Defense Department officials had abruptly canceled the deployments of thousands of troops there just last week.
President Trump announced on Thursday that the United States would deploy 5,000 troops to Poland, despite the Pentagon’s decision a week ago to cancel the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops there.
In a social media post that caught Pentagon officials by surprise, Mr. Trump suggested that he was making the move “based on the successful election” of Karol Nawrocki, Poland’s conservative nationalist president whom Mr. Trump endorsed in his election — nearly a year ago.
Mr. Trump’s apparent reversal of the Defense Department’s decision was the latest in series of head-snapping announcements that have stunned leaders of Poland, one of the administration’s staunchest allies in Europe, and drawn intense bipartisan criticism from lawmakers who said troop cuts in Eastern Europe would send the wrong signal to Russia.
The Pentagon declined to comment on Thursday, referring questions to the White House. That left a raft of unanswered questions, including whether the military would now need to cut troops elsewhere to fulfill Mr. Trump’s larger goal of having Europe shoulder more of its own security burdens and allow the United States to reduce its roughly 80,000 forces there.
The confusing situation started three weeks ago when the Pentagon said it was withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany and would redeploy them to the United States and other posts overseas. It also canceled a plan developed under the Biden administration to put a missile-equipped artillery unit in Europe.
Those decisions came after Mr. Trump angrily responded to remarks by Germany’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, that Iran had “humiliated” the United States. Mr. Merz questioned how Mr. Trump planned to end that conflict.