The U.S. and Russia recently agreed to honor the spirit of the expired Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), while they continue to negotiate a replacement treaty. Under the treaty, signed by Russia and the U.S. in 1991, both countries agreed to reduce nuclear warheads to roughly 6,000 and delivery vehicles to 1,600. Eleven years later, the Moscow Treaty, a follow-up to START, required warhead reductions to between 1,700 and 2,200.
Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, said the two countries are still trying to replace START and blames America’s plans to continue developing a comprehensive missile defense system for the delay. (Source)
“If we don’t develop a missile defense system, a danger arises for us that with an umbrella protecting our partners from offensive weapons, they will feel completely safe,” he said. “The balance will be disrupted and then they will do whatever they want, and aggressiveness will immediately arise both in real politics and economics.”
Putin adds that to counter our missile shield Russia would make new offensive weapons. As a result, he is demanding that the U.S. provide Russia detailed data on its missile defense plans and capabilities. Logic dictates that Putin wants Russia to receive this information in order to permit it to modernize its offensive nuclear force in ways to defeat the missile defense system.
Will Barack Obama allow Russia to make START’s replacement contingent on whether the U.S. changes its missile defense policy? Obama already dropped plans to deploy missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, although he claimed Iran’s missile capabilities were the reason, not Russia’s negative reaction. President Obama’s explanation is not convincing and suggests that he is bowing to Prime Minister Putin’s demands that the U.S. terminate its missile defense program in order to get the START follow-on treaty.
Yesterday, Iran test-launched its longest-range, solid fuel missile, capable of hitting Israel and parts of Europe, a day after the House of Representatives voted for sanctions against the rogue state.
Iran’s Sajjil-2 is the kind of weapon missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic would have defended against. President Barack Obama dropped the Bush-era missile shield plans in Central Europe for one that deals with shorter-range missiles. The administration’s new missile defense policy doesn’t jibe with the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) goals. Stopping Iran’s long-range missiles will be the focus of the MDA’s simulated attack next month.
The Telegraph analyzes why Iran test-launched the Sajjil-2. Reporter Richard Spencer writes:
“[T]he most important response to Iran’s noise in recent weeks has been its mirror image: Israel’s silence…Since making his keynote speech to the Muslim world a week before the Iranian elections, President Barack Obama has urged negotiations, more diplomacy, and friendship with the Iranian people. That puts Mr Ahmadinejad in a dilemma. For the 30 years of the Republic, the US has been the enemy-in-chief, the Great Satan. Yet the more Mr Obama plays nice, the more that propaganda card fails to fulfil its purpose of uniting the Iranian people in a frenzy of support for the regime.”
Since Obama is going the diplomacy route, Iran needs an excuse to forge ahead with its defiant testing and nuclear development. Israel, which may pre-emptively strike Iran’s nuclear sites, is the “replacement bogeyman.”
“The Israelis have always said that military action is a possibility, but if Mr Ahmadinejad calls their bluff, have they got what it takes?”
The world may find out much sooner rather than later. Major General Amos Yadlin, Israel’s top intelligence chief, said Iran is close to developing a nuclear bomb, because it has enriched enough uranium.
In reaction to Iran’s missile test, White House spokesman Mike Hammer said, “Such actions will increase the seriousness and resolve of the international community to hold Iran accountable for its continued defiance of its international obligations on its nuclear program.” (Source)
Brian T. Kennedy, president of the Claremont Institute and member of the Independent Working Group on Missile Defense, wrote an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal about missile defense in Japan.
Kennedy cites what he sees as Japan’s lack of concern about strong missile defense. He quotes politician Tsuyoshi Yamaguchi, who said missile defense was “almost totally useless…Only one or two out of 100 are ever effective.”
“Unfortunately,” writes Kennedy, “both the new Japanese and the U.S. administrations appear to share an ideological predisposition against missile defense.”
Kennedy briefly summarizes President Barack Obama’s views on missile defense. The administration has cut funding to missile defense and dropped plans to deploy missile shields to Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama envisions a world of no nuclear weapons, whereas our enemies are more realistic. Kennedy notes that Japan sits between China and the U.S., and China intends to continue building its ballistic missile program. Does it make sense for Japan to move in the opposite direction?
“Today China possesses an arsenal of medium-, intermediate- and intercontinental ballistic missiles that could inflict destruction on the Japanese homeland,” Kennedy writes. “In addition, China possesses nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and is developing advanced stealth bombers to deliver them. Next year the Pentagon expects that Beijing’s JIN-class nuclear ballistic missile submarine fleet to be operational. The missiles on these submarines could strike at Japan from a significant distance anywhere in the international waters of East Asia. Beijing also seeks space-based capabilities.”
