A US View on the Missile Defence system in Eastern Europe

A Russian viewpoint is presented in another article. THis is from the Toledo Blade. Surprisingly the Russian article is rather restrained and doesn't make fun of the suggestion that the system is for defence against Iran or North Korea although it does suggest there would be more appropriate places to put it!


Article published Wednesday, February 28, 2007
U.S. picks wrong moment to poke the Russian bear


Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, is a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.




NOT to pursue the imagery too far, but America is toying with the Russian bear that now lives just beyond the edge of America's new backyard, the countries formerly in the purview of the former Soviet Union that are now in NATO.





The administration is talking about positioning pieces of its beloved $90 billion Star Wars ballistic-missile defense system, which hasn't been shown to work yet, in Poland and the Czech Republic. The envisaged elements of the system would be poised on the border between NATO and Russia, but the administration is claiming that it would be directed against possible attacks by North Korean or Iranian missiles.

To put the system on the border with Russia and say that it is directed against North Korea and Iran might offer Russia a fig leaf of self-respect, but it would also invite the Russians to allow themselves to be painted and treated by America as stupid. It is the equivalent of the United States building a fence along the Mexican border and claiming it is there to keep North African immigrants out of the United States.

The honest Russian response was to tell Poland and the Czech Republic that it was fair enough for them to accept their new responsibilities in NATO by agreeing to the installation of the U.S. missile system on their soil, but that Russia would have to consider among its responses the re-targeting of its own missiles against Poland and the Czech Republic. Those two countries immediately screeched that the Russians were threatening them. The Russian response was that it wasn't a threat and that it had been uttered by one general, albeit the commander of its strategic missile force.

The United States and other NATO members have taken some actions along the way to lull the Russians into acquiescence as NATO expanded to include the former Warsaw Pact nations of Bulgaria, the two parts of the former Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, and Romania. The argument was that these countries wanted to join NATO and that their membership posed no threat to Russia.

That line prevailed as NATO membership grew to also include Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, former republics of the Soviet Union. Now the Russians see the same argument being advanced for Georgia and Ukraine.

That's getting close to home, and if it is all so harmless, why exactly does the United States want to put parts of a missile defense system on Russia's very borders? And if today it is installed in the Czech Republic and Poland, how do the Russians know that tomorrow it won't appear in the Baltic republics?

All of this comes against a background in Russia itself that on the political side includes presidential elections next year, with no successor to Vladimir Putin yet in sight. On the economic side, Russia continues to go from strength to strength, primarily based on the generally rising price of its oil. Its combination of growing economic strength and uncertainty about its future leadership makes it, to a degree, a potentially serious bear, not to be messed with idly.

If we didn't know better, we might think that the Bush Administration would take into consideration the sensitivities currently at play in Russia and not throw stones at it from the relative insecurity of the fragile eastern European borders.

It would be a mistake to think that the defenses the NATO countries had in place before the end of the Cold War would be usable against Russia now. Those defenses were located in western Europe on the borders of the Warsaw Pact countries, not on the border with Russia.

There has been some buildup of defenses near Russia in the new NATO countries, but neither construction nor geography offers a serious deterrent to Russia's military involvement in its eastern European neighbors if it so wishes.

Those countries' only credible defense depends on the United States and the western European NATO countries. The United States is in no position to defend them, particularly with the demands of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Yet the western European countries had heaved a sigh of relief when the former Warsaw Pact countries joined NATO, seeing an end to their own responsibilities to serve as partners with the United States in the defense of their eastern neighbors.

When the Russian bear snarled at the thought of the U.S. putting missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic, the western European response came in the form of the ever helpful United Kingdom hastening to state that under active consideration was the thought of putting part of the U.S. missile defense system in the United Kingdom, not in Poland or the Czech Republic.

One might be tempted to imagine that the heavy U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan right now might serve as a reason not to throw stones at Russia at the moment.

There might also be some reason to imagine that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, allegedly a specialist in Russian affairs who also presumably has the ear of President Bush, might quickly head off this provocation of the Russians as ill-timed, with their elections coming up and them flexing their muscles because of their growing oil wealth.

It seems instead that the United States has chosen almost precisely the wrong moment to challenge Russia in its own backyard.

What does possess us?

Dan Simpson, a retired diplomat, is a member of the editorial boards of The Blade and Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.