Poland is willing to pay their fair share.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is considering permanently basing U.S. troops in Poland, a country that has offered up to $2 billion in financial support in hopes of luring American forces to the country.
“Poland is willing to make a very major contribution to the United States to come in and have a presence in Poland, and certainly it’s something we’ll discuss,” Trump said during a news conference with Polish President Andrzej Duda at the White House.
For years, Poland has lobbied for larger numbers of U.S. troops in its country, where there are now several thousand American soldiers carrying out missions on a rotational basis.
In addition to about 700 U.S. cavalrymen positioned near Poland’s border with the Russian military enclave of Kaliningrad, the country also is a main outpost for an Army armored brigade on rotation from the United States.
However, all the U.S. forces shuffle in and out of Poland and there is no permanent American base in the country. Warsaw, long uneasy about a more aggressive Russia, has argued an Army brigade and associated support units stationed permanently in the country would serve as a more serious deterrent to Russian aggression.
To that end, Poland has offered as much as $2 billion to set up a permanent U.S. base in the country. Within the U.S. military and among security analysts, there is a long-running debate over the merits of building up forces in Poland. Supporters of the idea argue it puts more American firepower in areas where NATO is more vulnerable and makes the alliance a more formidable deterrent to potential Russian aggression.