> “Of course we will be talking to the U.S. to make sure that the rotational U.S. forces would be in Lithuania permanently,” President Gitanas Nauseda told a news conference.
So, I’m not sure what this means, whether this is “keeping the rotation going permanently” or “ending rotation and stationing people there permanently”.
My understanding is that as it stands, the soldiers that the US rotates in Eastern Europe are mostly [National Guard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_(United_States)) (that is, the forces that are normally under state control and operate as one of the reserves for the federal forces).
Today, these are sent over, spend a short amount of time in the country, and then return back to their home state, and someone else gets sent out.
National Guard people *usually* don’t get stationed overseas or outside their state for a long period of time — my impression is that that’s a major part of why one would sign up for the National Guard as opposed to the regular federal forces.
As it stands, each state in Eastern Europe got assigned a US state to draw National Guard troops from (which, also from my past poking around, appears to be states where a lot of population had migrated to from back when). So, for example, Poland has Illinois, which has Chicago, the largest center of Polish-American population.
> NATO reiterates that in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement **rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces**. Accordingly, it will have to rely on adequate infrastructure commensurate with the above tasks. In this context, reinforcement may take place, when necessary, in the event of defence against a threat of aggression and missions in support of peace consistent with the United Nations Charter and the OSCE governing principles, as well as for exercises consistent with the adapted CFE Treaty, the provisions of the Vienna Document 1994 and mutually agreed transparency measures. Russia will exercise similar restraint in its conventional force deployments in Europe.
Now, I think that given the situation today in Ukraine, there’s probably a good argument that the security environment has changed from what it was in 1991, but the point was that there was an aim to avoid anyone being permanently-stationed, instead just keeping them on rotation.
If they’re talking about permanently on rotation, then I think that that’s probably a small change — there’s no reason that the rotation couldn’t run for as long as is desired.
If they’re talking about being permanently-*stationed*, like, people need to be sent to *live* in Lithuania for years, have to have their family and all also sent out, my guess is that it won’t be National Guard troops (again, these are people who expect not to be taken away from their home state for long term), but federal ones, and it will probably mean that NATO would need to officially take the position that the security environment today has changed.
2 comments
Hope this comes true for our Lithuanian friends!
> “Of course we will be talking to the U.S. to make sure that the rotational U.S. forces would be in Lithuania permanently,” President Gitanas Nauseda told a news conference.
So, I’m not sure what this means, whether this is “keeping the rotation going permanently” or “ending rotation and stationing people there permanently”.
My understanding is that as it stands, the soldiers that the US rotates in Eastern Europe are mostly [National Guard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Guard_(United_States)) (that is, the forces that are normally under state control and operate as one of the reserves for the federal forces).
Today, these are sent over, spend a short amount of time in the country, and then return back to their home state, and someone else gets sent out.
National Guard people *usually* don’t get stationed overseas or outside their state for a long period of time — my impression is that that’s a major part of why one would sign up for the National Guard as opposed to the regular federal forces.
As it stands, each state in Eastern Europe got assigned a US state to draw National Guard troops from (which, also from my past poking around, appears to be states where a lot of population had migrated to from back when). So, for example, Poland has Illinois, which has Chicago, the largest center of Polish-American population.
https://www.nationalguard.mil/Portals/31/Documents/J-5/InternationalAffairs/StatePartnershipProgram/National-Guard-State-Partnership-Program-Map-(1-Jan-22).pdf
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poles_in_Chicago
Lithuania has Pennsylvania, which has New Philadelphia, the place with the highest percentage of Lithuanian-American population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuanian_Americans
Georgia has Georgia, which…I don’t think has a migrant connection so much as the name.
Anyway, I *think* that the reason for the rotation may be due to the [NATO-Russia Founding Act](https://www.nato.int/nrc-website/media/59451/1997_nato_russia_founding_act.pdf), which states that:
> NATO reiterates that in the current and foreseeable security environment, the Alliance will carry out its collective defence and other missions by ensuring the necessary interoperability, integration, and capability for reinforcement **rather than by additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces**. Accordingly, it will have to rely on adequate infrastructure commensurate with the above tasks. In this context, reinforcement may take place, when necessary, in the event of defence against a threat of aggression and missions in support of peace consistent with the United Nations Charter and the OSCE governing principles, as well as for exercises consistent with the adapted CFE Treaty, the provisions of the Vienna Document 1994 and mutually agreed transparency measures. Russia will exercise similar restraint in its conventional force deployments in Europe.
Now, I think that given the situation today in Ukraine, there’s probably a good argument that the security environment has changed from what it was in 1991, but the point was that there was an aim to avoid anyone being permanently-stationed, instead just keeping them on rotation.
If they’re talking about permanently on rotation, then I think that that’s probably a small change — there’s no reason that the rotation couldn’t run for as long as is desired.
If they’re talking about being permanently-*stationed*, like, people need to be sent to *live* in Lithuania for years, have to have their family and all also sent out, my guess is that it won’t be National Guard troops (again, these are people who expect not to be taken away from their home state for long term), but federal ones, and it will probably mean that NATO would need to officially take the position that the security environment today has changed.