Trump confirms more US troops will be sent to Poland

23.09.2019

The US troop presence in Poland will expand by 1,000, in addition to the 4,500 soldiers rotating through the country. The contingent could be enlarged by moving soldiers currently stationed in Germany.

The United States will likely move troops to Poland from other bases in Europe, President Donald Trump said Monday as he signed a defense deal with his Polish counterpart, Andrzej Duda.

Read more: US military in Germany: What you need to know

Meeting on the sidelines of the US General Assembly in New York, the two leaders signed a Joint Declaration on Advancing Defense Cooperation that builds on a framework deal reached in June.

The United States currently has 4,500 rotational troops in Poland. That number is "expected to grow by approximately 1,000 additional United States military personnel in the near term," according to the joint declaration.

Trump said the new troops would "most likely" be transferred from other European bases.

The United States has about 35,000 troops stationed in Germany. In June, Trump suggested additional soldiers to be sent to Poland could be pulled from Germany, which the president has repeatedly criticized over NATO defense spending targets.

Read more: Trump's troop talk again rattles Germany's security assumptions

Trump says Poland paying for military presence

According to the joint declaration, six sites in Poland have been identified for enhancement to host US troops and the two sides are in talks to find a location for an armored brigade combat team.

Poland is "going to be building us facilities that I'm sure are going to be very beautiful," Trump said. "They'll be bearing the entire expense."

Trump claimed the enhanced US military presence is not to counter Russia, whose annexation of Crimea and involvement in the war in eastern Ukraine caused jitters in NATO member Poland.

He also said that the United States was working on providing visa waivers for Poland, whose citizens need a visa to enter the United States despite being a member of the EU's passport-free Schengen zone.

Germany's NATO missions Germany's role in NATO West Germany officially joined the trans-Atlantic alliance in 1955. However, it wasn't until after reunification in 1990 that the German government considered "out of area" missions led by NATO. From peacekeeping to deterrence, Germany's Bundeswehr has since been deployed in several countries across the globe in defense of its allies. Germany's NATO missions Bosnia: Germany's first NATO mission In 1995, Germany participated in its first "out of area" NATO mission as part of a UN-mandated peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. During the deployment, German soldiers joined other NATO member forces to provide security in the wake of the Bosnian War. The peacekeeping mission included more than 60,000 troops from NATO's member states and partners. Germany's NATO missions Keeping the peace in Kosovo Since the beginning of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission in Kosovo, some 8,500 German soldiers have been deployed in the young country. In 1999, NATO launched an air assault against Serbian forces accused of carrying out a brutal crackdown against ethnic Albanian separatists and their civilian supporters. Approximately 550 Bundeswehr troops are still stationed in Kosovo. Germany's NATO missions Patrolling the Aegean Sea In 2016, Germany deployed its combat support ship "Bonn" to lead a NATO mission backed by the EU in the Aegean Sea. The mission included conducting "reconnaissance, monitoring and surveillance of illegal crossings" in Greek and Turkish territorial waters at the height of the migration crisis. Germany, Greece and Turkey had requested assistance from the trans-Atlantic alliance. Germany's NATO missions More than a decade in Afghanistan In 2003, Germany's parliament voted to send Bundeswehr troops to Afghanistan in support of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Germany became the third-largest contributor of troops and led the Regional Command North. More than 50 German troops were killed during the mission. Nearly a thousand soldiers are still deployed in Afghanistan as part of Resolute Support. Germany's NATO missions German tanks in Lithuania Forming part of NATO's "enhanced forward presence" in the Baltic states, 450 Bundeswehr soldiers have been deployed to Lithuania so far in 2017. The battalion-size battlegroups there are led by Germany, Canada, the UK and US to reinforce collective defense on the alliance's eastern flank. It forms the "biggest reinforcement of Alliance collective defence in a generation," according to NATO. Germany's NATO missions Taking over the leadership The Bundeswehr is due to take over leadership of NATO's multinational Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF) at the start of 2019. The rapid reaction force has been set up to counter potential Russian aggression on the alliance's eastern flank.

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cw/rt (AFP, dpa)

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