Joe Biden Visits Central Europe
It’s Vice President Joe Biden’s turn to visit Europe and assure allies we didn’t abandoned them when we dropped plans to deploy missile shields, which would have helped defend the region from Iranian attacks.
Supporters of strong and comprehensive missile defense saw the move as an attempt to placate Russia, notoriously hard to please. President Barack Obama’s decision ostensibly was based on new intelligence showing Iran’s shorter-range rockets to be a greater threat than its long-range rockets.
Biden’s three-day trip is the first such visit to the Poland-Czech Republic region by a high-level official since the plans were dropped. Tony Blinken, Biden’s national security advisor, said Biden will discuss America’s “strong commitment to missile defense and to a better system, a more effective system, than the one we had originally proposed.”
The vice president will attempt to assure the two countries that the new missile defense system is better than the previous one. Will he also try to convince them the U.S. is not trying to appease the former Soviet Union? Although the administration denies the accusation, it looks like appeasement. Russia considered the shields a threat, and now the shields won’t happen. The U.S. wanted Russia to issue tougher sanctions against Iran, and Russia so far has refused. The U.S. has received nothing in the appeasement deal, and we appear weak.
We doubt Biden will say anything to change that perception.
(Source: ABC News)
Tags: Barack Obama, Czech Republic, Iran, Joe Biden, Poland, Russia