No missile shield in Eastern Europe

[PeZook]

Yahoo, citing Reuters

U.S. to shelve Europe missile shield plans: report

Reuters

20 mins ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House will shelve U.S. plans to build a missile-defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move likely to ease tensions with Russia, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.

The decision will be based on a U.S. "determination that Iran's long-range missile program has not progressed as rapidly as previously estimated, reducing the threat to the continental U.S. and major European capitals," the paper said.

It said the findings were expected to be completed as early as next week following a 60-day review ordered by President Barack Obama. The paper cited unnamed current and former U.S. officials for the report.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is visiting Baghdad, declined to comment when asked about the report.

The Bush administration had pushed for the defense shield to defend against what it said was the possibility of Iran developing nuclear warheads to put on its long-range missiles.

Washington insisted the plan was not directed against Russia, which said the system was a threat to its own missiles.

Iran denies Western charges that it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, and says its missiles are for defense.

Iran and six world powers -- the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany -- are due to start wide-ranging talks on October 1.

The Journal said the Obama administration's assessment would order a shift toward the development of regional -- and less controversial -- missile defenses for Europe.

It said the administration "was expected to leave open the option of restarting the Polish and Czech system if Iran makes advances in its long-range missiles in the future."

The Obama administration has said it wants to "reset" relations with its Cold War foe, strained by issues such as Russia's 2008 war with Georgia and proposals to expand NATO to include former Soviet republics Georgia and Ukraine.

The Journal said the decision to shelve the missile shield plans would raise alarm in Eastern Europe, where officials have expressed concern that U.S. efforts to improve relations with Russia would come at the expense of U.S. allies in the former Soviet bloc.

"The Poles are nervous," it quoted an unnamed senior U.S. military official as saying.

(Reporting by Mohammad Zargham in Washington and Ross Colvin in Baghdad; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)

I also heard it on the radio not 10 minutes ago that the final decision has been made, and the involved governments informed.

I have to say that on one hand, the shield was never popular in Poland nor the Czech Republic, and Russia obviously disliked the idea, so this move will improve relations with everyone. On the other hand, I really liked the idea of there being some measure of protection from nuclear hellfire in my country - as unlikely as a missile attack on Poland was, the death of millions is always a scary perspective.

Albeit I must say, Americans were really, really obnoxious when it came to negotiations on the shield. You guys barely agreed to supply a single Patriot battery in exchange for permission to build the base, and even then - without any missiles! It's like the US expected agreement to be natural and obvious, not thinking they might need to do something in return for your allies, especially since we'd have pissed off Russia if the base was built.

[K. A. Pital]

On the other hand, I really liked the idea of there being some measure of protection from nuclear hellfire in my country - as unlikely as a missile attack on Poland was, the death of millions is always a scary perspective.

Until recently, Russia did not even have MRBMs massively retargeted at Poland, so in an event of war, your nuking would've been unlikely to come in the form of missiles. Probably tactiacl bombers with special payloads, for which ABM provides no protection whatsoever.

The introduction of the radars in Poland would've made it sure that in an event of war with Russia, those installations would require additional MRBM and/or SRBM payloads to take out, increasing the yield destined for Poland (thus increasing strategic attrition of the Russian nuclear arm)

In case Iran or DPRK attack Poland?.. well, that's an impossible scenario from any political perspective in my book.

[PeZook]

Until recently, Russia did not even have MRBMs massively retargeted at Poland, so in an event of war, your nuking would've been unlikely to come in the form of missiles. Probably tactiacl bombers with special payloads, for which ABM provides no protection whatsoever.

The introduction of the radars in Poland would've made it sure that in an event of war with Russia, those installations would require additional MRBM and/or SRBM payloads to take out, increasing the yield destined for Poland (thus increasing strategic attrition of the Russian nuclear arm)

In case Iran or DPRK attack Poland?.. well, that's an impossible scenario from any political perspective in my book.

