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Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, has expressed readiness to allow the United States create a permanent military base in the country with Donald Trump’s name on it.
Speaking with Trump and reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Duda said Poland would pay more than $2 billion for the military installation to be named Fort Trump.
He told Trump that his country was “willing to make a very major contribution to the United States to come in and have a presence in Poland.”
Trump said he would consider the proposal. Facing Russia’s increased military activity in the region, Poland has been pressing for the 3,000 U.S. troops now deployed in Poland on a temporary, rotating basis to be upgraded to a larger, permanent presence.
A 1997 NATO-Russia agreement technically forbids U.S. or NATO troops from being permanently based in former Warsaw Pact countries, including Poland. Over the summer, the U.S. ambassador to NATO told Chris Wallace on “Fox News Sunday” that the Trump administration was considering the move anyway.
“We look at all offers made like that, but no decision is being made right now. But looking at it, yes,” the ambassador, Kay Bailey Hutchison, a former U.S. senator from Texas, said on the program.
Last month, Duda said that a U.S. base in Poland would “scare away every potential attacker” during a massive military parade that featured Polish and U.S. troops.
Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine has caused anxiety in Poland and elsewhere, as Moscow has continued to support separatists in eastern Ukraine. U.S. and NATO troops were deployed to Poland and the region last year as a security assurance.