{"id":11703,"date":"2022-12-18T00:12:40","date_gmt":"2022-12-17T22:12:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=11703"},"modified":"2022-12-18T00:12:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-17T22:12:41","slug":"poland-tends-to-become-the-new-great-power-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/?p=11703","title":{"rendered":"Poland tends to become the new Great Power in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Europe, a new military superpower appears to be emerging. At least, as far as ground conventional forces are concerned. And this is none other than Poland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Polish government has decided to raise the percentage of GDP that goes to defense spending to 3%, well above the 2% that the US has set as a condition for NATO member states and which few relevant states have achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has embarked on a colossal arms program, buying mainly from the US and South Korea. In August he signed a 4.9 billion deal to buy 250 armored Abrams from the US to replace the Soviet tanks it sent to Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has signed a $4.6 billion deal to supply 32 F-35s and has ordered $10-12 billion worth of weapons systems from South Korea, which make up the first package, with the main armament program being 1,000 Korean armored K2s and 600 K9 guns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The goal of the Polish government is for its armed forces to reach 300,000 by 2030, thus having a much larger armed force than Germany which currently has around 170,000. Among other things, it has also invested in the formation of national guard forces, which are not professional soldiers but after a short training serve if called. These “weekend soldiers” were initially treated with great caution, but after the example of how Ukraine uses such units the opinion is now different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poland currently has the largest army in the European Union and one of the largest in NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poland wants a large army, while Germany seems indecisive<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The prospect of Poland having the largest NATO army in Europe arises in large part because this is a responsibility that Germany does not want to assume, even now that there has supposedly been a major shift in its defense doctrine and a shift back to large equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that’s because it currently only spends around 1.5% of GDP annually on defense spending. There is of course the decision on the \u20ac100 billion defense investment fund, but the debate is still ongoing as to whether after this defense spending package it should continue to maintain its share.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The insistence on the hard offensive line against Russia<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it is not only the Polish government’s decision to invest in the armed forces that reflects this determination to claim a more elevated role in European affairs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is also that the country feels justified in the offensive line against Russia. Like the other “enlargement countries” with a socialist past, Poland has traditionally had a particularly negative attitude towards Russia, after all there is also the whole past concerning Tsarist Russia and the attitude of the USSR.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is simply now trying to shape a scheme where its own aggressive stance has been far more justified than the “appeasement” line chosen by countries like Germany and France, which failed to prevent Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is no coincidence that Poland claims a leading role among the countries that are currently pushing for even greater Western support for the Ukrainian war effort, essentially for greater Western military involvement with the prospect of Russia’s defeat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This position was also seen in the confrontation he had about the Patriot missiles with Germany. We recall that when Germany offered Patriot anti-ballistic missile arrays to bolster Poland’s air defenses, Poland initially rejected the proposal, arguing that it would be preferable to send the arrays to Ukraine, which of course Berlin did not want, as it would violate essentially the “red line” of NATO which is to avoid more direct involvement in military operations. In the end, Poland seems to accept the German offer, but the confrontation was quite indicative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problems in Poland’s relations with the EU<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, it is not so easy for Poland to claim a more upgraded overall role in Europe. In other words, the feeling of “historical justification” regarding the need for an anti-Russian stance is not enough, nor is the creation of a large and powerful army. It also requires the ability to assume a leading political role within Europe. And in this regard things are much more difficult.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Poland is still in conflict with European institutions over the issues of the rule of law and its violations by the right-wing nationalist government of the Law and Justice party, which have not yet been resolved. It should be noted here that the problems in matters of the rule of law have also made the Biden administration somewhat wary of the Polish government, which, after all, had shown its preference for Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then there is the problem of how the ruling party and especially its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski have invested heavily in harsh anti-German rhetoric. A highlight is how the Polish government officially claims $1.3 trillion in war reparations from Germany for the devastation the country suffered during the Nazi occupation.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The new divisions<\/strong> and the Polish’s ambition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Poland’s rise to prominence shows how the EU landscape is changing and new divisions are forming. One of them is the division between countries that prefer peace over war and those, like Poland, that prefer “justice” i.e. punishing Russia and vindicating Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, it also reflects the embarrassment of the countries that led the EU in a previous phase to have a strategy for the new landscape, an element that is particularly evident in the German case.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, when the war in Ukraine ends, more correctly when it goes into a “frozen” conflict phase, then the real limits of a country like Poland that has a serious inflation problem and is still dependent on European subsidies will be seen. There is no doubt that Poland is trying to represent a trend that is developing in European countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, the way in which an upgraded position in the EU can be envisioned has to do with the very way in which Polish nationalism has historically been shaped, in a country which, in the form of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, was indeed one of the largest European powers until the 18th century, before finally finding itself between Prussia and Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But all this is not always the best starting point for claiming a leadership role in Europe. This, after all, has to do with the economy and institutions and not only with defense. And there things are much more complex and difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Europe, a new military superpower appears to be emerging. At least, as far as ground conventional forces are concerned. And this is none…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11704,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[825,3],"tags":[25,470,489,1190,215,70],"class_list":["post-11703","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-geopolitical","category-geopolitical","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-germany","tag-poland","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11703","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11703"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11703\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11711,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11703\/revisions\/11711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11704"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11703"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11703"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.liberalglobe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11703"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}