Published November 13,2024
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The United States will formally open a brand new air defence base in northern Poland on Wednesday, as Warsaw seeks to reassure residents that NATO ensures their safety amid jitters after Donald Trump‘s presidential election victory.
Situated within the city of Redzikowo close to the Baltic coast, the bottom has been within the works for the reason that 2000s and Warsaw says it symbolises the truth that its navy alliance with Washington stays stable irrespective of who’s within the White House.
“It took a while, but this construction proves the geostrategic resolve of the United States,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski mentioned in a video posted to X on Tuesday.
“The Polish-American alliance is strong, regardless of who governs in Warsaw and Washington.”
Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who has confused his heat ties with Trump, is ready to attend the bottom opening ceremony. On Monday, he instructed reporters that Trump had known as him with greetings for Polish independence day.
Trump’s previous criticism has unnerved some NATO members, as he has vowed that beneath his management the United States wouldn’t defend international locations which don’t spend sufficient on defence.
However, Poland says the very fact it’s the alliance’s greatest spender on defence relative to the scale of its economic system means it ought to don’t have anything to concern.
MISSILE SHIELD
Dubbed ‘Aegis Ashore’, the U.S. base at Redzikowo is a part of a broader NATO missile defend which the alliance says is able to intercepting short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Other key parts of the defend embody a second Aegis Ashore web site in Romania, together with U.S. navy destroyers primarily based within the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar within the Turkish city of Kurecik.
Russian and Belarussian officers mentioned they have been watching the NATO base fastidiously and would issue it into their navy planning.
Moscow had already labelled it a menace to Russia way back to 2007, when the bottom was nonetheless within the planning levels. NATO says the defend is solely defensive.
The Redzikowo base was to some extent a “relic of a previous era”, nevertheless, Marek Swierczynski, an analyst from think-tank Polityka Insight, instructed state news company PAP, because it was designed with a menace from Iran in thoughts relatively than one from Russia.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz mentioned on Monday the scope of the defend wanted to be expanded and Warsaw would focus on this with NATO and the United States.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will meet Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw in a while Wednesday.
Source: www.anews.com.tr