1st Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division loading and chaining down a line of Bradley Fighting Vehicles for transport to Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

WASHINGTON: There might never be a Fort Trump on Polish soil, but Washington and Warsaw are close to signing a new defense cooperation deal that would put more US troops, and new drones, in the Eastern European nation, according to Trump administration officials. 

The deal might get wrapped up during Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit today to the White House, an event that both sides are hoping will cement a number of initiatives that would bring more rotational US troops and surveillance drones to Poland, even as the Pentagon begins planning to withdraw thousands of troops from Germany.

The two countries have had a busy year, wrapping up a $6.5 billion deal for 32 F-35s, establishing a new divisional headquarters in Poland, and finalizing details for a new training center. 

The F-35 deal is the largest of Poland’s 126 Foreign Military Sales cases that will ship $15.6 billion worth of American weaponry to Poland in coming years.

Fort Trump might have never been in the cards, but plans call for several smaller outposts across the country, including one where US Air Force MQ-9 Reaper reconnaissance drones can operate, and a base for a rotational American armored brigade combat team to call home.

“We’ve agreed on a location for the armored brigade combat team,” an administration official told reporters, “and are in discussions regarding additional infrastructure to support the ABCT, as well as the combat aviation brigade and combat support sustainment battalion.”

Asked for details about the basing location for the rotational brigade, spokespeople for both the Pentagon and European Command declined to comment, kicking the request back to the White House and State Department.

The moves come amid uncertainty over the size of the US troop presence in Germany, where the White House has pledged to draw down the number of troops from 34,500 to 25,000. There is no timeframe for the withdrawal, and Pentagon officials haven’t divulged which troops would leave or where they would be reassigned. President Trump’s pledges to withdraw troops have not always been followed through on, as evidenced most recently in Syria.

The proposed pullout came as a complete surprise to the Pentagon and to allies when word leaked earlier this month. President Trump later confirmed the plans, saying the NATO ally has been “delinquent in their payments” to the alliance. As often happens, the president misstated the obligation NATO members have to the pact. NATO members agreed in 2014 to spend two percent of their GDP on their own militaries, not, as the president suggests, as a payment to the international organization. No country owes any payment to the NATO alliance. Countries have until 2024 to meet that obligation. Germany has been one of the least effective European countries in meeting that country and now says it won’t get there until 2031.

In an op-ed earlier this week, National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien suggested that some of those troops might be moved to the Indo-Pacific, or might return to the United States. The clearest conclusion from what we’ve heard is that plans are very much in flux as the federal government rushes to find out what the president really meant and how to put the president’s order into motion.

“The numbers proposed bear no relationship to any strategic thinking or analysis,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges told me. A former commander of US Army Europe who now holds the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies at the Center for European Policy Analysis, Hodges added via email that the “decision was not the result of the normal, professional interagency process where all of the different government agencies and hq’s and experts would have reviewed the proposals, done cost/benefit analysis, coordinated with Allies, etc.” 

The president has run into some early opposition on the proposed withdrawal from his own party. On Tuesday, six Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote Trump, asking him to reconsider. They warn that pulling the 9,000 troops will “place U.S. national security at risk” and strengthen the hand of Vladimir Putin. “This is not the time to take any action that might cause the Putin regime to question the credibility of the NATO deterrent or might lead our NATO allies and partners to doubt the U.S. commitment to our collective security,” they write.

The letter, signed by the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Michael McCaul, along with Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the top Republican on the European affairs subcommittee, and Reps. Ann Wagner, Joe Wilson, Brian Fitzpatrick, and John Curtis.

It’s not clear that any of those troops would head to Poland, which will host a rotational US presence, as opposed to the permanent American footprint in Germany.

There have been some hiccups in the effort to build American-funded installations in Poland, however.  The completion of an Aegis Ashore missile defense site has been delayed for a second time, adding two years to its original schedule and forcing the Pentagon to spend an extra $96 million this year to clean up problems with the local contractor. The Polish site, designed to track and knock down Iranian intermediate-range missiles and provide a layer of security for Europe when combined with another Aegis site in Romania, will now be completed in 2022, US defense officials say.

While Trump has slammed Germany over its defense spending for much of the past four years, it’s clear the White House values Duda, with Poland hitting the two percent goal and spending big on US weaponry. The White House official praised Warsaw’s “ambitious 15-year defense modernization program valued at over $130 billion [that] will help it continue to meet its commitments to NATO.” 

Duda’s trip to Washington — the first foreign leader to visit the White House since the pandemic struck — allows two leaders who share similar sentiments on immigration and a disdain for many international pacts to commiserate, but is also a campaign stop of sorts for Duda, who leads Poland’s Law and Justice party, which faces a presidential election on Sunday. The trip allows Duda to show off his role as a statesman, and solidify his closeness with Washington at a time when many in Eastern Europe are eyeing Russia nervously, in particular the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea.

If the plans for a larger US military presence in Poland come to fruition, along with more American investment in building Poland’s nascent nuclear energy industry and other economic cooperation initiatives, it would mark a shift to the east in US interests in Europe.

That relationship is something the Polish government has been cultivating as it charts a course to take a more prominent role on the continent. 

“We need time to get used to being a leader,” Chief of the Polish armed forces, Gen. Rajmund Andrzejczak, told me at the Halifax Security Forum in November. “It’s as much about showing determination as well as inspiring other countries,” as it is buying new weaponry and equipment, he added. “For some of the countries in the region, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, they recognize we are the regional leader, so it’s kind of a responsibility.”