Russia’s rising threat faces the Polish fortress

On Sunday, a Russian drone struck a train in Ukraine close to the Polish border. This latest Russian escalation follows U.S. intelligence warnings that Moscow intended to target Polish-Ukrainian border crossings. Senior political figures including former British prime minister Boris Johnson, former CIA director David Petraeus, and the current U.K. national security advisor were on nearby trains during the attack.Here we see President Vladimir Putin’s escalating terrorist campaign against the West. As predicted, Putin’s flailing war on Ukraine has led him to shake up the deck. Unable to achieve scaled breakthroughs of Ukrainian lines, Putin is suffering growing economic difficulties and public frustration at home. He’s also lost a staggering 500,000 soldiers. This is why Russia’s military intelligence service is once again so focused on terrorizing civilian populations across Europe. If and until Putin meets physical Western resolve, he’ll keep increasing his intimidatory pressure to isolate Ukraine from its foreign supporters. Absent Western counterforce, Putin’s strategy is sadly a sound one. His problem?Not all Western powers are made equal.In pursuing his ambition to subjugate Ukraine and then eastern Europe, Poland confronts Putin with a very heavy obstruction. Indeed, Poland obstructs Putin with a fortress built on history, geography, and raw combat power.Bordering the Russian military exclave of Kaliningrad to its North, Belarus to its East, and Ukraine to its Southeast, Poland is on the frontline of NATO’s defensive flank. In the event of a future Russian invasion of Estonia (a prospect Putin openly flirts with), Poland would be instrumental in preventing Russia (and potentially also Belarus) from cutting off Poland’s 40-mile long “Suwalki Gap” border with Lithuania. Polish forces would also be crucial to surging reinforcements into the Baltic states to buy time for other NATO forces to arrive. At the same time, while President Volodymyr Zelensky has sometimes behaved rudely to his Warsaw benefactor, Poland has sustained a critical artery of support for Ukraine.Poland’s support for Ukraine and for NATO isn’t exactly surprising, of course. Warsaw knows very personally the threat posed by the dreams of Russian imperialists such as Putin. Polish nationalism was brutally subjugated by the Russian empire in the 18th and 19th centuries. In 1939, the Soviet Union then conspired with Nazi Germany to carve Poland in half. Following the end of the Second World War, Poland lived under an oppressive, Soviet Union controlled puppet government until 1989.This understanding of an enduring Russian threat informs Poland’s defense budget.Even following the war with Ukraine, most NATO member states continued to treat the alliance like an American piggy bank. As a means via which to divert funding from their militaries into their expansive welfare systems. Not so Poland. Under successive Polish governments since 2015, the country exceeded NATO’s then 2%-of-GDP defense spending target.But following Russia’s February 2022 full scale invasion of Ukraine, Polish defense spending soared. Warsaw will spend 4.8%-of-GDP on defense this year, a far higher percentage than even the U.S. (which will spend approximately 3.3-3.4%-of-GDP). And while his force deployments in Europe have sometimes been poorly strategized, President Donald Trump recognizes that Poland is exactly the kind of ally that he has long called for.Poland’s military investments are not for show. Rather than waste its defense budget on personnel spending, as Belgium, Italy, Portugal and Spain do, Poland has invested in combat power. The return on that investment is measured in high lethality.Today, the Polish Army is centered around heavy armor maneuver formations supported by helicopter gunships and rocket artillery. It also benefits from surging integration of a wide range of drone and counter-drone warfare capabilities. Poland’s Air Force is similarly impressive, boasting well-trained pilots flying a growing force of advanced jets including F-35s. Even Poland’s long neglected navy is undergoing a major revitalization. It will soon boast cutting-edge frigates and submarines that would, in war, help turn the Baltic Sea into a Russian death trap.The Polish armed forces are now far more than a difficult obstacle in Putin’s way. They are capable not simply of stopping a future Russian invasion, but taking the fight back to the invader. Covered by drone, artillery, and air forces, Polish tank units would likely penetrate Russian lines and enable encirclement operations early in any war. They would link up with American, French, British and Polish paratroopers. And unlike their Russian counterparts, Polish field officers would have the authority to exploit enemy tactical failures.Poland’s military potency also translates into increasingly potent political effects.After all, Poland’s military prowess has also embarrassed other NATO member states such as Germany to finally start taking their alliance responsibilities seriously. While his response to recent Russian terrorist attacks has been weak, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has enacted major boosts to the German military, for example. Europe’s other two major powers; the United Kingdom, and France, also recognize that Poland’s military power has fostered its growing influence on and off the continent. They’ll have to increase their own defense budgets if they are to maintain their U.S. and international relevance.HOW ANOTHER 9/11 WAS PREVENTED JUST FIVE YEARS LATERThe key benefit of Poland’s military strength and, crucially, Warsaw’s perceived willingness to use that strength, isn’t its means of successfully waging war. Instead, it is how this strength incentivizes Putin to maintain the peace in fear that doing otherwise would risk his terrible loss. If Putin believes a war with Estonia would impose higher costs on him than on his enemies, Putin is far less likely to risk that war.If only other European powers were so astute.