WARSAW, Poland — The Polish government will insist on the necessity of "a permanent military presence on the eastern flank of NATO" during the Warsaw summit to be held in July here, officials sayon 8-9 July at the National Stadium.
What kind of presence? "This is still a question under discussion," Polish Defense Minister Antoni Macierewicz said during a lunch meeting with international reporters to discuss "the most important event for security this year in Poland."
"Russia is an aggressive state, Russian troops are deploying more and more and Russian ballistic missiles are near our borders. We want to be prepared to react. This is why we need a NATO military presence every day," Macierewicz emphasized.
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo and Foreign Affairs Minister Witold Waszczykowski also underlined that the Warsaw summit July 8-9 must conclude with "concrete solutions" to face a threat that Russia could "destroy" Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said May 20 NATO will hold formal talks with Russia before members at the July summit endorse the alliance's biggest military buildup since the end of the Cold War.
In April, the NATO Russia Council (NRC) held its first meeting since June 2014 but the talks ended in "profound disagreements" over Ukraine and other issues although Stoltenberg said at the time it was a useful exchange.
Pressed last week by some of NATO's 28 member states to try again, alliance foreign ministers had agreed to explore if another NRC was possible, Stoltenberg said.
"We have agreed on the message of dialogue and defence ... based on that, there was broad agreement yesterday that NATO should convene a new meeting of the NRC before our next summit in July," he told reporters alongside European Union foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini on May 20 in Brussels.
"We will now start to look at the modalities and practical arrangements," he added as NATO foreign ministers met for a second day in Brussels.
Stung by Russia's Ukraine intervention and annexation of Crimea, US-led NATO cut all practical cooperation with Moscow but the NRC was kept open as a potential channel of communication.
At the same time, the alliance began a major military revamp to ensure a much quicker response in the event of a repeat of the Ukraine crisis.
A key component involves putting more troops and equipment into eastern Europe to reassure allies there they will not be left in the lurch, a move Russia says threatens its security.
Poland, host of the July summit, has pressed especially hard for NATO to take a hard line on Moscow as fears grow that Russia wants to re-establish its Cold War sphere of influence.
Some member states, however, have been nervous about ending up in a new Cold War, and Germany in particular has urged using the NRC to talk with Moscow — if only to show the alliance's good faith.
NATO diplomatic sources said others were unenthusiastic but prepared to go along in order to preserve unity.
A senior US official said it was not clear if there would be another NRC before the Warsaw summit "but the United States does not mind either way."
"Maintaining dialogue is good but we won't resume practical cooperation — joint exercises, etc. — until Ukraine is resolved," said the official, who asked not to be named.
In February, NATO defense ministers agreed to strengthen the alliance's military presence on the eastern flank. Such a presence would be "multinational, to make clear that an attack against one ally is an attack against all allies," Stoltenberg said at the time.
NATO is studying two possible plans for deploying the permanent troops: a battalion in Poland and each of the three Baltic states (roughly 800 to 1,000 in each unit); or, a more modest version, a single NATO battalion in the area. Those troops could deploy to the eastern flank in six-month rotations as Baltic air policing has been carried out since 2004 with four-month rotations.
Now NATO is dealing with this issue with the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force — the "spearhead" force — a measure the Eastern countries seem to think is lacking.
The Polish government is aware that the request for a permanent NATO military presence could face resistance from allies that do not perceive the Russian threat as Poland does, the officials said.
"NATO will produce a message of unity to Russia at the Warsaw summit ... I am not afraid about a "multi speed" NATO members, although we have different challenges, different threats, different solutions," Waszczykowski answered when asked about the diverse concerns of southern European countries. He offered "Polish solidarity" as NATO fights terrorism and deals with migration issues and instability in the Middle East and North Africa.
Asked to describe the Russian threat to Poland, the defense minister said: "In the '90s Russia held two wars in Chechnya; in 2008, Georgia; in 2014, Crimea, and its support to separatists in Donbass. ... What more evidences do you need?"
"Do you think Western European countries' troops would die for Estonia?" a Dutch journalist asked.
"Nobody wants to die for [other countries], but I would do it for Amsterdam," Macierewicz said.
These two questions and replies show how important the final «concrete solutions» to be taken at Warsaw Summit will be for Polish expectations.
Other Polish concerns are related to the deployment of the Iskander short-range ballistic missiles system in Kaliningrad. "We also need to have an answer to it. Those Iskander missiles can hit Poland but also Germany," Macierewicz said.
The Polish authorities reiterated the country does not aspire to have nuclear weapons, but instead endorsed "nuclear sharing."
"This means that only in case of war NATO member states could think about delivering nuclear weapons to other states. I have said 'only in case of war' and 'think about it,'" the foreign affairs minister added.
The Warsaw summit will bring together about 5,000 people in 60 delegations, including heads of state or government. Two thousand journalists are expected to cover the event. The main venue will be the National Stadium, although there will be four parallel events during the evening at the Presidential Palace, the Grand Theatre and the Castle of Warsaw.
The war against the Islamic State, the NATO southern countries' challenges, a faster mechanism to adopt military decisions, hybrid war, cyber, the commitment to spend 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense budgets, the invitation to Montenegro to become the 29th member state of NATO and the growing Artic concern will be also on the table of this summit which comes after the last one in Wales in 2014.