At the present rate, China may one day overpower the entire continent, including Russia. Will the U.S. be able to protect Japan, considering that our president is lukewarm on missile defense? While both the U.S. and Japan cut spending, countries like China, North Korea, and Iran are putting resources into defense technology.
“[T]he Japanese must continue to build robust defenses. Otherwise it will not be possible to build a strategic relationship between the two over the longer term in which Japan is not merely the junior partner but a supplicant to Beijing.”
Last year, Russia threatened to deploy Iskander missiles near Poland in response to our country’s plans to deploy missile defense shields to the region. The purpose of those plans was to protect Poland and the Czech Republic from missile attacks from North Korea. Russia claimed the shields would compromise its national security.
In September President Barack Obama dropped those plans.
Yesterday, Russia participated in “war games,” simulated attacks on Poland. (Source) Russia fired nuclear missiles, while troops landed on “Poland’s” coast. Held in September, the purported defense simulation looked offensive in nature to witnesses.
“The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a ‘Polish’ beach and attacked a gas pipeline.”
During the exercise, Russian troops also simulated suppressing an uprising of minorities in Belarus. In light of Poland’s and the Czech Republic’s concerns that Russia is dictating their foreign policy, with the Obama administration’s apparent blessing, the simulation is even more ominous. What does it portend for Central Europe?
The Telegraph quotes a Polish man calling himself Ted, who said “Russia has laid bare its real intentions with respect to Poland. Every Pole most now get of the off the fence and be counted as a patriot or a traitor.”
Strong words. No doubt Poland thought it had negotiated some sort of protection with the U.S. when the country agreed to host missile shields. Now, a fearless and bold Russia is playing war games simulating “defensive” measures against Poland.
We won’t hold our breath waiting for Barack Obama to respond in a way that would displease Russia.
Last week, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of missile defense critic Philip Coyle to become the administration’s Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (Source)
A former assistant secretary of defense and director of operational test and evaluation at the Pentagon, Coyle will advise the president on various scientific and national security issues. He called Bush-era testing on ballistic missiles “shoddy” and “thin” and disparaged the former president’s plan to deploy missile defense shields to Poland and the Czech Republic.
“In my view, Iran is not so suicidal as to attack Europe or the United States with missiles,” Coyle said. “But if you believe that Iran is bound and determined to attack Europe or America, no matter what, then I think you also have to assume that Iran would do whatever it takes to overwhelm our missile defenses, including using decoys to fool the defenses, launching stealthy warheads, and launching many missiles, not just one or two.”
Given these statements, Coyle obviously doesn’t believe Iran might have an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) by 2015. The U.S. is developing land-based SM-3 missiles to counteract this threat, but the target date for completion is 2020, five years after Iran’s possible ICBM capabilities.
Despite these projections, Coyle believes our country’s spending on missile defense isn’t justified.
As a vocal critic of Bush’s missile defense and supporter of Obama’s way of thinking, Coyle likely will breeze through the vetting process and take his place among the president’s team of appeasement-minded advisors.
Last week, Vice President Joe Biden visited Poland and the Czech Republic, the first such visit to the region by a high-level official since the President Barack Obama dropped plans to deploy missile defense shields to those countries. The Heritage Foundation‘s Peter Brookes commented on the new missile defense shield plan proposed by the administration.
“In pulling the plug on the Bush missile-defense plan in Eastern Europe last month,” Brookes writes in the New York Post, “the White House came up with a new architecture based on a new evaluation of existing intelligence on the Iranian ballistic-missile threat…The Pentagon now insists Iran is moving faster on its short- and medium-range ballistic-missile programs than on its long-range ICBM effort, against which the Czech and Polish sites were aimed. (Of course, many experts think progress in one missile program supports another.)”
The new plan may protect Europe, but what about the Iranian threat to the U.S. and Israel? Land-based SM-3 missiles, designed to protect us and our ally, are in development. The target date for completion is 2020, but Iran could have an intercontinental ballistic missile by 2015.
“[T]he Obama administration thinks that if the Iranian ICBM comes online before the land-based SM-3s are developed and in place, the West Coast, Bush-era missile-defense sites give us some breathing room…Not really.”
Brookes notes that the “West Coast” system was created to protect us from North Korea, not Iran. Sites that would protect us from Iran (in Alaska and California) may not be adequate, especially since the administration reduced interceptors at those sites.
“That means there’s a gap in our defenses against an Iranian ICBM strike until the land-based SM-3s are operational, which, by the way, will almost certainly face funding and engineering-development challenges.”
Other problems with the new plan are cost, efficiency, and concerns that Russia will once again “negotiate” with the U.S. to curb development of another weapon.
“It’s…a good time to remind ourselves that the purpose of defense is to be technologically ahead of the threat, not behind it — which is where we’ll be if we’re not careful,” Brookes writes.
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.
