Jak zbrojit s rozumem. Česko-polská diskuse
23.04.2025
How to reform our armed forces to match current geopolitical challenges? How to absorb new investments into the defence sector in a way that would really strenghten our military capabilities? Those are the questions of today which were discussed at the CEVRO University in the Czech-Polish format.
The event organized by Centrum transatlantických vztahů – PCTR and Warsaw-based Instytut Sobieskiego gathered excellent experts from both countries. The keynote address by Tomasz Szatkowski, advisor to the president Andrzej Duda, former deputy minister of defence and ambassador of Poland to NATO, ended with a strong statement: „In today’s world, if we don‘t invest heavily in our defence, we will become irrelevant”. He presented the conclusions of the extensive report prepared by the experts of Instytut Sobieskiego „How to Arm Polish Army“.
The following discussion was moderated by Daniel Koštoval, the fomer deputy minister of defence and future Czech ambassador to Moscow and apart from Tomasz Szatkowski featured as well Jan Jireš, Director General of the Defence Policy and Strategy Division of the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic and Lt. Gen. Jaromír Zůna, former First Deputy Chief of General Staff.
Czech guests pointed out to the crucial role of Poland as the regional leader at the Eastern flank of NATO and stressed the necessity of providing European funding for the projects strengthening Polish defence capacities. They also stressed two major differences concerning the issue of defence: lower level of threat perception from Russia in the Czech society that makes it more difficult to pursue ambitious reform plans, and a deeper trasformation of the Czech military forces from the conventional army towards the mere expeditionary force within the NATO framework that was implemented in previous decades.
The main conclusion of the debate was the need to re-think our approach to the defence forces in terms of a return to the concept of the army (and society) able to defend the territory of a state, that is a stress on the autonomous defence capacity-building (Article 3) as a necessary pre-requisite for the regional cooperation within the NATO framework (Article 5).
Photo: Michal Čížek.
