On a sunny afternoon in mid-August, fighter jets flew across a blue sky above Warsaw and a succession of tanks wound through the Polish capital’s streets. The country’s national flag and the NATO flag flew side by side from municipal buildings across the city for Armed Forces Day, a holiday commemorating Poland’s 1920 defeat of the Red Army.
The day-long celebration was also an occasion for Poland to demonstrate – both to its fellow European Union member states and to an aggressive Russia to the east – that its military is better trained and equipped than at any other time in the country’s history.
Poland, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization since 1999, allocated four per cent of its GDP, or €31.4bn, to defence spending this year – significantly above the alliance’s long-standing two per cent target for member countries. Among the 32 NATO allies, only four – the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom and France – will spend more in absolute terms this year, though Poland’s spending relative to its economic output far outpaces other countries.
“We are boxing [above] our weight,” says Tomasz Smura, a resident senior fellow at the Warsaw-based think tank Casimir Pulaski Foundation.
The transatlantic alliance, which marked its 75th anniversary in July, has seen a major boost in defence spending by members in 2024. A record 23 countries are on track to meet the benchmark that requires NATO countries to spend at least two per cent of their gross domestic product on defence capabilities annually. Germany, NATO’s second-biggest economy after the US, is among the countries that will hit the spending target for the first time.
“It’s definitely good news. Seventy-five years just happens to be the right moment for this,” says Michal Baranowski, a Warsaw-based defence and NATO expert at the German Marshall Fund, a non-partisan public policy think tank. According to Baranowski, NATO allies understand the security environment in and around Europe has changed. “It’s good that the 23 [countries] are stepping up,” he says. “We are waiting for the rest.”
The driver behind Poland’s increased defence spending is clear: Russia’s unprovoked invasion of neighbouring Ukraine in February 2022. A month after Russia launched its full-scale war, the Polish government adopted the Homeland Defence Act, requiring the country to spend at least three per cent of GDP on defence. Poland shares a border with both Kremlin ally Belarus and the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad in the northeast.
“We are fully aware that Russia is quite unpredictable,” Jerzy Aleksandrowicz, a research fellow at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation, tells The Parliament. He says that Russia may decide to invade the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia next. “Knowing that, we would like to be able to send them support and to allow other countries to send us support,” he adds.
Despite NATO’s core principle that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all members, Poland’s government is wary of relying too heavily on other allied powers, says Melania Parzonka, a Russia-Eurasia programme co-ordinator at the London-based think tank Chatham House. “There’s that sense of – we cannot be overly trusting,” she tells The Parliament. More specifically, Warsaw does not want to “overly rely on US support,” despite the two countries’ strong bilateral military co-operation, she adds.
The guideline for allies to allocate at least two per cent of their GDP to defence spending goes back to a 2014 pledge agreed in response to Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, and the simultaneous outbreak of several conflicts in the Middle East. Allies currently spending less than two per cent of their GDP on defence are expected to meet the requirement within a decade.
The defence spending target was a diplomatic consensus, Smura says, adding that setting aside two per cent of their GDP should enable allies to modernise and train their armed forces.
A Polish response
Under Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, the country has pushed ahead with plans to expand its military. Late last month, the government approved a draft budget that will see Poland allocate almost five per cent of its GDP to defence in 2025.
“That says a lot in a country that is pretty polarised,” Baranowski tells The Parliament.
In addition to a broad political consensus on the need for increased military spending, support among the population is strong. According to a study commissioned by Business Insider Polska, over 75 per cent of Poles agree that the nation needs to arm itself, regardless of the cost.
Although Estonia and Latvia already spend over three per cent on defence, Poland’s increased military spending might encourage larger EU nations to ramp up their own efforts, Baranowski believes. “Poland will hopefully be [an] inspiration for others,” he says, suggesting that Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK may follow in Poland’s footsteps.
Calls for joint European defence
The Weimar Triangle, a political alliance created in 1991 between Germany, France and Poland, offers the ideal forum to envision a bold future for Europe’s defence, Baranowski argues. But with France struggling to form a government since inconclusive July elections, and Germany’s ruling coalition deeply divided over spending, Poland’s role looks increasingly important.
“Right now, Poland is the most stable politically and determined at the same time among our European friends and players,” Baranowski says. “That gives Poland this additional reason to play an important role.”
The Polish prime minister’s return to the corridors of powers in Brussels – Tusk previously served as president of the European Council – appears to have bolstered the nation’s position at the EU level. In recent months, Tusk has called for a common European air defence system, urged the bloc to commit at least €100bn in common defence spending and pleaded for joint EU debt for military investments. Poland is also expected to nab one of the EU’s most pivotal commissioner portfolios, that of EU budget chief.
Meanwhile, Poland is set to take over the rotating European Council presidency in January 2025. Defence will likely be one of the country’s priorities during its six-month term. “We are bringing our money to the table,” Baranowski says, adding that Poland would aim to lead by example during its presidency. “This is what will be necessary also for industrial co-operation. We need to see more of that within Europe,” he says.
Europe’s fastest-growing military power
Under NATO’s 2014 investment pledge, allies are also required to devote 20 per cent of their annual defence spending to major new equipment. Poland is set to spend 51 per cent of its defence budget on equipment this year, according to NATO figures, an achievement that would make it Europe’s fastest-growing military power, Baranowski says. “Poland is going to be [a] really big kid on the military block and the key country for defence and deterrence of NATO’s eastern flank,” he says.
In August, Warsaw bought 96 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters from the US for $12bn (€13.3bn), which are meant to replace the country’s post-Soviet Mi-24 helicopters. In 2022, Poland ordered 1,000 K2 tanks from South Korean military equipment provider Hyundai Rotem.
One major reason Poland has looked for new equipment outside Europe is simple supply-and-demand dynamics, Smura explains, as Europe’s defence industry could not fulfil Poland’s orders. He adds that efforts will also have to be made to ensure military universities are capable of teaching students how to use new equipment.
Still, Poland’s unprecedented defence expenditures are also having an impact on its debt levels. In July, the Council of the European Union started proceedings against eight EU countries, including Poland, for ballooning deficits in their domestic budgets.
But Poland will not make a U-turn on its defence budget because it believes there is no alternative, Aleksandrowicz says. “We need to keep all the [spending]. We understand that we could invest this in other areas, but Russia will not stop until we have enough ammo.”
Source link : https://www.theparliamentmagazine.eu/news/article/as-nato-countries-spend-more-on-defence-poland-leads-by-example
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Publish date : 2024-09-04 07:00:00
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