(May 31, 2020)
As the lockdown unraveled, the disoriented Polish public swiftly learned from the media that the country is “at war with an invisible aggressor”, one that requires the Minister of Health to act like a “Commander in Chief” and puts the medical staff on the “front lines”. This military rhetoric was soon multiplied by media reports on the spike in Russian and Chinese “information warfare” against the European Union over COVID-19. Far from being purely discursive, this warlike response to the pandemic has also involved a wide deployment of close to ten thousand military personnel across the country. Already in March, the newly-founded Territorial Defense Forces (TDF) were mobilized for the first Polish comprehensive anti-crisis military operation after 1989.