From Reuters: Central Europe needs “strategic reassurance” from Washington and NATO forces should be placed in the region to underscore its value to the alliance, Poland’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

The minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said a visit last month to Poland and the Czech Republic by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, to ease concerns about Washington’s revised missile defense plans, had been welcome, but military capabilities would be more convincing than words.

“If you can still afford it, we need some strategic reassurance,” Sikorski said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington…

[T]here are just six U.S. soldiers in Poland right now, Sikorski noted, while Russia and Belarus recently staged a military exercise involving hundreds of tanks close to Poland.

“If you had on the one hand 900 tanks, and on the other six troops, would you be convinced?” he asked. (photo: Office of the Prime Minister of Poland)