As part of what the Pentagon calls its Phased Adaptive Approach to missile shield deployments in Europe, especially in the east of the continent, Poland has also been mentioned as a prospective site for the stationing of longer range Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors on Aegis class warships in the Baltic Sea, in a land-based version (Aegis Ashore) on the Polish mainland or both.
"[T]he U.S. plans to deploy more powerful anti-ballistic missiles in Europe by 2018-2020. These will probably be silo-based missiles, for example upgraded SM-3 missiles with high runway speeds and interception altitudes exceeding 1,000 kilometers, making it possible to destroy not only ICBM warheads but also ballistic missiles launched by Russia." [6]
The current Patriot missile deployment, coupled as it is with what will certainly be the long-term if not unlimited stationing of American troops on a rotational basis or otherwise, signals an advance over previous, if already persistent and mounting, U.S. and NATO military presence and exercises in Poland, the general Baltic Sea region and throughout Eastern Europe as a whole.
NATO opened its Joint Force Training Centre (JFTC) headquarters in Bydgoszcz, Poland in March of 2004. Since then it has focused on "joint and combined training at the tactical level," particularly for NATO's war in Afghanistan, and on providing "support to the NATO Response Force (NRF) joint and component commanders in the training and exercising of the NRF..." [7]
Regarding the deployment of Polish troops for combat missions (the nation's first since World War Two) abroad, four years ago then Polish defense minister, now foreign minister, Radislaw Sikorski spoke of the fact that over 10,000 of his nation's troops had served in the Iraq war zone and said, "They are the core of the new Polish military. They had not been in a warlike situation for half a century. They go out as civilians in uniform but they come back as real warriors." [8]
Poland will soon have 2,600 soldiers under NATO command in Afghanistan, the largest overseas military deployment in its history, with 400 more troops held in reserve for duty in that war zone. 23 Polish troops have been killed in Iraq and 16 so far in Afghanistan, the nation's first post-World War II combat and combat-related deaths.
Sikorski's waxing militant over his nation's acquisition of its first battle-hardened warriors since the opening days of the Second World War can only be understood in the context of Poland bordering the only two nations in Europe truly not within the U.S. and NATO military orbit (Ukraine's status in this respect still to be decided): Belarus and Russia.
The Polish foreign minister (since 2007) was a citizen of the United Kingdom from 1984 onward and a resident of the U.S. from 2002-2005 where he was resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. and executive director of the pro-NATO New Atlantic Initiative (he is married to American journalist and fellow former American Enterprise Institute affiliate Anne Applebaum), and returned from the U.S. to become Poland's defense minister in 2005.
He was back in Washington late last month visiting several of his old haunts. While at the State Department, Sikorski met with his American counterpart Hillary Clinton, who described the government her visitor represented as "one of our closest friends and allies," and pledged the U.S.'s "commitment to Poland's security."
"A statement issued by the top diplomats said the two allied countries would look to more closely cooperate within NATO and on the future development of a European missile defense program." [9]
The two foreign affairs chiefs also discussed the war in Afghanistan and even - for good measure, to leave out not a single bone of contention with Russia - "Sikorski said if American companies exploring energy resources in Poland 'strike it lucky,' it would enhance the energy security of Poland and Europe and forge new investment links between Poland and the United States." [10]
The Polish foreign minister also met with Pentagon chief Robert Gates and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander and current U.S. National Security Advisor James Jones (about whom more later) and addressed the annual awards dinner of U.S.'s preeminent advocacy group promoting the globalization of NATO, the Washington, D.C.-based Atlantic Council. Gates promised Sikorski 24 mine-resistant military vehicles for the Afghan war and the latter told the former, "We are there as part of the NATO mission. We've gone in together and we will also leave Afghanistan together." [11] Given the boost in Polish troops and American-supplied combat vehicles, that joint departure will not be anytime soon.
Over the past five years, first as defense and now as foreign minister, Sikorski has been a major player in the consolidation of Poland as the Pentagon's and NATO's main military outpost in northeastern Europe and, along with Bulgaria and Romania, in so-called New Europe, in New NATO, as a whole.
In 2005 the U.S. signed a ten-year agreement with Romania for the acquisition and upgrading of four military bases and a comparable agreement with Bulgaria the following year for three bases in that country. This February both Black Sea nations disclosed plans to host U.S. Standard Missile-3 installations. In 2006 then U.S. European Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander General James Jones said that the U.S. was planning to use the Mihail Kogalniceanu air base in Romania not only for land troops - the U.S. Joint Task Force - East is now headquartered there - "but also for naval and air special units."
"The general added that the east European force [what is now Joint Task Force - East] will significantly improve the U.S.'s capacity to plan, coordinate and carry out operations that regard security cooperation in Eurasia and the Caucasus." [12]
NATO has conducted a now six-year operation in which warplanes from several member states patrol the airspace over the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. In the last-named country the Zokniai/Siauliai International Airport is home to the NATO air squads. "The presence of NATO fighters represents a dramatic transformation from Siauliai's not-so-distant past: the base was until 1992 a Soviet facility and housed types including Ilyushin Il-76-based A-50 airborne early warning and control system aircraft and RSK MiG-29 fighters." [13]
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