Reply #112: Throughout history Poland has been a target should war come.

[pampango]

This probably does not need to be explained to them. They have more experience with this than we do. Their government needs to decide whether an anti-missile base gives them more security of less.

Small countries next to big powerful ones have three options to preserve their national integrity. They can essentially kowtow to their big neighbor and keep them happy by doing whatever they want (the "how high do you want me to jump" model).

They can try to make themselves strong enough, with a stronger military or international alliances, that the big country will think that conquering the small one (while it will always be militarily possible) isn't worth the effort (kind of the Switzerland option).

Or they can do neither and just hope that the big guy will respect international law and just accept a weak but possibly unfriendly country on its border.