority in the legislature, they have a president from same party and the government. Why would a government have any disdain for the legislative branch that is from the same party? You must be thinking about UK not Poland.

There is however pretty sizable disdain for the judiciary.This is not only on part of the ruling party, but also a huge majority of people. The rule of law in Poland is seen as being for everyone, but corrupt judges. There many examples of judges of all levels including high court judges committing crimes (from petty theft caught on CCTV, killing a pedestrian while drunk driving, being recorded on the phone while openly discussing bribes) and nothing happens to them. Their colleagues always rule in their favor.

At the same time there are situations like this where there was a huge property extortion scandal in Warsaw that had some of the city's government involved, politicians and corrupt judges which accepted faked power of attorney documents etc. In process of this thousands of people were evicted illegally. There was a parliament special commission established with members of all political parties that over years found evidence of those crimes. All members of that commission agreed regarding its findings of crimes despite their political differences. As part of their proceedings they ruled certain properties should be returned. One of the people affected was a daughter of a woman who was killed(burned alive) by members of the criminal organisation because she started to make information about their crimes public. The property she was living in was supposed to be returned to the city's ownership, but the city still governed by the same party that participated in the original criminality appealed. Then the case got to a judge whose dad was a known communist secret police member. The judge found some technicality based on which he could deny the property retrieval and when asked why he is committing such injustice he actually laughed in the face of the woman that is the daughter of the victim I mentioned before.

The biggest problem with judiciary in Poland is that, after communism ended no one kicked out judges that were corrupt. Germany had its Nuremburg after Hitler lost - this cleansed it somewhat. Polish judiciary is a direct descendant of communist apparatchiks. Even though many people involved are younger and perhaps their intentions weer good when they were joining, they developed in the organisation that didn't change one bit since communist times.

Until this is resolved there will be no true rule of law in Poland.