The Poles have quietly been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
Look, I’m all for a prepared Europe, but this quote is a joke at best.
Poland has 300k troops (all numbers are active and reserve combined), Germany has 862k, France has 300k, Ukraine has ~2.2 million, China has 2.53 million, Russia has 3.57 million, the US has 2.8 million.
Poland might be building one of the largest European militaries, but they’re still 10x smaller than the belligerent players.
In what world does Germany have 900k soldiers? Google says 180k active duty, you only get to 900k if you count someone who did mandatory service back when he was 18, which was like 30 years ago, and hasn’t touched a gun since. If you define military as “people who train regularly and would be ready on a short notice”, we have nowhere near as many (since mandatory service was effectively stopped 10+ years ago)
Point is, those numbers mix active and various qualities of “reserve” personnel
Sorry, i should have been more precise myself and should have read your answer more clearly.
My point is, those numbers are a bad indicator for military strength.
Someone having gone through a few months of training decades ago doesn’t make them a soldier who is ready to fight on a short notice.
Likewise, a country at war with less personnel but a huge stockpile of resources and working structures will likely conscript a lot of citizens anyway.
Poland doesn’t have conscription at the moment (they stopped at a similar point in time as Germany), and their number seems to count only “proper” reservists. Germany counts everyone who at some point was part of the military as (legally) reservist, regardless of their current state, fitness, or motivation.
No worries, I thought you might have confused the statement as only applying to the first group. I see what you mean about how you count reservists and think it’s a totally valid point.
The most recent year that numbers are widely available for was 2024 when Germany had 184,000 active-duty military personnel. Poland had 216,000 active military personnel; among NATO countries only Turkey and the US had more. Poland had the 13th highest military budget on Earth and was ranked 14th for military expenditures as a percentage of GDP: 4.1% (the highest in NATO).
Their reserves ARE limited in number, but they’ve been spending their funding on large quantities of equipment and weaponry.
I spent some time thinking about your response and I’ll give it to you that Poland is heavily investing in their military which is probably a good thing long term for themselves and the EU. I think my qualm was specifically with the statement that they have been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
On the evaluation of their investment by % GDP they are certainly investing heavily, this website puts them somewhere in the top teens out of ~265 regions (broken down even more than the 195 recognized by the UN). Another metric to look at is the raw total military, not just investment in %GDP. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to compare Poland with other countries which have dissimilar GDPs, for example that website says that Armenia invested 5.5% of it’s GDP in comparison to Poland’s 4.2%, but Armenia’s GDP is $27 billion to Poland’s $1.1 trillion and their military is ~1/3 the size.
To your point (investment in equipment) we have to take into account the quality of the military, not just quantity; you can have 100x more troops but it doesn’t mean much if they are completely outclassed in gear.
So yes, of the ~195 countries of the world Poland is in the top ~10% and if you review their investment by %GDP they are probably closer to the top 5%.
The top 4 militaries by troops (China, the US, North Korea, and India) all have >1,000,000 troops and the top 4 by raw expenditure (US, China, Russia, and Germany) are all >$88.5 billion (and Germany is pulling that group way down).
Let’s break down these metrics. 5% of the average of the top 4 in quantity is 76k troops and only ~50 countries have that amount or more. 5% of the average of the top 4 in expenditure is ~$19.3 billion and only ~21 countries meet that value.
All this is to break down that Poland is in the top 5-10% of world militaries, but if you remove all the countries doing basically nothing they are basically in the middle (31/50 in quantity, 13/21 in expenditure). Poland is definitely making one of the strongest militaries in Europe, but a big part of that is that the other countries in the EU aren’t doing much. If you count up the EU countries that are included in that 21 listed above (UK, Germany, Ukraine, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Netherlands) Poland makes up $38 billion of the groups combined $423.5 billion (~8.9%), but all of those are half of the US expenditure ($997 billion) and 77% of the combined BRICS members in that group ($549.1 billion).
EDIT: I totally missed that the Ukraine isn’t part of the EU, I had removed Algeria and Turkey as well, so that should change the % values; however, I kinda feel like if the Ukraine pulls through they likely will join the EU so I’m not gonna change things here.
Look, I’m all for a prepared Europe, but this quote is a joke at best.
