PRESIDENT OBAMA ANNOUNCED THE TROOP MOVEMENT

President Obama and Polish President
Andrzej Duda at a press conference after a
meeting just before the NATO Summit at the
National Stadium in Warsaw, Friday.
WARSAW — The United States will send
about 1,000 troops to Poland as part of what
the alliance says is the biggest deployment of
NATO personnel since the end of the Cold
War.
President Obama announced the troop
movement at the NATO Summit in Warsaw
Friday, saying the United States would rotate
battalions into Poland "to serve shoulder to
shoulder with Polish soldiers." An armored
brigade will also move its headquarters to
Poland, which Obama called one of the
United States' "most committed and
important allies." Both moves are expected
sometime next year.
The move is an effort to bolster NATO's
strength in eastern Europe in order to deter
further Russian aggression following its
annexation of Crimea in 2014. It's just one of
many messages NATO sent to Moscow on the
first day of the summit, some more subtle
than others.
After meetings with allies at the Polish
National Soccer Stadium, the 28 NATO
leaders adjourned for a working dinner. The
venue: The Column Hall, The same room in
the Presidential Palace where Soviet bloc
nations signed the Warsaw Pact as a
counterweight to NATO in 1955.
Poland is now on the other side of the East-
West divide and hosting its first NATO
Summit. "We are also grateful for the
understanding that security is there where
the strongest armed forces in the world are
present," said Polish President Andrzej
Duda. "And the strongest armed forces of the
world is the armed forces of the United
States, as we all know."
By using rotating battalions, the United
States is technically living up to a 1997 treaty
with Russia that prohibits "additional
permanent stationing of substantial combat
forces" in eastern Europe, while reassuring
Poland and other NATO allies that it has a
"solemn, binding" duty to help defend them.
Part of that strategy includes pre-positioning
heavy equipment and munitions to the
regions to be used by rapid-response troops
based elsewhere.
The new troop rotation announcement
follows a series of steps by NATO to move
military personnel and equipment into
central and eastern Europe. The United
States is building advanced radar systems in
Germany and Turkey, moving surveillance
drones to Italy and stationing troop
transports in Hungary.
And in May, the United States and Poland
broke ground on a new Aegis Ashore Missile
Defense System — a land-based version of
the anti-ballistic missile system found on
U.S. destroyers. That system will become
operational by 2018, joining a similar system
in Romania and four Aegis destroyers based
in Rota, Spain — where Obama is scheduled
to visit troops on Sunday.