{"id":44187,"date":"2014-04-20T08:30:27","date_gmt":"2014-04-20T12:30:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=44187"},"modified":"2014-04-20T08:30:27","modified_gmt":"2014-04-20T12:30:27","slug":"boots-on-the-ground-in-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=44187","title":{"rendered":"Boots on the ground in Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"

ROS sends us a link from the Washington Post<\/a> which reports that this week, Poland and the US will announce the deployment of US troops to Poland in response to Russia’s movements in the Ukraine.<\/p>\n

But the defense minister also said that any immediate NATO response to Russian aggression in Ukraine, while important, matter less than a long-term shift in the defense postures of Europe and America. The United States, having announced a \u201cpivot\u201d to Asia, needs to \u201cre-pivot\u201d to Europe, he said, and European countries that have cut back on defense spending need to reverse the trends.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe idea until recently was that there were no more threats in Europe and no need for a U.S. presence in Europe any more,\u201d Siemoniak said, speaking through an interpreter. \u201cEvents show that what is needed is a re-pivot, and that Europe was safe and secure because America was in Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n

How likely is such a reversal on defense spending? Siemoniak said there was widespread support at a recent meeting of European defense ministers. \u201cNow they\u2019ll go back to their presidents, prime ministers and ministers of finance, and this will stop being easy,\u201d he admitted. \u201cBut the impetus is very strong.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I can think of worse places to station US troops than Poland, but they’re kind of missing the biggest counter-measure. This administration needs to go back and start talking about the missile defense shield for eastern Europe once again. Obviously, that’s what keeps Putin awake at night. He laughs at sanctions placed on his minions, but a missile shield would bring him to the table. But this is the administration that thought that the troops arming themselves in a combat zone would send the wrong message, so I don’t think they have enough testicles between them to do what actually needs to be done.<\/p>\n

Troops in Poland will essentially defenseless without tanks, by the way, and tanks are few and far between in Europe these days. Without tanks, US troops will be little more than a political tripwire which would trigger sternly-worded letters and more pointless sanctions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ROS sends us a link from the Washington Post which reports that this week, Poland and … Boots on the ground in Poland<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-foreign-policy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=44187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=44187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=44187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=44187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}