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Poland asks Donald Trump to establish permanent US military base to counter Russian aggression
Poland has asked the US to establish a permanent military base on their soil in a bid to counter Russian aggression.
A proposal from the Polish defence ministry, obtained by Polish news site Onet, states that Warsaw is willing to pay up to $2 billion to fund the new base.
The Polish offer reflects a long-standing desire in Warsaw to build closer security relations with the US, ever since entering Nato in 1999. Polish officials believe the plan has taken on an added urgency in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region four years ago, and Vladimir Putin’s aggressive posture toward the alliance.
Poland currently hosts US armed forces and Nato units, who are stationed in the country on a rotational basis, moving between Poland and three Baltic states to the north.
Poland’s defence ministry, which confirmed the authenticity of the document, said it had been sent to Washington and Mariusz Blaszczak, the Polish defence minister, told state Radio 1 he has recently held talks in Washington about having a permanent presence of US troops in Poland.
The text says a permanent base will help achieve President Donald Trump's goals in the region. Mr Trump warned last year in Warsaw that there were “dire threats to our security and to our way of life”.
Mr Trump added: “We will confront them. We will win.”
The Polish proposal states: “Establishing such a force is necessary to present an unequivocal challenge and deterrence to Russia’s increasingly emboldened and dangerous posture that threatens Europe.”
However, Mr Trump’s generals may well caution against the plan to deploy 15,000 US troops and 250 tanks and armoured vehicles in Poland, knowing the response it would draw from Russia.
Any decision to base such a force in Poland would be seen in Moscow as a serious breach of the 1997 Nato Russia Founding Act, through which Nato agreed not to deploy permanent forces in eastern Europe as part of its expansion plans.
Dmitry Peskov, spokesman for Mr Putin, said that the Polish plan would “not contribute to security and stability on the continent in any way.”
He told the Tass news agency: "On the contrary, these expansionist steps, certainly, result in counteractions of the Russian side to balance the parity which is violated every time this way."
Mr Peskov said that a permanent deployment of US troops in Poland is a "sovereign decision" but warned that the consequences for the "entire security on the continent" are evident.