“If you want peace, prepare for war,” President Jaroslaw Kaczynski reminded the ancient saying and went on the attack, presenting the provisions of a new law on defending the homeland. The homeland, of course, according to him, has been besieged, attacked and is still under threat from the plots of its neighbours
After loud statements about rearming the Polish army by the head of the Ministry of Defense Mariusz Blaszczak (pictured), who constantly welcomes the US military-industrial complex, which sells not the most modern weapons to countries with a status similar to Poland, the president himself announced an increase in the Polish Army to 250 thousand soldiers, maybe even more. Poland is to become a military power in front of which the strongest will tremble. All this, of course, costs money. The ruling party tactfully ignored this aspect of the project.
According to them, the Armed Forces Support Fund will be set up at Bank Gospodarstwa Krajowego, but it will not be financed by Kaczynski, Blaszczak or even by contributions from PiS members. Its sources are to come from the state budget, bonds and the profits of the National Bank of Poland. The state budget finances the rising costs of maintaining the Polish army, as instructed by Washington, at more than 2 per cent of GDP.
Most European countries see far more urgent needs and expenses. Bonds are nothing more than an increase in government debt. They will have to have adequate interest rates for Western investment funds to decide to buy them. However, the simple manipulation of creating a separate fund with BGK would hide this new debt, even though it would in fact be the biggest national debt. Finally, profits from the NBP. I remember years ago Andrzej Lepper calling for them to be included in the state budget. He argued that these funds could significantly increase resources for social policy and the state’s active economic policy. Years later, Kaczyński approaches the concept, but the priorities are slightly different: instead of supporting hospitals, schools, social infrastructure or the elderly we have announcements about preparing for war and the need to spend another billion on toy soldiers and toys for Jarosław Kaczyński.
Here the rational question arises: from whom does the PiS president intend to defend. Once, shouting from the parliamentary rostrum “This is our war!”, he was probably frightened by the Iraqi aggression, because he supported the Polish Army’s participation in the attack on that country. Today, in his opinion, we are faced with military aggression just as unlikely. An attack is coming at us, and indeed, from the sinister Russia. Nobody asks the question: why? No one asks what goals the Russian Federation will achieve by invading across the Bug River. Nobody remembers that Russia is our only neighbour in the post-Soviet space, where no one, not even the most exotic environment, has any territorial claims against us.
Russia is the “aggressor” and this must be the truth, revealed by the president and company together with the media and “experts”. Let’s add that even if Kaczynski puts millions of Poles under arms, the Russian Federation, being a nuclear and military superpower, as the simulations show, would neutralise any organised military resistance within a dozen hours or so. Not of this scale or, as the fans say, league. Jarosław Kaczyński knows this very well and nevertheless decides to stage a military absurdity and deliver a financial blow to the knee.
But most importantly, the parliamentary opposition is silent on the matter. There is no demonstration of peace and common sense in the streets. The opposition media has been in no doubt. Why? There are no more people on the opposition side like the aforementioned Lepper, who were willing to ask incorrect questions directly. There are people who today mentally belong to the Kaczynski-led war party, suffer from phobias, idiosyncrasies and live with the syndrome of a besieged fortress. Without an opposition capable of articulating a critique of the militarisation of the Polish public language and now the state budget, the madness announced by Kaczyński and Blaszczak will be realised. All Poles will have to pay for their phobias and fantasies. The militarist from Żoliborz in Warsaw will get an additional army of soldiers and will be able to play with them and with Blaszczak and his friends at will. Paying for these games from the citizens’ own wallets, which are thinning before their eyes.
Mateusz Piskorski, Mysl polska