Poland Wants To Host U.S. Nukes with Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine Skirting Border
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Poland wants a 50% increase of U.S. troops and is “open” to hosting U.S. tactical nuclear weapons as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine continues along the western border skirting Poland.
RELATED: Ukraine War: Poland Reminds the EU How Vulnerable Its Border Nations Really Are To Russian Aggression
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Poland would welcome a 50% increase in the number of U.S. troops in Europe, the leader of the country’s ruling party said in comments published on Sunday, as Warsaw calls for tougher action against Moscow over the conflict in Ukraine.
The invasion of Ukraine, which Russian President Vladimir Putin called a “special military operation” to demilitarise its neighbour, has fueled security fears in states on NATO’s eastern flank.
The alliance has responded by increasing its presence in the region, announcing four more multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia last month.
“Poland would be pleased if the Americans increased their presence in Europe from the current 100,000 soldiers up to 150,000 in the future due to Russia’s increasing aggressiveness,” Jaroslaw Kaczynski told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
Above: U.S. military vehicles are seen at a base in Mielec, Poland February 9, 2022. REUTERS/Kuba Stezycki
The alliance has responded by increasing its presence in the region, announcing four more multinational battle groups in Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia last month.
“Poland would be pleased if the Americans increased their presence in Europe from the current 100,000 soldiers up to 150,000 in the future due to Russia’s increasing aggressiveness,” Kaczynski told German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
“Of these, 75,000 soldiers should be stationed on the eastern flank; ie, on the border with Russia; 50,000 soldiers in the Baltic states and Poland,” he said in the interview, which was also published on the website of Poland’s ruling party Law and Justice (PiS).
Above: Polish Deputy Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski attends a joint meeting with Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala, Slovenia’s Prime Minister Janez Jansa and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in Kyiv, Ukraine March 15, 2022. Ukrainian Presidential Press Service/Handout via REUTERS
There were roughly 80,000 US troops in Europe before Russian troops moved into Ukraine.
So what holds up the decision to place the U.S. nukes in Poland? Well this entire special operation by the Russian military has already activated the NATO Response Force. The NATO Response Force (NRF) is a highly ready and technologically advanced multinational force of land, air, maritime, and Special Operations Forces (SOF). These components are an alliance that can deploy quickly, wherever needed.
Reports also state the activation of the response troops does NOT mean that any U.S. or NATO troops will go into Ukraine, which is not a member. President Joe Biden made it clear that U.S. troops are deploying to Eastern Europe to help bolster NATO countries. However, they will not be fighting in Ukraine.
But all of this has skirted closely around what exactly consists of an Article 5 treaty violation.
Article 5 of NATO’s Washington Treaty states that if one of its members is attacked, it is considered an attack against all members and that there will be a “collective defence.” The first time it was invoked was after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
Ukraine is not a member of NATO.
NATO is primarily concerned with five member nations that share borders with Russia: Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Poland, and Turkey.
It doesn’t immediately look obvious from a world map, but Poland and Russia indeed share a border.
That’s because of a small Russian enclave that isn’t connected to the rest of Russia called Kaliningrad (think of it a little bit like how Alaska isn’t connected to the rest of the U.S.), which borders Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north and gives Russia access to the Baltic Sea to the east.
Ukraine and Poland share a 332 mi border.
At this stage it seems unthinkable that Russia would ever invade Poland – a country with a stronger military and central government than Ukraine – and it wouldn’t make any sense to stage it from Kaliningrad.
Above: Credit…Kacper Pempel/Reuters
But U.S. troops are already in Poland at the country’s border with Ukraine to help with refugees, and the historical parallel of Hitler’s invasion of Poland being the real igniting factor in World War II has been noted by some commentators.
Russia’s illegal war enters its sixth week tomorrow.
