ON A bluff close to the River Vistula in Warsaw stands Poland’s military museum. A collection of tanks, aircraft and artillery pieces pays tribute to a history of martial valour marked by glory and the trauma of existential defeat. The fact that predatory neighbours twice crushed the life out of Poland, and that its allies had no means to help, has left ineradicable scars. Although firmly embedded in NATO since 1999 and a member of the EU for almost a decade, Poland does not believe in letting down its guard.

Having weathered the past five years better than most—the economy has grown by a fifth since 2009—and imposed tight spending limits on most departments, the centre-right government of Donald Tusk, re-elected in 2011, has made modernising the armed forces a priority. This year’s defence budget of $9.5 billion has grown by 7% over 2012, bringing Poland close to the 2%-of-GDP target that all NATO members are supposed to meet, but very few do.

The defence minister, Tomasz Siemoniak, has announced that $43 billion is earmarked for military procurement to replace outdated weaponry, much of which hails from the Soviet era, over the next ten years. The share of the defence budget going on equipment will rise from 15% to 33%. On Mr Siemoniak’s shopping list is a missile-defence system, new ships for the navy, upgraded tanks, military training aircraft, 70 helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles and better equipment for ground troops. This is part of a military overhaul that began with the end of conscription in 2009. The new all-volunteer army of about 65,000 active personnel, supported by a much larger part-time reserve, is nimbler and more deployable than its lumbering predecessor. That is crucial for the expeditionary missions that have preoccupied NATO since the cold war.

A clear political purpose lies behind this. Out of loyalty to America, Poland joined George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing”, sending a brigade to fight in Iraq. It dispatched a 2,600-strong contingent to the tough eastern province of Ghazni in Afghanistan, where almost 40 Polish soldiers have died. Increasingly, Poland seeks influence within NATO that reflects its size and new prosperity. Having modern armed forces that can be sent into action when a crisis hits gets you a place at the decision-making table, especially when other countries are slashing defence budgets.

Perhaps because of history, but certainly because of geography, Poles fret about the “double whammy” of declining military commitment from NATO’s European members and America’s strategic “rebalancing” towards the Asia-Pacific region. Radek Sikorski, the foreign minister, recalls Europe’s helplessness in the face of Serbian aggression in Bosnia 20 years ago. He says Europe must shoulder more responsibility for security in its own backyard as a fiscally straitened America continues to reduce its military footprint there. Another theme of Polish security policy is the need for NATO to move away from intervention in far-flung lands towards a renewed emphasis on territorial defence and a commitment to Article 5 (which treats an attack on one NATO member as an attack on all). Poland sat out the Libyan campaign in 2011, believing it to be an unnecessary diversion from NATO’s core purpose. Mr Sikorski notes Russia’s rapidly growing defence budget—this year it will rise by more than a quarter—and the belligerent tone that Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin uses towards the West. He calls Poland’s relations with Russia “pragmatic but brittle” and, after the war between Russia and Georgia in 2008, he sees conflict in Europe as only too “imaginable”. Poland and other NATO “border countries” were concerned about the Russian-Belarusian Zapad and Ladoga military exercises in 2009, which simulated attacks on the Baltic states and Poland. They also point to the increased activity of Russian bombers close to the airspace of NATO members and the threats from Moscow of preventive attacks on parts of the European missile-defence system that America is deploying in stages. One indication of Poland’s growing clout in NATO is the “Steadfast Jazz” training exercise, to be held in November in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The biggest exercise of its kind since the end of the cold war, involving a force of about 5,000 on land, air and sea, “Steadfast Jazz” has two declared goals and an undeclared one. The first is to advance the “connected forces initiative”—NATO’s attempt to hold on to hard-won gains, made in Afghanistan, in getting different forces to work together—before the combat mission there draws to a close in 2014. The second is to test the command-and-control systems for the 13,000-strong immediately deployable element of the “NATO Response Force”—a powerful, high-readiness joint force that can either be used for out-of-area emergencies or become the first line of collective defence. The undeclared objective is to reassure those NATO members closest to Russia that Article 5 is still the bedrock of the alliance.

Yet somewhat undermining that is the fact that as many as 70% of the forces taking part will be provided by Poland, its partners from the Visegrad group (the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary) and the Baltics. France will contribute 1,000 troops and Britain will send two warships. But America can spare only a company of 200 soldiers, and others are staying away entirely. A similar “high visibility” exercise is planned for 2015, when Afghan deployments will be over, but there are fears that stretched training budgets and a reluctance to offend Russia could once again limit the numbers taking part.

Poland at least will continue to bang the drum for honouring commitments. It also hopes its example may encourage others not to cut too deeply into defence budgets. But it is right to be worried. The interminable crisis in the euro zone means more pressure on already inadequate defence spending, while Barack Obama repeatedly says that it is time Europe became a “provider” rather than a “consumer” of security. For Poles with a sense of history, that is an ominous combination.