Last week we blogged about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Russia, a country she claimed was being “extremely cooperative.” She echoed the president’s intent to “reset” relations with Russia and agreed to stop criticizing the former Soviet Union about its human rights abuses.
Russia has refused to issue tougher sanctions against Iran. In fact, the country’s leaders didn’t even want to discuss the matter. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said, “At the current stage, all forces should be thrown at supporting the negotiating process. Threats of new sanctions and pressure against Iran under current circumstances are counterproductive.”
What, if anything, has the U.S. gained in talks between the two countries or from the compromise we made on missile shields in Poland and the Czech Republic? Columnist Charles Krauthammer asks these and other questions (Source):
“[W]hat’s come from Obama’s single most dramatic foreign policy stroke — the sudden abrogation of missile defense arrangements with Poland and the Czech Republic that Russia had virulently opposed? For the East Europeans it was a crushing blow, a gratuitous restoration of Russian influence over a region that thought it had regained independence under American protection.”
Krauthammer notes that despite how the talks were reported in the media, President Dmitry Medvedev didn’t budge on Iran sanctions. According to Lavrov, threats of pressure on Iran are of no use. At which point would it be productive to threaten tougher sanctions? The U.S. is retreating on missile defense, as Russia calls the shots, and Iran and North Korea defiantly continue their missile development.
Rather than dealing with Iran without Russia’s help, the Obama administration appears indecisive and desperate at the expense of resetting relations with a country that has all but refused to compromise.
“The Russian leadership, hardly believing its luck,” Krauthammer writes, “needs no interpreter to understand that when the Obama team clownishly rushes in bearing gifts and ‘reset’ buttons, there is nothing ulterior, diabolical, clever or even serious behind it. It is amateurishness, wrapped in naivet, inside credulity. In short, the very stuff of Nobels.”
Reuters reports that Poland may be in the running to receive missile interceptors under President Barack Obama’s new missile defense plan.
Poland and the Czech Republic were surprised (to put it mildly) when the president dropped plans to deploy missile interceptors and radar to the region. He purportedly intends to focus on systems that will defend against Iran’s shorter-range missiles rather than long-range.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense Alexander Vershbow told reporters at a briefing to Polish officials that the U.S. will deploy sea-based and SM-3 interceptors to Poland that would target short-range missiles.
Vershbow said the new plan will be “more flexible” than President George Bush’s plan and will allay Russia’s concerns about long-range missile interceptors.
No doubt Poland and the Czech Republic feel betrayed by the U.S. and resentful toward Russia’s dominance. Poland tried to assert itself, and the U.S. reneged. But Poland may get something even better. Polish Undersecretary of State for Defence Stanislaw Komorowski said his country would bring a U.S. battery of Patriot missiles.
Agreed to in August 2008, the battery would be based permanently in Poland in 2012. We suspect Russia will object to this agreement as well.
Last month President Barack Obama dropped plans to build missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic, claiming that he wants to focus on proven and cost-effective technology that will aid in defending against Iran’s shorter-range missiles rather than long-range. The decision was seen as a move to placate Russia, a country that so far hasn’t given anything in return.
The AFP reports that Russia may not be elated about the decision after all. “The statements that are constantly being voiced raise more questions than answers,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said. “We would like to receive full clarification.”
Don’t we all?
The two countries are discussing the new plan. There’s talk the Ukraine might be in the running to receive missile defense shields. The bottom-line is that Russia doesn’t want the U.S. to deploy any missiles in or near Europe. Will Obama go that far to appease Russia, while getting nothing in return? The former Soviet Union has refused to issue tougher sanctions against Iran.
The AP reports that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Russia to discuss how the two countries will deal with Iran. Since discovery of a second nuclear site in Iran, the U.S. is pushing for inspection to determine whether the endeavor is peaceful. We hope the president will play hardball with Russia and Iran if the efforts prove not so peaceful.
Clinton’s talking tough, saying that we “will not wait indefinitely” for Iran to decide to open its facility for inspection. It remains to be seen whether Russia will agree to harsher sanctions if Iran fails to comply. No doubt the second site has made Israel even more nervous, and our ally is prepared to defend itself.
Last year, Russia threatened to deploy Iskander missiles near Poland in response to our country’s plans to deploy missile defense shields to the region. The purpose of those plans was to protect Poland and the Czech Republic from missile attacks from North Korea. Russia claimed the shields would compromise its national security.
Last week, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of missile defense critic Philip Coyle to become the administration’s Associate Director for National Security and International Affairs at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. (
Last week, Vice President Joe Biden visited Poland and the Czech Republic, the first such visit to the region by a high-level official since the President Barack Obama dropped plans to deploy missile defense shields to those countries. The 
Last week we blogged about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Russia, a country she claimed was being “extremely cooperative.” She echoed the president’s intent to “reset” relations with Russia and agreed to stop criticizing the former Soviet Union about its human rights abuses.
