Warsaw officials began "feverishly, if not frantically" calling Washington after initial reports that the Pentagon had abruptly cancelled the arrival of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team in Poland, the paper said. Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said Tuesday the rotation had been "delayed", not cancelled, with final basing decisions to be worked out through consultations in coming weeks.
The Sueddeutsche Zeitung questioned why the freeze targeted a country "exemplarily fulfilling all American demands regarding higher defense spending", while acknowledging that "establishing the reasons for such a move is difficult".
The paper speculated that relocating the 2nd Cavalry Regiment from its base in Vilseck, Bavaria — where soldiers live with their families — would be costly and time-consuming. "So instead, for practical reasons, the ongoing deployment of a brigade from Texas to Poland was halted", it wrote.
"Trump's punishment thus affects not Germany and its chancellor, who is quick to criticize the U.S., but Poland, whose right-wing populist president Karol Nawrocki is a declared Trump supporter", the paper said, adding that observers speculated the cavalry regiment from Vilseck could soon be transferred to Poland as compensation.
NATO officials were approaching the matter "calmly", though they were not being briefed on details, according to the paper, which warned that "everything would be twice as good if Europe knew what the U.S. was planning".
While the military consequences of the decision were "manageable", the political damage was far greater, it said. Rational planning to avoid a "deterrence gap" was "nearly impossible if the U.S. does not communicate with its allies".
(jh)
Source: PAP