And that is exactly what is pissing off the Russians. When the Cold War ended and the Warsaw Pact folded, the Russians went home. Their fear was that US/NATO troops would "move up the road a bit" as you put it. In other words we didn't go home.
Time for Western Europe to put up or shut up and if they want to slug it out with Russia over the Ukraine, they don't need US troops to do that.
I don’t disagree (too much) with you on this. However, if they’re going to be there anyway, I’d just as soon they were in the cheaper location. I got to visit Poland a couple of times in my final European tour. The people were very friendly to me. They treated us well, a Polish chaplain friend took us to his old seminary in Wroclaw, I got to meet his family. They fed us dinner, took us in, treated us like family. His brother, now the mayor of his town, had been imprisoned for years during the communist regime because of his participation in Solidarity.
They WELCOMED us, BradyLS.
I would not want to threaten the independence of this new Poland, but we might disagree on troops in Poland. Nevertheless, if we’re going to have troops in Europe, I’d far rather they were in cheaper Poland than in more expensive German. (And I think a tour in Germany is its own kind of holiday; Germany is that neat of a place to be.)