Obama, in Warsaw, Pledges Solidarity With Eastern Europe
As he began a four-day trip to Europe, President Obama announced new measures intended to bolster security in Central and Eastern Europe in response to Russia’s intervention in the crisis in Ukraine, including its annexation of Crimea.Mr. Obama tried to make a point of demonstrating solidarity with America’s friends in the region as soon as he landed in Poland, the first stop on his itinerary. Striding across the tarmac from Air Force One, he visited a hangar where four American F-16 fighter jets were parked, and addressed about 50 American and Polish airmen and soldiers with a message of resolve.“I’m starting the visit here because our commitment to Poland’s security as well as the security of our allies in central and eastern Europe is a cornerstone of our own security andit is sacrosanct,” Mr. Obama told the troops, with President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland at his side. “As friends and allies, we standunited together and forever,” Mr. Obama said.Later he announced that he would ask Congressfor $1 billion for a “European reassurance initiative” that would increase the American troop presence in Eastern Europe with additional exercises and training, and would send American Navy ships more often to the Baltic and Black seas. The plan would position more equipment in Europe for quicker military responses and dispatch American experts to augment the allies’ capabilities. It would also provide aid to Ukraine and two other former Soviet republics, Georgia and Moldova,.It was not clear whether Mr. Obama’s announcement would satisfy leaders in the region, who have so far been unimpressed by the relatively small forces the United States has sent in recent months. Mr. Obama has dispatched about 600 paratroopers to Poland and other allies in the region and rotated more aircraft and support personnel through the area.Anxious about the threat from Moscow, Polish leaders have been pressing for a more robust deployment, and even creation of a permanent base on their territory. NATO reached an agreement with Russia after the Cold War ended, promising to refrain from deploying substantial forces in Eastern Europe, but Polish officials have argued that Russia effectively abrogated that agreement by annexing Crimea.“For the first time since the Second World War, one European country has taken a province by force from another European country,” Radoslaw Sikorski, the Polish foreign minister, said in a telephone interview before Mr. Obama’s arrival. “America, we hope, has ways of reassuring us that we haven’t even thought about. There are major bases in Britain, in Spain, inPortugal, in Greece, in Italy. Why not here?”Joined by Secretary of State John Kerry, Mr. Obama met on Tuesday with Mr. Komorowski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, reaffirming repeatedly what he called America’s “rock solid commitment” to Polish security. He also met with the leaders of Bulgaria, Croatia, the CzechRepublic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia, all of whom traveled here to hear a similar message.On Wednesday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet for the first time with Petro O. Poroshenko, the president-elect of Ukraine, whose inauguration is set for Saturday. Mr. Obama hopes to reinforce American support for the new government in Kiev as it tries to stabilize a rocky economy and quell a violent pro-Russian insurgency in the eastern part of the country, where there was fresh fighting on Tuesday.Later on Wednesday, Mr. Obama plans to address a public rally marking the 25th anniversary of elections in Poland that led to the end of Communist rule. The fresh confrontation with Russia, coming at a time when this part of Europe is commemorating the end of the Cold War and Soviet domination, lent symbolic potency to the event.Then Mr. Obama plans to fly to Brussels to meet with leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Japan in a Group of 7 format. That meeting was originally supposed to be a Group of 8 summit in Sochi, Russia, hosted by President Vladimir V. Putin, but Russia was suspended from the group following its annexation of Crimea.From Brussels, Mr. Obama is to travel to France for meetings in Paris and a ceremony in Normandy marking the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Mr. Putin plans to attend the Normandy ceremony as well, setting up his first encounter with Mr. Obama since the Ukraine crisis erupted.Because Article 5 of the NATO charter obligates the United States and other alliance members to come to the defense of any member that is attacked, American and Western European officials doubt that Mr. Putin would use military force or the threat of it against a NATO ally like Poland, the way he has with nonmembers like Ukraine or Georgia, which was invaded by Russian forces in 2008 after a skirmish in a breakaway republic.Still, the nervousness was palpable in Warsaw as Mr. Obama arrived. “Russia is testing the strength of the international system set up by the United States after World War II,” Mr. Sikorski said. “She tested it in Georgia, which was an implied ally of the United States. She has now tested it in Ukraine. And I don’t think we can discount the possibility that she will test it again. And therefore our security guarantees have be credible, which is to say physically enforceable.”Russia objected strongly when the former Warsaw Pact nations of Central and Eastern Europe sought to join the NATO alliance in the 1990s, saying that Western troops on their soil would be a threat to Russia. In the 1997 agreement, NATO said it did not intend “additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces” in Eastern Europe, while Russia agreed to refrain “from the threat or use of force” that would violate the “sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence” of its neighbors.The American airmen whom Mr. Obama visited in the hangar at Okecie Airport are here as part of a full-time United States Air Force detachment stationed in Poland in November 2012. Since then, American F-16 jets and C-130 transport aircraft have rotated into the country temporarily for training exercises, and the United States added additional rotations after the crisis in Ukraine heated up.“Poles and Americans stand shoulder to shoulder for freedom,” Mr. Obama told the troops in the hangar. “And we’re so grateful to all of you for your service.”
