The new front against a threat from Russia is 1,000 years old.
Moscow and Warsaw have been adversaries for centuries, but when Poland shook loose its communist shackles 30 years ago and joined NATO shortly after, it brought with it a security guarantee that comes with troops and capabilities.
The Army’s new V Corps headquarters in Poland is the latest American effort to strengthen the eastern flank of the NATO alliance and follows the signing of two defense agreements between President Trump and Andrzej Duda of Poland.
“As we’ve entered a new era of great power competition, we are now at another one of those inflection points in NATO’s history,” Defense Secretary Mark Esper said last week when he announced that 12,000 troops will withdraw from Germany, with some redeploying to Poland.
“Sometimes, this has been a result of changes in the threat, sometimes because of other changes in the international environment, and sometimes simply because the borders between NATO countries and Russia have shifted as new allies have joined,” he said before announcing that an agreement had been reached to position the Army’s reconstituted V Corps headquarters in Poland.
Nearly 1,000 Army soldiers will form a reactivated V Corps at Fort Knox, Kentucky, on Oct. 16, and 200 will deploy to the new headquarters in Poland in time to participate in the Defender-Europe 21 exercises scheduled for May 2021.
Combat ready
The new unit is more than signaling, say security experts. It will provide combat-ready support to deter Russia just as the United States’s withdraw from Germany reduces America’s manpower in Europe.
“It is a high level of command, which provides operational direction for actual combat,” said Wojciech Lorenz, international security analyst at the Polish Institute of International Affairs in Warsaw.
Lorenz told the Washington Examiner that the V Corps headquarters is significant for a number of reasons, from participating in defensive operations to creating leverage against peer rivals like Russia.
“It demonstrates that the U.S. wants to have forward-deployed elements, which are necessary for a defensive operation on a large scale,” he said. “On the practical level, it also offers new possibilities of developing interoperability between U.S. forces and allies during a large-scale defensive, multidomain operation.”
Esper’s announcement alongside U.S. European Command Gen. Tod Wolters complies with a EUCOM request for more forward-operating troops and an additional command headquarters in Europe.
Army spokesman Terry Mann told the Washington Examiner that the corps will provide additional capability to support the U.S., allies, and partners in the region.
“The corps is the Army’s primary operational-level warfighting headquarters whose mission in support of Europe will be to conduct operational planning, mission command, and oversight of rotational and other assigned forces,” he said.
The V Corps was first established in World War I and was deactivated in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2013.
Its reactivation, announced in February, culminated with the elevation of Maj. Gen. John Kolasheski to the rank of lieutenant general and V Corps commanding general on Tuesday in Poland.
After Esper’s announcement, the Polish Ministry of Defense announced that negotiations for a rotational force of 1,000 troops had concluded and praised the V Corps decision.
“Together with NATO’s enhanced forward military presence on the eastern flank of the Alliance, this increases the level of deterrence and defense of all Allies, including our region in particular,” the ministry said in a statement.
Lorenz warned that changes in the American force posture in Europe are not all good news.
“From the regional point of view, however, it would be beneficial if [the] U.S. did not decrease the number of combat units deployed in Europe,” he said, noting that the U.S. is sending mixed signals to adversaries by adding and removing forces.
“On the one hand, we will have more noncombat U.S. troops in Poland,” he said. “But on the other hand, with the withdrawal of a combat Stryker brigade from Germany to the U.S., we will have fewer operational U.S. troops in Europe.”
