In June 2019, President Trump and Polish President Andrzej Duda met at the White House and signed what they called a “Joint Declaration on Defense Cooperation.” The agreement added an additional 1,000 U.S. troops to the already 4,500 stationed in Poland and allowed the United States to construct more military facilities in the country, from a division headquarters to an MQ-9 squadron. U.S. and Polish officials are in the process of finalizing the legal, logistical, and cost-sharing details in preparation for Duda’s scheduled return to Washington on Wednesday.
Trump and Duda are likely to trumpet the deal as a major step forward in the bilateral U.S.-Poland relationship and signal to the rest of NATO that fulfilling the alliance’s 2% GDP defense spending benchmark has its privileges. But realistically, increasing the U.S. military presence in Poland to 5,500 troops is unnecessary and will likely have the unintended impact of diluting the Trump administration’s goal of transmitting the defense burden to Europe.
The looming U.S.-Poland deal comes on the heels of a decision earlier this month to cut 9,500 U.S. troops from Germany and cap the number of U.S. forces on German soil to 25,000. Although the details are still being worked out, the move itself is long overdue and sends a message to European countries that Uncle Sam has higher strategic priorities in the 21st century than providing for another continent’s defense.
Preserving large, pricey military garrisons in the heart of Germany is not one of those priorities. Europe, after all, is one of the world’s richest continents and is nearly as wealthy as the U.S. Germany, the fourth-largest economic power on the planet and the wealthiest in Europe, possesses the resources required to fulfill its spending obligations. What Berlin and many of its European neighbors don’t possess at the moment are the incentives and will to follow through.
Partially increasing U.S. troop levels in Poland, however, nullifies the partial decrease of troops in Germany. If one of the ideas behind the administration’s Germany decision is to promote burden-sharing across the alliance, then it’s nonsensical to ship some U.S. soldiers to NATO’s eastern flank. Simply stated: The more U.S. boots on the ground in Europe, the less incentive or urgency the other members of NATO will have to do what they promised they would do — take their defense needs seriously.
What is the purpose of an additional 1,000 U.S. personnel in Poland? If it’s meant to reward Warsaw for being one of only nine NATO member states that spend at least 2% of GDP on their defense budgets, then an infusion of American troops makes little sense. Why would a government that spends more on defense need more U.S. troops?
If the deployment is designed to enhance NATO’s deterrence posture against Russia, the logic is just as weak. Moscow may be effective at hacking parliamentary buildings, shutting down computer networks, and sowing disinformation, but Russia is hardly the 10-foot monster many in the West claim it to be. Russia’s economy is nearly one-tenth the size of the European Union’s. At $65.1 billion, the Russian defense budget is 21% of what NATO-Europe spent in 2019. There is no evidence to suggest NATO lacks in deterrent power or that Russia is willing or even interested in recklessly attacking NATO territory and testing how the alliance would respond.
Every U.S. president since Dwight Eisenhower has tried to entice European governments to stop treating the U.S. as if it were Europe’s permanent defense force. Still recuperating from a world war at the time and facing the threat of a Soviet juggernaut to the east, the continent was hardly in a shape to do so.
But European officials no longer have that excuse today. If Washington is genuinely committed to shifting the responsibility of Europe’s security to its European partners, it should think twice before authorizing a U.S. deployment that would duplicate what NATO is already doing and complicate U.S. attempts to realign its military footprint.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a fellow at Defense Priorities.
