The Polish armed forces are training citizen volunteers how to be armed partisans, firing rifles and donning gas masks.

That’s… not great. The program is apparently popular, so they are expanding its capacity so that every adult male receives the training.

  • mastertigurius@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    An attack on Poland would immediately invoke NATO Article 5, drawing in the combined forces of continental Europe, the UK, the US and Turkey. The world wouldn’t need to worry about it going nuclear, conventional forces would have the Russians back over the Belarusian border by lunchtime.

    • CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world
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      23 hours ago

      Gammelfisch said it better than I could, but what makes you think Trump would feel any type of responsibility to follow through with a treaty signed by a president that isn’t him and was almost 100 years ago?

      • mastertigurius@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Probably couldn’t trust Trump to come through, but you have to keep in mind that he’s not an autocrat quite yet. Not everyone in the US government shares his views on NATO and the commitments the US has pledged to under that alliance. Look at the rest of NATO. You have four of the top ten military powers in the world to start off with (UK, France, Turkey, Italy). Then add to that the rest of Europe and Poland’s own considerable military might. Canada would also join in, and those otherwise peaceful Canadians go fucking nuts when provoked. Even disregarding NATO, you have the Anglo-Polish Alliance, which is a mutual assurance that the UK provides military assistance (or vice versa) if their ally is invaded. Poland also has many close friends and allies in the old East Bloc, so the misconception that they would be left to their own devices is simply untrue.

    • Gammelfisch@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Mango Fucking Mussolini would abandon Poland like the British and French in 1939. Fuck Russia and the MAGAts, this German supports the European NATO members and especially our neighbors to the east. If the motherfucking Muscovites attack, I will request to be reinstated and do whatever I can to stop the filthy bastards.

      • mastertigurius@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Who needs’em? If Uncle Vlad hears that Ze Germans are rolling across the Polish border, he’ll be skipping on one leg back to Russia while changing his soiled pants. :D

    • SpongeBorgCubePants@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      Unfortunately that’s not necessarily what article 5 implies. It only states that the member nations will respond, not how exactly they will respond.

    • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      I would love to believe you but looking at the sleepy AF response when Europe decided to help Ukraine…

      Yeah, no, Poland is a buffer. Again.

      • mastertigurius@lemmy.world
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        12 hours ago

        Ukraine isn’t a member of NATO. In fact, their wish to join the EU and NATO could very well be the excuse Putin needed to start the invasion.

        • mastertigurius@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          Ukraine not being a NATO member yet is most likely among the main reasons Putin had the balls to send troops across the border. There’s absolutely no way he’d risk a full-on confrontation with NATO, because he knows it would be the end of the Russian Federation.

        • jnod4@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          If you think the poles won’t get betrayed I have a bridge to sell you

          • Honytawk@lemmy.zip
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            2 days ago

            If Ukraine was NATO, we’d be out in all force already.

            It is only because we don’t have a defense treaty with them that we risk the NATO treaty if any NATO country decides to send troops. Since they are essentially deciding for every NATO country to enter the war then.

            But if they attack a NATO country like Poland, then that is exact what NATO is designed for and nothing is risked.

            • Demdaru@lemmy.world
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              2 days ago

              Mate, I am not speaking about armed response but overall response. Europe was straight up sleeping. We are underarmed and our response times suck, and historically Poland always was seen as comfortable buffer zone.

              • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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                2 days ago

                I love your extremely oversimplified to the point of being ridiculous type response

                • YeOldGrim@lemmy.world
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                  2 days ago

                  Nothing is a cliche when it happens to you. I would argue if you were in poland, and especially with the knowledge how poland has been consistently fucked over by it’s “allies” your stance might differ.

                  It’s easy to go into semantics when you are not one day’s ride away from firing guns.