Obama pledges $1 bln to step up US military presence in Eastern Europe
3 June 2014, 20:53 -- President Obama is preparing to invest $1 billion in boosting US military presence in Eastern Europe as tensions are running high in Ukraine.
The White House will send more military equipment to the region and rotate additional troops to 'reaffirm' its commitment to NATO allies.
'Today, I'm announcing a new initiative to bolster the support of our NATO allies here in Europe,' Obama said Tuesday at a news conference in Poland, Ukraine's western neighbor. 'Under this effort, and with the support of Congress, the United States will preposition more equipment in Europe.'
'Given the situation in Ukraine right now, we have also increased our American presence. We've begun rotating additional ground troops and F-16 aircraft into Poland... to help our forces support NATO air missions,' said Obama, calling the commitment to NATO allies in Europe 'the cornerstone of our own security.'
While on his two-day trip the first stop of his trip to Europe, US President is also scheduled to meet with Ukraine's president-elect, Petr Poroshenko. Before their first face-to-face meeting, Obama has called on Moscow to refrain from further provocation in Ukraine and said it has a responsibility to work constructively with the new government in Kiev.
'We are interested in good relations with Russia. We are not interested in threatening Russia,' Obama said, but added that 'rebuilding trust may take some time.'
After the Polish capital, US President is scheduled to proceed to the G7 Summit in Brussels. Additionally, the US leader will visit France to attend ceremonies dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy.
'Mr. Obama is trying to renew the alliance of the Central European countries which would of course represent the anti-Russian stance in the context of the Ukrainian crisis,'- Mateusz Piskorski, Head of the European Center for Geopolitical Analysis, based in Poland, told Radio VR. 'Mr. Obama has managed to invite different Central and Eastern European leaders for meeting in Warsaw and to discuss the possibilities of strengthening the American presence there. This means that probably Mr. Obama is influenced by those who want to continue the more confrontational line with Russia in the context of the Ukrainian crisis.'
'It is going to revive the whole idea of old and new Europe which means that the new EU countries, as well as some post-Soviet countries from Eastern Europe, would create a kind of anti-Russian\pro-American block in which we would have to deal with strengthening military and intelligence presence of the US," he added.
But VR's political analyst Dmitry Babich wonders if the US military presence will do good to Ukraine's European members.
'The question is: are Poland and the other Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries happy to be 'the battlefield' in the event of a conflict with Russia? Isn't NATO membership a threat, rather than a boon, to the security of Poland and other new NATO members in the center and east of Europe,' he writes.
'So, this is the true audience that Obama will be addressing in Warsaw with his calls to 'isolate' or even to 'contain' Russia. A pretty dreadful and almost indecent repetition of history – between 1917 and 1941, Western powers led the same policy. And they would have been no more now, if Russia had stayed 'isolated' and 'contained' during our common fight with Nazism in 1940s,' he adds.
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