2021

Safety & Defense

Journal year: 2021 | Journal volume: vol. 7 | Journal number: no. 3

scientific article

english

EN The ongoing cooperation between the United States and Poland on ballistic missile defense has been centered for a long time solely around the construction of the U.S. missile defense complex in Readzikowo, Poland. Although the complex is going to operate as an element of the NATO Integrated Air and Missile Defense System, its origins were tied to bilateral security and defense cooperation between the U.S. and Poland. As the presence of the U.S. military forces in Poland will remain crucial for Polish security and de-fense, and the societal support will be vital for its sustainment, it is worth exploring how Polish society reacted to concepts and plans for fielding the U.S. missile defense complex several years ago. The aim of this article was to explore the evolution of societal support and public opinion in Poland related to the construction of the U.S. missile defense complex in Redzikowo, Poland. The following research prob-lem was posed: how has the Polish public opinion about the missile defense complex construction changed over time? The research relied on methods of qualitative and quantitative analysis, and the primary re-search technique was the analysis of public opinion polls in Poland between 2004 and 2019. Public opinion has remained interested in the developments related to hosting the U.S. missile defense complex in Poland since early negotiations to the project implementation phase. The project was seen in a broader con-text of security and defense cooperation with the U.S. and within the NATO.

32 - 41

https://doi.org/10.37105/sd.137

https://sd-magazine.eu/index.php/sd/article/view/137/115

CC BY (attribution alone)

open journal

final published version

16.10.2021

at the time of publication

70

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