Bydgoszcz , Poland ( CNN ) -- I first visited Poland in 1990 , just after the end of communist rule . Back then , the United States meant everything to people here : freedom , protection , opportunity , hope . I worked for The Wall Street Journal at the time . That business card resonating with capitalism opened every door . It even persuaded a border official not to pass my camera through a Soviet-era X-ray machine . Twenty years later , Poland has become a stable democracy . It has joined NATO and the European Union . True , wages remain low by Western standards . And to the eye , Poland still shows the scars of its communist past : Half the population still lives in communist-era high-rise slabs . But things get better every year , visibly better even than during my last visit two years ago : new homes , new stores , improved roads , new stations opened on the Warsaw subway . Poland scored the highest growth in the whole European Union in 2009 , suffering not a single quarter of negative growth during the global recession . So that 's all good news for the Poles . Now the thought-provoking news for Americans : America 's place on the Polish mental map seems to shrink every year . When Poles dream of leaving the country , they think not of Chicago but of London . A Pole can work legally in any large EU country , and an estimated 1 million do , sending home more money than Poland earns from all its U.S. trade . Meanwhile , Poles need a visa even to visit the United States . Polish business is oriented toward Germany , by far the country 's largest trading partner and investor . Poland buys and sells less with the United States than it does with the Czech Republic . Theoretically , the United States remains very important to Poland 's security . Through NATO , the U.S. has guaranteed defending Poland against Russia , with nuclear weapons if necessary . But Russia is behaving itself well toward Poland these days . When Russia did behave badly -- for example , embargoing Polish meat exports in 2005 -- it was the threat of European economic retaliation that changed Russian minds . The U.S. has opened new military bases in southeastern Europe -- in Bulgaria and Romania , but none in Poland . There are practically no U.S. soldiers stationed here . If anything , Poles might feel that they are doing much more for the United States than the United States does for Poland . Polish troops fought in Iraq , and fight now in Afghanistan . Polish support for U.S. geopolicy has twice ended in humiliation for Polish governments . In 2005 , sources inside the U.S. government leaked the news that Poland was permitting the CIA to detain captured al Qaeda terrorists in secret in Polish prisons . Poland was threatened with the loss of its EU voting rights and subjected to an EU investigation . Then in 2009 , the new Obama administration abruptly canceled a proposed U.S. missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic . These experiences would cause any future Polish governments to worry that cooperation with the U.S. will horribly backfire on them . Some waning of U.S. prestige in Poland was inevitable . With the end of the Cold War , Poles naturally worry more about earning a living than protecting their security . And of course , next-door Germany offers more economic benefits than faraway America . Of course , too , the U.S. has banked a huge store of goodwill in Poland that will take years to deplete . It was the U.S. that championed Poland 's independence from Moscow while anxious Germans urged that the U.S. stop annoying the Soviet Union with talk of freedom . But although inevitable and gradual , the dwindling of American importance , not only in Poland but in other liberated countries in central Europe as well , is a real and large fact of life . That fact might matter less if there were other regions of the world where America 's clout was increasing . But where ? The opinion expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum .
David Frum visited post-communist Poland in 1990 ; nation was eager to connect with U.S. Now , 20 years later , democratic Poland part of EU , NATO ; U.S. seems less central in importance . Poland has closer connections in EU , he says , have had awkward political moments with U.S. Frum : U.S. still key to security , has goodwill history with Poland , but its importance dwindling .