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.