EUROPEAN MISSILE DEFENCE
Mark Dowe
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA has decided to scrap plans for a US missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland that had deeply angered Russia. Under the plan, which had been proposed by the Bush administration to defend the United States and its European allies against a possible missile attack from Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East, 10 interceptor rockets were to have been stationed in Poland and a radar system based in the Czech Republic.
NATO’s new chief hailed the move as “a positive step” and a Russian analyst said the move will increase the chances that Russia will cooperate more closely with the United States in the dispute over Iran’s nuclear programme. Yet, the timing of the announcement was symbolically poor, coming on September 17th, the anniversary of the Soviet attack on Poland in 1939. In a country highly tuned to symbolic snubs, it matters that nobody in Washington seemed to know or care about that.
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The news was broken clumsily too: the Czech prime minister was woken by a brief phone call from Mr. Obama the night before the decision was made public. It will be disappointing for the Czech Republic who will receive nothing for its steadfast loyalty to a controversial scheme that was supposedly a symbol of America’s commitment to the region; politicians in Prague will no-doubt feel humiliated by such a reversal. Poland is at least gaining some promise of a beefed up US contribution to its security. Underpinning the US decision is its assessment that the threat of an attack is from short and mid-range missiles rather than long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Pragmatically, the American change of plan is perfectly understandable. The technology of the planned scheme was unproven, let alone disproportionate given the nascent and embryonic Iranian threat it was supposed to counter. As with the decision to deploy Cruise and Pershing missiles in Western Europe in the 1980s, something that was meant to strengthen the Atlantic alliance ended up putting it under strain. Czech and Polish public opinion has been increasingly sceptical, if not, at times, even outright hostile to the bases. Other countries worried that pro-American hawks in ex-communist countries were risking an unnecessary confrontation with Russia.
America’s new strategy and plan is different. Mr. Obama has described it as a “stronger, smarter and swifter” defence of American forces in Europe and of its allies. Reinforcing existing defences against possible long-range Iranian missiles is seen as a problem for the future, given that America now says that Iran is working more on short and medium-range missiles than on long-range ones. For now, the extra deployments will be less capable sea-based Aegis missiles which could shoot down any medium-range Iranian missiles aimed at mainland Europe. After 2015, with further development, the scheme could encompass land-based versions of the SM3 missile which, the Pentagon says, would cover all of Europe by 2018.
To soften the impact of the decision to withdraw the US missile defence shield, America did reiterate its promise to place a battery of Patriot short-range missiles to defend Warsaw. Poland expects that this pledge will be US-financed, part of NATO’s commitment to the country’s defence, and fully integrated with Poland’s own air-defence system.
Strategically, though, the technicalities could have additional ramifications. Whilst Russia has welcomed the decision to shelve the existing scheme, it is unlikely to be pleased about any replacements based anywhere in the former soviet empire, which the president, Dmitry Medvedev, has described as a sphere of Russian “privileged interests”. Yet, if America could obtain Russian help in squeezing Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, and if Russia also backs down on its threatened deployment of missiles in the Kaliningrad region, which borders Poland, it would be easy for the administration to walk even further away from missile defences in Europe.
America’s timing on this issue may well have been shaped by the forthcoming meeting of the UN General Assembly. Russia and China, for instance, have been reluctant to agree to further sanctions or other pressures on Iran. President Obama may hope that by demonstrating a willingness to engage Russia in Europe he might have a better chance of co-operation in the Middle East.
The Big task for Washington now is to reassure the Poles and other nervous ex-communist countries, such as the Baltic States, that it remains committed to their defence. It stresses that ample high-level structures exist in addressing these anxieties and that NATO is actively rethinking its defence plans in the east. But further discussions will be needed in allaying fears that are becoming increasingly restive. The east European countries, squeezed between an increasingly close Russian-German friendship, look anxiously towards America that it intends to safeguard their interests.
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