Harris’s meeting with Polish President Andrzej Duda, and with Romanian leaders a day later, was conceived as an effort to reassure countries on Europe’s eastern flank who are increasingly worried that after Russia completes its invasion of Ukraine it will target nearby NATO countries. President Biden has vowed to protect those countries as required under the NATO treaty, though that commitment has not been tested.
But things grew complicated on the eve of Harris’s trip. On Tuesday, Poland announced it would deliver an unspecified number of MiG-29 fighter jets to a U.S. military base to help repel Russian forces in Ukraine, and asked the United States to essentially backfill Poland’s supply of warplanes with other aircraft.
The Polish Defense Ministry said it was “ready to deploy — immediately and free of charge — all their MiG-29 jets to the Ramstein Air Base and place them at the disposal of the Government of the United States of America.” Ramstein is an American military facility in Germany.
The United States, however, has all but declined the offer. Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said in a statement Tuesday, “We do not believe Poland’s proposal is a tenable one.”
Still, the idea has sent ripples through the alliance. A senior European official said in an interview that Western officials were taken aback by Poland’s announcement, and another European official said he was “sideswiped.”
Those are the turbulent waters Harris must navigate Thursday. The United States has sanctioned Russia in an effort to punish its leadership since the invasion of Ukraine last month, but it has stopped short of direct military intervention that could draw the NATO alliance into a more direct conflict with Russia.
Poland’s proposal — and the prospect of U.S.-controlled jets taking off from an air base in a NATO country to engage in the Ukraine conflict — threatens that careful balance. Russian President Vladimir Putin has long claimed that his country’s aggression is a response to Western aggression, and American officials fear that the Polish plan would play into that storyline.
Another issue expected to be high on the agenda for the Harris-Duda meeting is U.S. aid for Ukrainian refugees, who have streamed over the Polish border since the invasion began.
The meeting will shine a spotlight on Harris, whose team is working to dispel perceptions that she is inexperienced on the international stage. By the end of the week, the vice president will have visited five countries in as many months, including making two transatlantic trips in three weeks.
More broadly, the White House also hopes that navigating through the crisis in Ukraine will shore up Americans’ views of Biden’s international leadership, which took a hit after a botched U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year left 13 U.S. service members dead and was marked by images of desperate Afghans seeking an exit.
In a call with reporters about the vice president’s trip, a senior administration official declined to provide detail about any communication between Warsaw and Washington before the Polish government announced its proposal but said the conversation about military aid to Ukraine continues.
“This is not a one-and-done situation. We have been discussing it across the board, and we will absolutely continue to do so,” the official said, speaking under ground rules that official not be named. “As you’ve seen from the Pentagon statement, it is our judgment that this one is not a tenable one. But we want and certainly are encouraging all allies to bring ideas forward and for us to stay in very close coordination across the board.”
At Wednesday’s White House media briefing, press secretary Jen Psaki cited “obvious concerns” with Poland’s fighter jet plans, saying that “carting (the planes) down the street” was not as easy as people might think.
“They have to be taken apart and put back together,” Psaki said. “You have to have people who are able to put those planes back together. You have to ensure that they can be safely moved through the course of a contested country.”
Psaki added the United States has “not held back” on providing other weapons, such as antimissile systems and tanks, throughout the war.
“There are important operational logistics concerns here and steps [and] conversations that should happen between military experts, and that’s exactly what’s happening,” she said. “It doesn’t require a military expert to understand why having planes fly from a U.S. air base into … a country where there is a war is not in our interests and not in NATO’s interests.”
