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I think you are applying inappropriate Dunbarian intuitions to the output of an algorithm that feeds on billions of people here. "Someone said X" is really not a statement that is surprising or has any information content, and consequently "I kept hearing X" is not surprising either as long as some entity stands to benefit (clicks, engagement, whatever) from funnelling that opinion to you.
The third one seems plausible enough, but do you have any concrete evidence for the former two? Is there something you consider sufficient proof that the former were not reasons or at least not primary reasons, or is this an irrefutable belief?
That's fair, but where for one people paranoid overreaction to their own history might still be arguably adaptive as a meta-reasoning, it seems like insanity for others to go along with it.
I checked and apparently it's only about ~35% believing in it to ca. 45% not, though the last polls are from before the war and the tendency has been slightly rising. Mea culpa for assuming it is more.
It seems to me that playing up the Russian threat has been unambiguously good for Poland's position in European politics, since as long as they position themselves as an steadfast, and morally unassailable due to personal trauma, bulwark against Russia within the EU, this assures them American backing that is qualitatively almost comparable to that given to Israel, even it's quantatively far from the latter. During the PiS years there was tremendous appetite in the rest of Europe to punish Poland somehow, for ideological nonalignment, non-cooperation within EU structures such as refusal to participate in refugee redistribution, trade scuffles with Germany, environmentalist misdeeds etc.; somehow these never went anywhere, and more than once I heard sentiments like "cracking down on Poland would just give Putin what he wants" fielded to defend that. Now there is talk that Poland is or might become the strongest land army in Europe, and their overall prestige and weight has risen in particular at the expense of their other historic enemy to the West. Surely this is tremendously appealing to politicians, who dedicate their lives to the pursuit of prestige and power.
If appearance of various "it would be great to conquer Poland" and/or "we deserve controlling USSR-sized sphere of influence" would appear in Russian popular and official discourse as often as "we should reconquer Moscow/Lithuania/Ukraine" appears in Polish one.
Then I will worry less.
Not invading neighbours, not having dropping nuclear device on Warsaw as part of exercise scenarios etc would be also good step.
Unambiguously being sorry for numerous Russian invasions, massacres and meddling would be nice but even previous steps are dead head dreams, so...
More or less see above. Putting propaganda billboards with "Russia has no borders", Putin's face and Russian flag in background is not some strong evidence but doing this kind of thing consistently over years has convinced me.
Maybe it is selective presentation of facts but Russia has hardly bothered to counter it.
If I would feel ever in doubt I can go to official Twitter account of Russian government and feel reassured about treating Russia as suspicious, problematic, dangerous and lying.
Given high cost of failure* and relatively small costs of reducing risks it seems to be not a paranoid overreaction to me. But well, if I would be overly paranoid then I would claim this.
Bombing Moscow under "well, they will attack anyway so we can start" would be.
*underpreparation to WW II resulted in about 16% of population murdered, multiple years of murderous occupation and decades of colonial rule. And massive devastation of economy and several other major problems. Previous such failure resulted in 123 years of occupation and required world war to undo. Even with 1% risk of things going even a bit as badly as that - spending a bit more on defence seems a good idea.
It is not paranoia if they actually after you.
(to be clear, I am not expecting Russia to run death camps, but Mariupol-style devastation is bad enough)
It is such fuckup that overestimating how specific part of fuck up is going is hardly a major failure.
This would require either absurd overstretching of Polish resources or some comical failure across Europe including Russia. Several years of grinding down USSR reserves maybe could achieve this, but that seems quite unlikely scenario. Though Russia running out of tanks while invading half-failed state next door would still not be the stupidest part of this war.
Poland does not need larger army than Russia has, it needs to have large enough to fulfil it share of ensuring that invading NATO will remain scary enough. Or alternatively, powerful enough that invading Poland will be clearly stupid idea.
Also, ideally it would be small enough that no politician will get some ideas of invading neighbours (no trace of such ideas right now, but I would not underestimate stupidity of politicians).
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