"Peace through strength"

Poland’s army is arming itself to become the most powerful in Europe

Polish soldiers at a parade in Warsaw

(Bild: APA/AFP/Wojtek RADWANSKI)

Poland is massively arming itself. The NATO country wants to deter its neighbor Russia - and could become the patron of European security.

Fighter jets, helicopters, cruise missiles: Poland is filling its arsenal. This year, the country will spend more money than the USA on armaments, measured as a proportion of gross domestic product. At four percent of GDP, the country will receive the largest defense budget of all North Atlantic Treaty Organization member states this year. Poland wants to be a role model: In mid-March, Polish President Andrzej Duda called on NATO allies to invest three percent of their GDP in defense. Duda called for a "clear and bold" response to Russian aggression against Ukraine.

Poland wants to put itself in a strategic position as Europe's future security guarantor. They are not interested in purchasing armaments from the EU, but are instead aligning themselves with the US military-industrial complex.

Jeffrey Fischer, Oberst der US-Luftwaffe

Strong alignment with NATO partner USA
"Poland wants to put itself in a strategic position as Europe's future security guarantor," Jeffrey Fischer, a retired US Air Force colonel, told krone.at. "They are not interested in buying armaments from the EU, but are aligning themselves with the US military-industrial complex."

Polish soldiers at a parade in Warsaw

(Bild: APA/AFP/Wojtek RADWANSKI)

Fischer refers to the massive quantities of weapons that Poland buys from the United States as part of the US Foreign Military Sales (FMS) program. At the end of March, the US Congress approved the sale of 821 new JASSM cruise missiles with a range of 900 kilometers to Poland. The country will thus have more than 1,000 missiles in its arsenal - more than any other European country. Poland has already received F-16 and F-35 fighter jets and 96 Apache combat helicopters in their most modern version.

The Polish armed forces are getting a lot of new weapons.

(Bild: Krone KREATIV, Hyundai, Reuters, AP)

"Peace through strength"
"However, the armament is not about Polish ambitions," emphasizes Marcin Terlikowski, security expert at the Polish Institute of International Relations (PISM), "but about responding to the Russian threat. The aim is to show Russia that it should not even think about starting a war". A Russian attack on a NATO country in Eastern Europe is a very unlikely future scenario, and the Polish contribution to NATO's deterrence policy is intended to ensure that this remains the case. "According to the motto: peace through strength," explains Terlikowski.

However, the rearmament is not about Polish ambitions, but about responding to the Russian threat.

Marcin Terlikowski, Sicherheitsexperte am polnischen Institut für Internationale Beziehungen

However, an effective NATO in Europe can only exist together with the United States: Not only is the US supplying weapons to the Central European country, it is also strengthening its military presence on NATO's eastern flank: a US army headquarters is being established in Poland, together with a heavy armored combat brigade - up to 6,000 men. There are already 11,000 US soldiers stationed in Poland.

Is Poland taking on the role of Germany?
Poland's strengthened role recently became clear at the so-called Weimar Triangle, where Prime Minister Tusk appeared on an equal footing with the powerful French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz. Macron also recently demonstrated his strength with his statements on the possible deployment of NATO soldiers in Ukraine. Germany, on the other hand, which is not budging in the Taurus debate, looks like a "ship without a rudder" to military expert Fischer.

Poland could fill some of the gaps left by Germany in military terms, "but in political terms, Germany must maintain its tough stance towards Russia and must not undermine the promise of a 'turning point' with contradictory signals from the Chancellery in Berlin," said PSIM expert Terlikowski, alluding to the Taurus debate among our neighbors.

It remains to be seen whether the Polish army will be able to wage war with all the new high-tech weapons it is acquiring. One expert told The Crown: "They are like squires who are knighted out of necessity before the battle."