US opens missile base in Poland as Trump presidency looms over NATO
2024.11.13 07:12
WARSAW (Reuters) -The United States will officially open a new air defence base in northern Poland on Wednesday, as Warsaw seeks to reassure citizens that NATO guarantees their security amid jitters after Donald Trump’s presidential election victory.
Situated in the town of Redzikowo near the Baltic coast, the base has been in the works since the 2000s and Warsaw says it shows Poland’s military alliance with Washington remains solid, whoever is in the White House.
“It took a while, but this construction proves the geostrategic resolve of the United States,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said in a video posted to X on Tuesday.
Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who has stressed his warm ties with Trump, will attend a function to open the base, which the Kremlin calls a bid to contain Russia by moving American military infrastructure nearer its borders.
Trump’s past criticism has unnerved some NATO members, as he vowed that the United States under his leadership would not defend countries that do not spend enough on defence.
However, Poland says it should have nothing to fear, as the alliance’s biggest spender on defence relative to the size of its economy.
MISSILE SHIELD
The U.S. base at Redzikowo is part of a broader NATO missile shield, dubbed “Aegis Ashore”, which the alliance says can intercept short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Other key shield elements include a second site in Romania, U.S. navy destroyers based in the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar in Turkey’s town of Kurecik.
Moscow had already labelled the base a threat as far back as 2007, when it was still being planned.
NATO says the shield is purely defensive.
Military sources told Reuters the system in Poland can now only be used against missiles fired from the Middle East and the radar would need a change in direction to intercept projectiles from Russia, a complex procedure entailing a change of policy.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday the scope of the shield needed to be expanded, which Warsaw would discuss with NATO and the United States.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will meet Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw later on Wednesday.
