Analyst Says Obama Should Impose Years-Long Delay In Deploying European Missile Defense
The recent softer tone from Russia hasn’t provided any genuine lessening or reversal of the threat from Moscow to demolish the European Missile Defense (EMD) system if the United States builds it, said Strobe Talbott, president of The Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington think tank.
Talbott said in a Brookings panel forum that only the “tonality on the Russian side has softened a bit,” while adding that “I’m not sure that the substance … has changed all that much.”
At first Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his predecessor, now-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, threatened to use missiles to blow up the EMD if the United States were to build it, saying they would move Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad to be poised for the attack. They also said they would have Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, target European cities, Cold War-style.
Later, however, Medvedev tried to seem calmer, softer, saying that if the United States doesn’t build the EMD, then the Iskanders won’t be deployed in Kalinigrad.
But, Talbott pointed out, this is a distinction without a difference, representing no genuine shift in the bellicose Russian stance.
All that Moscow leaders have done amounts to “restating the threat, flipping it around a bit,” noted Talbott, a journalist who was a deputy secretary of state under President Clinton.
Russia, along with the United States, is facing tough economic times, after lush years when soaring energy prices meant that Russia was awash in billions of rubles garnered from world oil and gas sales.
“It’s hard to exaggerate how severe the political implications could be” if Russians, having enjoyed years of plenty, now are forced into a time of bitter want, Talbott said.
There is, he said, a possibility of “very real political instability,” noting that riot troops had to be sent to Vladivostok to put down unrest.
Talbott said the Obama administration must not cave in the face of unacceptable Russian demands. They include Moscow hungering for a Russian sphere of influence that would encompass the former slave states of the former Soviet Union, and a Russian desire for a veto over any expansion of NATO to such countries in Eastern Europe.
Russian leaders have said they oppose the EMD out of fear the EMD interceptors could knock down Russian ICBMs, a claim that the United States finds ludicrous because there would be just 10 interceptors to hundreds of Russian ICBMs and warheads. Further, the interceptors lack the speed to catch Russian ICBMs, U.S. leaders have argued.
As well, Russia also derailed relations with the United States by ordering Russian troops to invade Georgia, the now-independent former Soviet state. Russian troops still remain inside Georgia, causing concern among leaders of other former Soviet republics, who wonder if their nations will be next on the Russian invasion list.
While Vice President Biden has spoken of wishing to press the “reset button” on relations with Russia, Talbott said any dialing down of the temperature must involve the Russians backing away from their bombastic, overheated rhetoric and threats.
Klaus Scharioth, ambassador from Germany to the United States, also a panelist at the forum, said it would be well to get the temperature down, and each side should state clearly what it ultimately wants.
And if the United States is the only one that would like to see a cooling of overheated rhetoric, “they have an advantage,” said Robert Kagan, senior associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, also a Brookings panelist.
Delaying EMD By Years
Another panelist in the Brookings forum was Stephen Pifer, a Brookings visiting fellow.
In a paper that Brookings published last month, Pifer argued that Obama should impose a two- or three-year moratorium on building the missile defense system in the Czech Republic (radar) and Poland (interceptors in ground silos), if Iran for its part cancels .
And the deep-freeze for the defensive shield could be even longer than that, if Iran cancels, or just slows, its missile development program.
The paper was written before Iran launched a satellite, Omid, proving that Tehran already commands the technology required to build an ICBM.
“Different timelines for Iran’s missile development and for U.S. missile defense deployment in Central Europe offer a possibility to defuse the missile defense issue,” Pifer wrote. “The Obama administration should impose a two- or three-year moratorium on the construction of missile defense facilities in Central Europe and inform the Russians that the moratorium could be extended if the Iranian missile program slows or stops,” Pifer suggested.
Pifer’s 27-page paper is entitled “Reversing the Decline: An Agenda for U.S.-Russian Relations in 2009” and was published by Brookings.
The U.S. Congress already has imposed a moratorium on any EMD construction. Democratic lawmakers insisted that NATO approve the EMD plan, which was considered impossible because all nations would have to agree. But they did, and NATO approved EMD as part of a multi-layered system including a NATO defense against short- to medium-range enemy missiles.
U.S. lawmakers also demanded prior approval from the Czech and Polish governments, considered unlikely because many citizens there oppose the EMD.
And yet the administrations of those governments have signed on the line to approve the EMD. Full parliamentary approval in the two nations still is pending.
And Congress has demanded that the EMD interceptors be tested, a two-year added delay before construction of the EMD can begin, even though the EMD interceptors would be just a variant of the GMD interceptors.
The EMD is needed to counter a rising threat from Iran, which is producing nuclear materials and which just launched a satellite, showing Tehran possesses ICBM technologies.
Even with a green light for construction now, if would be 2013 to 2015 before the United States and The Boeing Co. [BA] could complete EMD construction, and meanwhile Iran is thought to have produced sufficient nuclear materials to make one nuclear weapon now, and several by the end of the year. (Please see separate story in this issue.)