President Duda Urges Trump To Place Nuclear Weapons In Poland

Thursday saw more nuclear escalation nuttiness coming from heads of NATO states. This time it is NATO ‘eastern flank’ member Poland calling for more nuclear deterrence with an eye on Russia.

Poland’s President Andrzej Duda has again called on the United States to deploy nuclear weapons to his country, following on the heels of French President Emmanuel Macron last week saying he’s ready to extend France’s nuclear umbrella over all of Europe.

Duda’s fresh request of Washington came in an interview with the Financial Times, and some key lines were in the following:

Andrzej Duda said it was “obvious” that President Donald Trump could redeploy US nuclear warheads stored in western Europe or the US to Poland, a proposal the Polish president said he recently discussed with Keith Kellogg, US special envoy for Ukraine.

“The borders of Nato moved east in 1999, so 26 years later there should also be a shift of the Nato infrastructure east. For me this is obvious,” Duda said in an interview with the Financial Times. “I think it’s not only that the time has come, but that it would be safer if those weapons were already here.”

European leaders talking about “a shift of NATO infrastructure east” is precisely a key motive for Russia’s invasion in the first place – and such provocative rhetoric could only serve to escalate the full-blown proxy war.

President Duda as part of his rationale cited Russian tactical nukes currently stationed in Belarus, which sits to the immediate east of Poland.

“Russia did not even hesitate when they were relocating their nuclear weapons into Belarus,” Duda said. “They didn’t ask anyone’s permission.” So Duda is urging Washington to just do it, and similarly to not ‘ask permission’ or bother with consensus. 

Interestingly, on the question of Poland developing its own nuclear arsenal, he said this:

Duda, who is also supreme commander of Poland’s armed forces, echoed Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk in saying that the country could alternatively get better protection from President Emmanuel Macron’s idea to extend France’s “nuclear umbrella” to cover European allies. 

But Duda poured cold water on Tusk’s suggestion last week that Poland could develop its own nuclear arsenal. “In order to have our own nuclear capability, I think it would take decades,” the president said.

France, which remains the only nuclear power in the European Union, has called for a debate over strategic forces – especially amid signals that the Trump administration could again withdraw support for Ukraine, and might even step back from being the biggest military supplier and funder of the NATO alliance generally.

As for President Macron and his recent jingoistic remarks… for many Liberals and EU bureaucrats, he is currently the hero of Ukraine, and yet he’s now literally teasing nuclear escalation while claiming some kind of ‘Munich moment’ nonsense, as if Putin is about to imminently send his army to march down the Champs-Élysées.

It appears President Duda and Poland is jumping on the bandwagon – but of course these eastern European countries as well as the Baltic states have long presented the most heated rhetoric aimed at Moscow.