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Are you aware how well relying on alliances went for Poland during WW II?
Also, have you seen how Germany is spending its 100 billion?
And why you call Russia "vaguely threatening force"? Ongoing invasion is far from vague. And far from being definite victory, Ukraine can still collapse.
It seems a real risk for me. In fact my reaction to full scale invasion on 24th February was to start drafting emigration plans as I was worried that Russian army will not stop on Poland-Ukraine border. Fortunately war went in unexpected way.
What if there would war between Poland and Russia?
yep
And Trump actually had a point about other NATO countries not pulling their weight.
Makes need for updating https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_armed_conflicts_involving_Poland_against_Russia less likely.
Intervening in Estonia in case Russia gets uppity and still does not get that they are not entitled to empire in Central/Eastern Europe?
Protect against whatever is happening in 15 years? How many people predicted in 2007 that in 15 years we will have full scale war in Europe, with 100 000+ dead and numbers increasing? With Russia losing 1500 tanks? And getting distinction of being the first nuclear power having its strategic bomber base in own territory being hit by missiles (that their own former empire produced...)? Getting its flagship sunk?
And with Ukraine adding own losses, with just independently confirmed losses being large enough to equip all land armies of Western Europe and have leftovers?
On political side: who in 2007 would predict that Poland will give Ukraine 230+ tanks because they are being invaded by Russia?
How many predicted that Russian leadership will believe own propaganda and it will run WW II parody combined with Gulf War parody at cost of billions, 100 000+ dead people, massive human misery and other costs?
This war reminded that having an actual army is really useful also in XXI century, also for European countries.
Not entirely sure what will be happening and 2037 but at this point I am not willing to base defence on "war is not going to happen because we are in Europe and NATO". NATO has some chance to be de facto not existing in 2037.
Well, if Polish army would not manage to use THAT to expand/modernize then it would demonstrate absurd incompetence cough German procurement cough.
Note also that photographing yourself with pile of tanks will work nicely in upcoming elections. Especially given that weakest area of opposition was its handling of Russia-related international relations, also proposed handling of Belarusian border crisis.
So focusing topic on "we are importing bajillion tanks" is done in part (probably quite small one) to look well during upcoming elections.
So maybe scale is overly large, maybe opportunity costs is high but I do not think it is so clear case of waste/bad decision.
The only thing that can protect Poland from Russia is nuclear weapons. If Poland is worried about having to fight Russia alone (in some nightmare scenario where NATO has disintegrated), they need nuclear weapons. Nothing else could save them. Now you might say that Poland can't get nuclear weapons because the US will throw a tantrum about it, that's the whole non-proliferation scam that they've been spruking for the last 70 years... But that's rather tangential to the massive conventional buildup.
Yes, if you don't have nuclear weapons!
If the Russians attack Estonia in the normal scenario (an extremely big if), where NATO is behind them, then Russia loses the conventional war and starts a nuclear war. Even if they go for the fait accompli of just storming in quickly (which they clearly aren't too good at), you can't just attack countries in major alliances and not expect retribution. That defeats the whole point. The US would counterattack, they have tripwire forces in the region.
In the nightmare scenario where NATO is gone and it's every state for themselves, the Poles get turned into a Russian satellite regardless of what conventional forces they have. What good are tanks if the enemy can raze your cities in minutes? I suppose they could try using conventional forces for a stalling action and desperately nuclearizing... but that's precisely the most dangerous position to be in if you face a nuclear power. That's when it's most logical to use nuclear weapons to quickly finish the war and pre-empt any nuclear counterattack.
Certainly!
As Ukraine is proving right now - having decent conventional army is also useful. USSR lost in Afghanistan, Russia lost the First Chechen War, USA lost multiple wars against enemies without nuclear weapons.
Second is not guaranteed and escalates it into global conflict.
There is also intermediate position with Poland in situation where Ukraine is right now.
If Ukraine had nuclear weapons, they wouldn't need a decent conventional army, nor would they be fighting. Nuclear weapons are better for all defensive scenarios. Ukraine is proving that having a decent conventional army gets you five/six-figure casualties, economic devastation, power shortages and much of your country fleeing overseas. Nukes give you much better security.
but harder to obtain
Not for all. You will not use nukes over minor incursion.
I am not claiming that having decent conventional army is preferable to having nukes.
As we started from Poland: I am pretty sure that what was done to obtain this weapons would be glaringly insufficient to obtain nukes and enough ICBM/submarines/silos to act as counter to Russian invasion.
And conventional army would still be needed anyway.
You don't need 1000 tanks to defend against minor incursions, only full-scale wars and nobody launches 'minor incursions' against nuclear powers - if they do they are quickly squelched by both sides
Nukes are not hard to obtain for technically advanced countries like Poland
Only 100-200 warheads are needed, an arsenal on the scale of Britain and France. Even ICBMs are unnecessary since Poland is close to Russia. They only need mobile launchers, which is somewhat complicated.
Supposedly the Poles plan to field 300,000 troops, an increase on their current 150,000. That's a lot of troops.
Either I am deeply underestimating capacity of my country and its government or overestimate difficulty of getting nukes or overestimate how strongly other would react or you do the opposite.
But this claims seems laughable, even planned civilian nuclear power plant will be basically entirely imported tech. And importing nuke design would be quite hard to do.
This is untrue, Falklands for start. Situation in Israel and 9/11 may also count.
Also, India-China and India-Pakistan.
And probably many other cases, that is only what I remembered right now.
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