NATO’s New Center of Gravity

Poland just leapfrogged France to become NATO’s third-largest military. With a steel gaze focused on Russia, Poland is now devoting 4 percent of GDP to defense, is equipping its military with M1A2 tanks and F-35A fighter-bombers and is making room for permanent U.S. and NATO units all across its territory. Like West Germany during Cold War I, Poland has become NATO’s center of gravity in the early chapters of Cold War II.

In the Crosshairs
Before getting deeper into what Poland is contributing to the common defense, we need to emphasize that Warsaw is reacting to the aggressive and outright warlike actions of its ancient nemesis to the east. After a brief respite in the 1990s, Russia has reverted to its old ways and threatened Poland’s security, territory, people and interests throughout this century.

In 2008, for example, Russian troops invaded the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

In 2009, Russian forces practiced an amphibious invasion of Poland, complete with mock nuclear strikes against Polish territory.

Russia has violated the CFE Treaty (which limited the number of tanks and other conventional forces deployed in Europe) and the INF Treaty (which swept intermediate-range missiles from Central Europe). These treaties served as pillars for post-Cold War security—especially for Poland and its immediate neighbors.

In 2014, Russia invaded and seized Crimea, part of the former Soviet republic of Ukraine. After Russian strongman Vladimir Putin gobbled up Crimea, he growled that Poland would “know what it means to be in the crosshairs.”

Indeed, it does.
Russia has launched withering cyberattacks against the former Soviet republic of Estonia; carried out a violent coup attempt in Montenegro; weaponized migrant flows through the former Soviet republic of Belarus and into Poland; deployed agents to carry out arson and other sabotage operations across NATO’s footprint, including in Poland; based hypersonic missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave bordering Poland; mushroomed its military budget; increased its troop strength; and moved nuclear weapons into Belarus, Poland’s next-door neighbor.

For more than a decade, Putin and his puppet state in Belarus have launched “snap” military exercises along and near Poland’s borders. These are highly threatening and destabilizing. Recall that a Russian exercise in Belarus in early February 2022 served as the springboard for Putin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In the course of Putin’s assault on Ukraine, Russian missiles have veered into Polish airspace.

Russia will “push back the borders that threaten our country…even if these are the borders of Poland,” warns Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council and former president of Russia.

Unheeded Warnings
Add it all up, and it is understandable why Poland sees itself as Putin’s next target. Yet none of this is unexpected or surprising to Poland.

In the early 1990s, long before Putin was in power, Polish leaders raised concerns about the emergence of a neo-imperialist Russia. And long before Putin’s lunge at Crimea and Kyiv, Polish leaders warned that he would try to reconstitute the Russian Empire.

In 1993, for example, Lech Walesa, whose heroic battle against communism carried him to the presidency of post-Soviet Poland, warned, “If Russia again adopts an aggressive foreign policy, that aggression will be directed toward Ukraine and Poland.”

“Today Georgia, tomorrow Ukraine, the day after tomorrow the Baltic states, and later, perhaps, time will come for my country,” Lech Kaczyński, then-president of Poland, said in 2008, as Russia invaded Georgia.

After Putin’s first invasion of Ukraine—the 2014 attack that ended with Moscow’s illegal annexation of Crimea—then-President Bronislaw Komorowski warned that Putin was trying to “rebuild the empire” and urged the rest of NATO not to repeat “the appeasement policy of yielding to Hitler.”

But instead of heeding Warsaw’s warnings, the rest of NATO—including the United States—downgraded defense spending and shelved deterrent assets. That all changed in February of 2022 when NATO finally understood and accepted Poland’s words of warning.

Building Up
“We need to prepare our forces for full-scale conflict,” General Wieslaw Kukula, chief of staff of the Polish army, tersely explains.

Poland’s military and people are doing exactly that.

“Poland is the only country in the world that shares common borders with Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus. To keep the borders unchanged, we need the best equipment, the best capability and the best friends,” argues Deputy Minister of Defense Cezary Tomczyk.

Poland is acquiring the best equipment and best capabilities by investing more than 4 percent of GDP into defense this year—double what the NATO alliance expects its members to invest in defense. (We will talk more about Poland’s friends in the next issue).

On the strength of its deep military investments, which will jump to 5 percent of GDP next year, Poland is fielding a powerful deterrent force: 32 F-35A stealth fighter-bombers from the U.S.; 980 K2 main battle tanks from South Korea; 250 M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks from the U.S.; 128 Leopard 2A4 tanks and 119 A4 and A5 tanks from Germany; 648 self-propelled howitzers from South Korea; 486 HIMARS rocket artillery launchers from the U.S.; 48 Patriot air-defense systems from the U.S.; 288 multiple-rocket missile systems from South Korea; and hundreds of
anti-tank systems from Israel and Sweden.(On a related note, South Korea has agreed to allow Polish industry to coproduce tanks at factories inside Poland. Likewise, Israel is allowing Poland to produce its Spike antitank systems in Poland).

These weapons systems are controlled, steered, maintained and piloted by 216,000 well-trained
combat troops. Warsaw plans to increase its military end strength to 300,000 troops.

In short, Poland is deadly serious about defending the frontlines of the Free World and deterring
a revisionist Russia.

“We are perceived as those who guarantee security on NATO’s eastern flank,” Poland’s Prime
Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recently said. “Our efforts to strengthen the army through arms
purchases go hand-in-hand with strengthening NATO’s presence on the eastern flank.”

Next month’s issue will explore how Poland is helping its NATO allies cope with the return of the
bad old days of Russian aggression.