Poland Wants More Than NATO Can Give

John R. Deni

Security, Europe

Basing allied troops in NATO's east remains improbable. 

The NATO alliance is treating Poland and other allies in the region like a buffer zone, refusing to permanently station troops there and hence provide the same level of security that has long been accorded other allies to the west, according to a Polish official. Such undiplomatic comments weren’t those of a low-level functionary in the Polish Defense Ministry, or even the anonymous remarks of a “senior official.” Rather, they were the very public words of Andrzej Duda, the recently elected president of Poland. Unfortunately, major obstacles—political and economic—stand in the way of NATO establishing permanent troop concentrations in Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Duda’s comments and his relentless, vocal pursuit of permanent NATO forces on Polish soil mean that, by diplomatic standards, the upcoming NATO summit in July is likely to be downright riveting.

This summer, the presidents and prime ministers of the alliance will gather in Warsaw—on Duda’s turf—to engage in yet another NATO summit. As they did at the last summit, in September 2014 in Wales, alliance leaders will wrestle with the fact that Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea and its invasion of eastern Ukraine have fundamentally upended the security situation in Europe.

NATO discovered in early 2014 that its force posture in Europe was not up to the task of responding to this new security situation, of assuring the most vulnerable allies or, arguably, of deterring Russian aggression. There are four reasons for this: a relentless American drawdown of U.S. military forces on the continent, Europeans cashing in on the post–Cold War peace dividend through downsizing in the 1990s, flat defense budgets across most of Europe since the mid-2000s and the widespread move from larger conscript-based armies to professional volunteer forces. Together, these factors have resulted in a diminished alliance ability to conduct warfare against a large, near-peer adversary—like Russia.

Ultimately, the latent economic, political, and military power within NATO is likely to outlast Russia in any major conflict. However, it is in the short-to-medium term that the alliance needs to be concerned about its ability to deter Russia as well as assure its own member states.