What Poland Sees

John Schindler has a good read over at Observer.com focusing on Poland's efforts to increase here ability to defend herself - and as a byproduct, NATO and the West.

This spring, NATO finally came through, following years of pleading from Warsaw, and deployed 1,100 troops in northeast Poland. Some 900 of those troops are American, and this NATO battalion group, which is based 35 miles south of Kaliningrad, is merely a tripwire. They would be quickly flattened by Russian tanks if war breaks out, but they guarantee Poland will not be fighting alone.

That fear is widespread in Poland and is no surprise given the country’s painful history of abandonment by unreliable Western allies. No NATO country has taken the threat of a resurgent Russia more seriously.
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Warsaw is one of the few NATO countries to spend the “required” minimum of two percent of GDP on defense (the others, aside from America, are Britain, Estonia and Greece).

This paragraph stands out - and should put Germans to shame;

Increased funding has been put to good use, and the Polish military is in the middle of an extensive defense modernization program that will run through 2022. For the army, the largest of Poland’s armed services, this means hundreds of new armored vehicles, including modernized Leopard II tanks and cutting-edge artillery systems. The army possesses three divisions and 13 maneuver brigades, making it one of the biggest land forces in NATO. To compare, the German army boasts two divisions with eight maneuver brigades (one of them half-French), even though Germany has more than twice Poland’s population and its GDP is four times as large.

The small Baltic republics, led by the always game and plucky Estonia, are coming online as well.

The key on the continent is Germany. She simply must stop picking her bellybutton and take her place as a bulwark against Russia. If she just spent her 2%, with or without the USA, Russia would be even more deterred than she is. When Germany moves, so will the other European nations.

Until then, BZ Poland.