Poland is negotiating a permanent American military base just as Washington considers how far it might go to persuade Putin to end the war The United States now appears prepared to put NATO's military presence in Eastern Europe on the negotiating table as part of a deal to end the war in Ukraine. That means Vladimir Putin's long-standing demand to demilitarize the alliance's eastern flank could become part of the bargaining. You don’t have to take my word for it. On Thursday, after a private White House meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s economic envoy, Donald Trump said the coming agreement would “involve more than Ukraine” and that “it might involve all of Europe.” “It's going to be a big, beautiful agreement and everyone's going to be thrilled,” he declared. Hours later, his son-in-law and peace envoy, Jared Kushner, spelled out on the social media platform X what that means: a new European security framework addressing “the security concerns of all sides,” built on “reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks.” Kushner, it must be said, is never knowingly under-optimistic. Every round of these talks comes wrapped in the promise of a peaceful Europe “for generations to come” and every round has ended with Russian missiles still falling on Ukrainian cities. In Warsaw, Vilnius and Tallinn, though, officials will not share Kushner’s sunny outlook. For them, “the security concerns of all sides” means Russia’s objection to the allied troops on their soil, and Poland, which is in the middle of negotiating a permanent American base, has the most to lose. Putin has been here before After meeting Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg on October 21, Putin said the following day that the American envoy had stressed the need to discuss “the architecture of European security as a whole.” “And I agree with that too,” Putin added. We know what Moscow means by architecture because it published in December 2021, weeks before the full-scale invasion. In it, Russia demanded that NATO pull allied forces back to where they stood in 1997, before Poland and the Baltic states joined. NATO and Washington rejected it in writing on January 26, 2022, when Jens Stoltenberg, then the alliance's secretary-general, said NATO “cannot and will not compromise on the principles” on which European security rests. Now the demand is back. Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy adviser, has reportedly called again for a return to the pre-1997 posture. Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned on October 27 that Moscow wanted NATO infrastructure withdrawn from parts of the alliance. “I believe that any retreat, any rollback in security terms, is a sign of weakness for the alliance,” he said. Radosław Sikorski, Poland’s foreign minister, made the link explicit on Thursday, warning that Russia is returning to “the ultimatums of 2021.” Why Washington is listening Part of the explanation is Trump's determination to secure a peace agreement after repeated efforts have produced little progress. Talks confined to Ukrainian territory have gone nowhere, so Witkoff and Kushner have made the deal bigger, piling in sanctions relief, reconstruction money and Europe's security order in the hope that Putin finds something worth stopping for. The snag is that a bigger bargain lets Russia make demands of countries it has neither defeated nor fought. There is also a broader American strategic calculation. The Pentagon wants European countries to assume primary responsibility for their conventional defense, allowing the United States to concentrate more resources on other priorities, particularly China. That makes sense from Washington's perspective. Europe has the economic resources to shoulder a much greater share of its own defense. But there is a considerable difference between reducing America's military burden and agreeing to restrictions on where NATO can station its forces. Indeed, American combat troops on the eastern flank provide considerable deterrence at a relatively modest cost, particularly when countries such as Poland are willing to pay for infrastructure. Their presence means that any Russian attack could involve American forces from the outset. Giving that up would be a substantial concession to Moscow, and it is far from clear what Washington would receive in return. Of course, putting Russia's demands on the negotiating table does not mean agreeing to them. And NATO is not America's to bargain away. The US can decide where to station its own troops, but changes to the alliance's collective defense arrangements would require agreement from its other members, including the countries that joined after 1997 and the older European allies, such as Britain, France and Germany. But Trump's control over American troop deployments is precisely what makes the latest developments so uncomfortable for Poland. Poland's uncomfortable dilemma The timing is particularly awkward for Warsaw. Both Donald Tusk's government and President Karol Nawrocki are pushing for a permanent American military base. Deputy Defense Minister Paweł Zalewski said this week that Poland had completed the first stage of negotiations and that a decision could come around December or January. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is reviewing its military deployments across Europe, and Trump's peace negotiators are discussing a wider European security settlement with Russia. There is, of course, no evidence that Washington has offered to sacrifice the Polish base or accepted Moscow's demands for restrictions on NATO deployments. Kushner explicitly promises that NATO will remain central to European defense and that no country will have a veto over another's security choices. Those assurances are important, but they do not necessarily rule out concessions to Moscow. NATO could remain intact, with every country retaining its sovereign right to belong to the alliance, while the US at least restricts the deployment of its forces along the eastern flank. And that is precisely what Russia has been demanding for years. Poland and the Baltic states could remain full NATO members, but with significant limitations on the military presence of the allies that are supposed to help defend them. Poland's Trump dilemma And there are political complications for Warsaw. Nawrocki has invested heavily in his close relationship with Trump, presenting it as an advantage for Poland's security. That could become distinctly awkward if Washington starts entertaining Russian demands affecting the eastern flank. Tusk, meanwhile, faces the challenge of keeping the Americans engaged while ensuring that Poland has a meaningful voice in negotiations affecting its security. Next week's US-mediated talks with Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi will provide the first indication of how far this wider negotiating agenda might go. European governments have been consulted, although their direct participation in the negotiations remains uncertain. There is even talk of Trump, Xi Jinping and Putin meeting at the APEC summit in Shenzhen on 18 and 19 November. If it happens, the future of NATO’s eastern flank could be discussed by three men, none of whom lives anywhere near it.
