WARSAW — Poland has narrowed its proposal for a new permanent United States military base to two sites in western Poland, Deputy Defense Minister Cezary Tomczyk said Monday, naming Greater Poland and Lower Silesia as the locations Warsaw considers most viable.
“We have selected two most likely locations for an American base. These are Greater Poland and Lower Silesia,” Tomczyk said in an interview with RMF FM radio. A final decision has not been made, he added, saying “another location may emerge.” The announcement comes weeks after Poland formally submitted its base proposal to Washington in early June.
The selection of western rather than eastern locations is a deliberate strategic choice. Tomczyk said a western base would be optimal for the forward deployment of NATO forces, explaining that Poland has spent years developing logistics infrastructure at western airports specifically to receive military assistance from the alliance. A base further east — closer to the Russian and Belarusian borders — would function as a different kind of installation, more exposed and less useful as a reinforcement hub.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has argued publicly that Russia could strike a NATO member within months, framing Poland’s defense investments — including the US base request — as urgent rather than aspirational. The base proposal is part of a broader Polish positioning that Warsaw’s willingness to host and finance allied infrastructure gives it leverage with Washington over the terms and permanence of the US commitment.
Poland currently hosts approximately 10,000 US troops, primarily on a rotational basis. A permanent US Army garrison became operational in Poznan in 2023. The facility Tomczyk described Monday would go substantially beyond those arrangements — officials have described the planned installation as resembling permanent American military communities in Germany, including schools, commissaries, and medical facilities alongside the garrison itself.
Greater Poland — Wielkopolska in Polish — is the central-western region whose capital is Poznan, where the US already maintains a small permanent presence. Lower Silesia, in the southwest, has Wroclaw as its regional center. Both sit within Poland’s main western logistics corridor, the same infrastructure Polish defense planners have identified as the optimal route for moving NATO reinforcements eastward in a crisis scenario.
The financial arrangement has been a consistent feature of Poland’s pitch. Officials have indicated Warsaw is prepared to cover construction costs, estimated by analysts at around $3 billion. President Trump announced earlier this year that the US would send an additional 5,000 troops to Poland — a pledge that has not yet been fulfilled in detail, and which the formal base proposal is partly designed to structure into a permanent commitment.
NATO launched a new defence financing structure this month with nine founding members, providing additional context for Poland’s accelerating security investment. Warsaw is building institutional and physical infrastructure to position itself as NATO’s primary eastern logistics hub, rather than a country relying on rotating allied commitment that could change with an election cycle in Washington.
The Pentagon is conducting a force posture review to assess whether to accept the Polish proposal and which of the candidate sites it prefers. Poland formally submitted the base request to Washington in early June. Neither the Pentagon nor the US State Department commented publicly on Tomczyk’s Monday announcement. Public opinion in Poland on the base is divided: a June poll showed 44 percent in favor and 41 percent opposed, though the government has not treated that margin as an obstacle to pursuing the proposal.
What Tomczyk’s announcement does not address is when a final decision is expected or whether Washington has indicated a preference between the two sites. Both questions remain open.
