While President Trump continues to tout his supreme international peacemaking abilities, Europe prepares for all-out war.
The Wall Street Journal has reported that Poland has increased its military spending to the point that it is 4.7 percent of its entire GDP. For reference, military spending is around 3 percent of the U.S. GDP.
This comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin ratchets up aggression against Poland and its neighbors to the west. Just last month, Russian drones were seen in Polish airspace, forcing the NATO ally to shut down four of its airports as it scrambled to ready its defense systems against the incursion. Poland’s leadership invoked Article Four of the NATO Treaty the next day, calling the situation the “closest” that Poland had come to armed conflict “since the Second World War.” Three Russian fighter jets entered Estonian airspace just days after in yet another significant display of aggression meant to test NATO’s cohesiveness.
Now Poland is prepared to stop its former invader’s current one.
“This is our war,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the Warsaw Security Forum in September. “We decided to arm Poland and modernize the Polish army on a massive scale.”
Poland’s increased military spending has produced Poland now has more than 210,000 military personnel (trailing only the U.S. and Turkey in NATO), a large territorial defense force, and $50 billion of U.S. made weaponry, including Abrams tanks, and a Polish version of the U.S. High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars. They are also armed with multiple South Korean rocket launchers, and had their soldiers participate in monthslong wargames to test out the new equipment.
“In the case of war, Poland will be a very busy country because the military will mobilize, the economy will mobilize, but we would also have to prepare for NATO coming to—and through—Poland,” Armed Forces Operational Commander Lt Gen. Maciej Klisz told the Journal.
These developments paint a stark contrast to President Trump’s endless rhetoric in which he presents himself as the “President of Peace,” claiming to have ended six, seven, and sometimes even ten wars. While that is obviously a severe exaggeration, the war preparations in Poland and the greater European NATO region only further weaken that tenuous claim.
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