US opens missile base in Poland as Trump presidency looms over NATO
WARSAW, Nov 13 (Reuters) -The United States will officially open a new air defence base in northern Poland on Wednesday, as Warsaw seeks to reassure citizens that NATO guarantees their security amid jitters after Donald Trump's presidential election victory.
Situated in the town of Redzikowo near the Baltic coast, the base has been in the works since the 2000s and Warsaw says it symbolises the fact that its military alliance with Washington remains solid no matter who is in the White House.
"It took a while, but this construction proves the geostrategic resolve of the United States," Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski said 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 stressed his warm ties with Trump, is set to attend the base opening ceremony. On Monday, he told reporters that Trump had called him with greetings for Polish independence day.
Trump's past criticism has unnerved some NATO members, as he has vowed that under his leadership the United States would not defend countries which do not spend enough on defence.
However, Poland says the fact it is the alliance's biggest spender on defence relative to the size of its economy means it should have nothing to fear.
MISSILE SHIELD
Dubbed 'Aegis Ashore', the U.S. base at Redzikowo is part of a broader NATO missile shield which the alliance says is capable of intercepting short- to intermediate-range ballistic missiles.
Other key elements of the shield include a second Aegis Ashore site in Romania, along with U.S. navy destroyers based in the Spanish port of Rota and an early-warning radar in the Turkish town of Kurecik.
Russian and Belarussian officials said they were watching the NATO base carefully and would factor it into their military planning.
Moscow had already labelled it a threat to Russia as far back as 2007, when the base was still in the planning stages. NATO says the shield is purely defensive.
The Redzikowo base was to some extent a "relic of a previous era", however, Marek Swierczynski, an analyst from think-tank Polityka Insight, told state news agency PAP, as it was designed with a threat from Iran in mind rather than one from Russia.
Polish Defence Minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz said on Monday the scope of the shield needed to be expanded and Warsaw would discuss this with NATO and the United States.
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will meet Duda and Prime Minister Donald Tusk in Warsaw later on Wednesday.
Reporting by Alan Charlish; Additional reporting by Barbara Erling and Sabine Siebold; Editing by Clarence Fernandez
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