P OLES LIKE being reminded of the time they came to America’s defence. Meeting his counterpart in November, James Mattis, America’s now-departed defence secretary, waxed lyrical about General Tadeusz Kosciuszko, who built a string of vital forts during America’s revolutionary war. Poland’s government hopes America will return the favour with some fort-building of its own.

Having been repeatedly carved up by bigger powers, Poland is keen to cement alliances. It rushed to join NATO in 1999, and in 2016 welcomed the headquarters of NATO ’s “enhanced forward presence” scheme, which stationed 4,600 combat-ready troops in eastern Europe. Yet neither this, nor the several thousand American soldiers who rotate through Poland annually, nor the NATO missile defence system America is building on the country’s Baltic Sea coast have settled Polish nerves.

Documents leaked last May showed Poland had asked America to deploy an armoured division (roughly 15,000 troops) permanently on its soil, to which Poland would contribute up to $2bn. The proposal was sprinkled with references to 1776 and quotes from President Donald Trump’s speech in Warsaw in July 2017. It noted that Poland is one of the few allies that meet NATO ’s target of spending 2% of GDP on defence. It alluded to Poland’s contributions to American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and to America’s 70% favourability rating among Poles. Maps of potential locations even showed the schools that the hypothetical Americans’ offspring might attend. In September Andrzej Duda, Poland’s president, tried to close the deal: the base could be called “Fort Trump”.

Though this struck many Poles as toe-curlingly crass, the proposal kicked off a serious debate. Supporters, including some American generals, argue that a permanent deployment would be preferable to the current rotational arrangement, because commanders would get to know their surroundings. Sceptics replied that America does not have tanks to spare and that moving existing units eastward from Germany would make them a juicy target for Russian rocket artillery.