Poland has 300k troops (all numbers are active and reserve combined), Germany has 862k, France has 300k, Ukraine has ~2.2 million, China has 2.53 million, Russia has 3.57 million, the US has 2.8 million.
Poland might be building one of the largest European militaries, but they’re still 10x smaller than the belligerent players.
In what world does Germany have 900k soldiers? Google says 180k active duty, you only get to 900k if you count someone who did mandatory service back when he was 18, which was like 30 years ago, and hasn’t touched a gun since. If you define military as “people who train regularly and would be ready on a short notice”, we have nowhere near as many (since mandatory service was effectively stopped 10+ years ago)
Point is, those numbers mix active and various qualities of “reserve” personnel
I literally said that.
EDIT: The source of this number was looking up Bundeswehr on Wikipedia which lists 860k reserve personnel and 184k active personnel.
Sorry, i should have been more precise myself and should have read your answer more clearly.
My point is, those numbers are a bad indicator for military strength.
Someone having gone through a few months of training decades ago doesn’t make them a soldier who is ready to fight on a short notice.
Likewise, a country at war with less personnel but a huge stockpile of resources and working structures will likely conscript a lot of citizens anyway.
Poland doesn’t have conscription at the moment (they stopped at a similar point in time as Germany), and their number seems to count only “proper” reservists. Germany counts everyone who at some point was part of the military as (legally) reservist, regardless of their current state, fitness, or motivation.
No worries, I thought you might have confused the statement as only applying to the first group. I see what you mean about how you count reservists and think it’s a totally valid point.
🤝
The most recent year that numbers are widely available for was 2024 when Germany had 184,000 active-duty military personnel. Poland had 216,000 active military personnel; among NATO countries only Turkey and the US had more. Poland had the 13th highest military budget on Earth and was ranked 14th for military expenditures as a percentage of GDP: 4.1% (the highest in NATO).
Their reserves ARE limited in number, but they’ve been spending their funding on large quantities of equipment and weaponry.
I spent some time thinking about your response and I’ll give it to you that Poland is heavily investing in their military which is probably a good thing long term for themselves and the EU. I think my qualm was specifically with the statement that they have been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
On the evaluation of their investment by % GDP they are certainly investing heavily, this website puts them somewhere in the top teens out of ~265 regions (broken down even more than the 195 recognized by the UN). Another metric to look at is the raw total military, not just investment in %GDP. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to compare Poland with other countries which have dissimilar GDPs, for example that website says that Armenia invested 5.5% of it’s GDP in comparison to Poland’s 4.2%, but Armenia’s GDP is $27 billion to Poland’s $1.1 trillion and their military is ~1/3 the size.
To your point (investment in equipment) we have to take into account the quality of the military, not just quantity; you can have 100x more troops but it doesn’t mean much if they are completely outclassed in gear.
So yes, of the ~195 countries of the world Poland is in the top ~10% and if you review their investment by %GDP they are probably closer to the top 5%.
The top 4 militaries by troops (China, the US, North Korea, and India) all have >1,000,000 troops and the top 4 by raw expenditure (US, China, Russia, and Germany) are all >$88.5 billion (and Germany is pulling that group way down).
Let’s break down these metrics. 5% of the average of the top 4 in quantity is 76k troops and only ~50 countries have that amount or more. 5% of the average of the top 4 in expenditure is ~$19.3 billion and only ~21 countries meet that value.
All this is to break down that Poland is in the top 5-10% of world militaries, but if you remove all the countries doing basically nothing they are basically in the middle (31/50 in quantity, 13/21 in expenditure). Poland is definitely making one of the strongest militaries in Europe, but a big part of that is that the other countries in the EU aren’t doing much. If you count up the EU countries that are included in that 21 listed above (UK, Germany, Ukraine, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Netherlands) Poland makes up $38 billion of the groups combined $423.5 billion (~8.9%), but all of those are half of the US expenditure ($997 billion) and 77% of the combined BRICS members in that group ($549.1 billion).
EDIT: I totally missed that the Ukraine isn’t part of the EU, I had removed Algeria and Turkey as well, so that should change the % values; however, I kinda feel like if the Ukraine pulls through they likely will join the EU so I’m not gonna change things here.