While the German army has been reduced to training with broomsticks, the Polish Armed Forces have emerged as the region’s best and most impressively equipped militaries. This is complements of the Poles themselves with a little help by the United States of America.
For Warsaw, Washington is the most important strategic partner; therefore, despite other options, the Poles invariably prefer to buy American.
Snubbing the EU, Poland almost invariably sticks with America. For example, in 2020, the Polish chose American F-35s instead of Swedish or French fighter planes. The price tag was cool $4.6 billion.
The tradition continues. Warsaw followed that up with an order for 116 M1A1 Abrams tanks, in addition to 250 M1A2 Abrams tanks which had been secured earlier. The Biden administration finally has signed off on the latter deal and the awesome war machines are on their way to Poland, to Moscow’s great chagrin.
This is happening not a moment too soon. The Poles have given away to the Ukrainians a substantial chunk of their armored forces, about 250 Soviet-era modernized tanks and some 100 personnel carriers.
In addition, they handed over several batches of cutting-edge brand new equipment, including Polish PT-91 Twardy/Hard MBTs and most of their self propelled Krab cannon-howitzers.
Simultaneously, Poland continues its weapons shopping spree. Most notably, since the American offerings have grown slim, the Poles turned to our ally South Korea.
The advantage is not only that the South Koreans, denizens of a frontline state, boast of an impressively advanced arsenal, but also that their weapons have been tested in numerous exercises with the Americans. Thus, South Korean equipment is compatible with U.S. arms and South Korean personnel eminently qualified to train others how to maintain such compatibility and interoperability.
The Polish acquisition is impressive by any measure: almost 50 FA-50 light combat aircraft, nearly 700 K9A1 self-propelled howitzers, and, perhaps most importantly, 1,000 K2 tanks. The deal further includes a number of K239 Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers as well as customary logistical and other elements.
The first shipment consisting of 24 Thunder K9 howitzers and 10 Black Panther K2 tanks has just been offloaded in the Polish harbor of Gdynia. The rest of the inventory is scheduled to be delivered in installments by 2026.
The price tag altogether stands at $5.8 billion. South Korea gets the bulk but some money will fall into American pockets as well because FA-50 is a joint venture with U.S. Lockheed. Further, whereas the Thunders run on Korean engines, their gears are made in the USA.
As a side note, in the summer of this year China attempted to thwart the Poland-Korea deal by refusing to allow a Polish negotiating team to fly through its air space. The team returned home. Unfazed, Warsaw delegated its diplomats to ink the arms deal in Seoul.
The Poles plan to apply for a license to produce the Korean weapon systems at home. They earmarked a plant in Poznań to make the Black Panther and a factory in Łabędy to assemble the Thunders.
The Polish weapons shopping spree is not a fluke triggered by the Russian invasion of Ukraine of February 2022. Rather, this has been a consistent feature of Poland since the ascendancy to power of the populist-nationalist-etatist Law and Justice (PiS) government in 2015.
Polish government has increased defense expenditures significantly, in contrast to its liberal predecessor. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Polish parliament simply upped the ante.
But even before, unlike like some other European countries, Germany in particular, Poland, exceptionally (like Estonia), has always been paying the required 2% (and more) of its gross domestic product for defense as stipulated by the NATO charter.
The Poles have also asked to be a part of a nuclear sharing program. The U.S. will move some of its nukes to Polish soil and retain control over the launching system, while Poland will be host.
Counting on one’s American ally is great; but the Americans have had enough wars where they did most of the heavy lifting and bloodshedding. That is not the case in Poland. The Poles know that freedom ain’t free.
All in all, the Poles have been arming themselves to the teeth. As liberal Politico newshub commented: “Meet Europe’s coming military superpower: Poland.” And that’s a good thing, too.
The stronger the Poles are in Europe, the more the U.S. can focus on China.
Marek Jan Chodakiewicz is Professor of History at the Institute of World Politics, a graduate school of statecraft in Washington D.C.; expert on East-Central Europe's Three Seas region; author, among others, of "Intermarium: The Land Between The Baltic and Black Seas." Read Marek Jan Chodakiewicz's Reports — More Here.
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