Biden's two-day visit to Poland will be followed by stops in Romania and the Czech Republic. The visit is seen by the Polish public and leaders as "mainly about damage control and trying to make up for mistakes," said Bartosz Wisniewski, a foreign policy analyst with the Polish Institute of International Affairs.
Obama in September scrapped Bush's plans to put missile defense interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, a system intended to shoot down long-range missiles from Iran. ...
Poles were also dismayed that Obama announced his plans for a reconfigured missile defense system on Sept. 17, the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of World War II — timing that signaled to them a lack of sensitivity.
Kulesa said that with Biden's visit, "The Americans are clearly trying to cover over the disastrous impression made by the manner in which the Americans presented their change to the missile defense on Sept. 17th."
I don't think that REBIDPOL (REturn of BIDen to POLand) is enough to reassure the Poles (and Czechs, and Baltic states) of our resolve. We need more, like a REFORPOL program like our old REFORGER program, that will allow NATO to put a corps into Poland faster than Russia could invade:
As I advocated over a year ago, I think NATO should pre-position brigade sets of heavy armor in southern Poland, in a manner that we did in West Germany with our REturn of FORces to GERmany (REFORGER) program. We kept the equipment for a number of brigades in Germany so all we had to do was fly in the troops of a CONUS-based (continental United States) similar unit. If we, the British, and the Germans participated, it would reassure eastern Europeans that NATO help was close enough to matter. I called it REFORPOL.
Not that I really expect Russia to take that step, by why take chances? Who knows what the Russians might decide in a crisis if we leave them the opportunity to strike? And if Belorus reunites with Russia, warning time will drop considerably.
Already, we're deploying troops to Romania and Bulgaria:
The United States is building two new bases in Eastern Europe. One, in Romania, is costing $50 million while another, costing $60 million, is in Bulgaria. The base in Romania will be home for 1,500 American troops, while the one in Bulgaria will hold 2,500. The Romanian base will open this year, the one in Bulgaria will be activated in 2-3 years.
The purpose of these bases is to function as a staging area to deploy American troops into the eastern part of the arc of crisis extending from Gibralter to Central Asia.
Strategypage doesn't address it here, but these bases will host rotating Stryker units sent in to train. Plus we'll get lots of experience moving units east.
I'll admit that deploying heavy armor to Poland would be too provocative to Russia and stoke their already raging paranoia. But light troops pose no offensive threat to Russia and would reassure Poles. And stored equipment would allow us to rapidly field a force capable of bolstering NATO defenses in the east in an emergency. We don't need a sword in Poland the way we are forging one in the southeast, but we do need a shield.
We won't get the missiles shield we need. We should at least deploy an Army shield that our allies can trust.