Yeah, I know any ballistic missile attack was and still is hugely unlikely. But we wouldn't have been the ones paying for the installation, and if the unthinkable scenario ever happened, we wouldn't lose a city or two. If you multiply the probability of such an attack happening within the next decade by the economic cost of a city being nuked, it turns out you still get a mind boglingly huge number.

Anyway, I understand that Poland agreeing to the missile shield pisses Russia off, and more importantly, we'd have no chance of actually stopping an attack. Hence why I complaimed the US wasn't particularly reasonable during negotiations: upgrading our air defence network wasn't some strange and exotic request, since it would help protect the shield installation from bombers as much as it increased our own security - and since Russia is still a big trading partner of ours, we were rather justified in requesting some form of compensation for pissing it off.

As for the yield destined for Poland, I'm pretty sure that if Russia went to war with NATO, you'd blast Breslau, Poznan, Warsaw and Gdynia to bits, so a few more warheads to blow up the missile base wouldn't really matter much

[TimothyC]

Fuck Zero and the horse he road in on, He as just done more to weaken American Geo-political influence in Eastern Europe than Bush ever did, and all to appease Putin. What did I say before the election? That Obama was to vague on missile defense? SUCK IT BITCHES.

Stas - you know that with Poland as a NATO member they would have been hit anyway.

PeZook - Yes you guys whould have gotten an upgraded IADS to go along with the site. The Question now is, will the Patriot Battery still be deployed?

[PeZook]

PeZook - Yes you guys whould have gotten an upgraded IADS to go along with the site. The Question now is, will the Patriot Battery still be deployed?

I'd hardly call what the US was offering us an "upgrade". An upgrade (ie. several Patriot batteries) was what we wanted, what we were offered by the end of the whole mess was a loan of a single Patriot battery with dummy missiles.

Epic fail, dudes. Seriously.

EDIT: Also, more from the radio, it seems the static base is going to be replaced by some other as of this moment undefined system, which is somewhat more positive than "No ABM in Europe".

Kinda makes the thread title obsolete, but what the hell

[Serafina]

If you want Patriot Batteries, ask Germany - ours are better than the americans, anyway (we have no setupt time, since everything is mounted on trucks).

[PeZook]

If you want Patriot Batteries, ask Germany - ours are better than the americans, anyway (we have no setupt time, since everything is mounted on trucks).

If we had the spare monies to buy them ourselves, we would've done that already. We wanted them in exchange for letting Americans set up an interceptor base (they wanted it to be exterritorial, too, and their soldiers exempt from Polish law).

[Lonestar]

EDIT: Also, more from the radio, it seems the static base is going to be replaced by some other as of this moment undefined system, which is somewhat more positive than "No ABM in Europe".

Kinda makes the thread title obsolete, but what the hell

You rang?

[TimothyC]

PeZook - Yes you guys whould have gotten an upgraded IADS to go along with the site. The Question now is, will the Patriot Battery still be deployed?

I'd hardly call what the US was offering us an "upgrade". An upgrade (ie. several Patriot batteries) was what we wanted, what we were offered by the end of the whole mess was a loan of a single Patriot battery with dummy missiles.

What we offered you was useless, and yes we should have offered more, but Zero is a naive fool, so what do you expect?

EDIT: Also, more from the radio, it seems the static base is going to be replaced by some other as of this moment undefined system, which is somewhat more positive than "No ABM in Europe".

Kinda makes the thread title obsolete, but what the hell

Except Zero killed the mobile interceptor program (the Kinetic Energy Interceptor (KEI)).

[Garibaldi]

Generally speaking I'm in favor of investing in missile defense but at the moment rapprochement with Russia is far, far more valuable than these interceptors would have been. The interceptors are aimed at protecting from a rather vague future threat whereas we urgently need to secure Russia's cooperation, or at the very least their benevolent neglect, on a whole range of issues.

[Vympel]

[Russia]Good riddance.[/Russia]

Link

The Bulletin Online

By Pavel Podvig | 14 September 2009

Of the many security quagmires confronting President Barack Obama, perhaps the most challenging is how he navigates the Bush administration's decision to place missile defense installations in Eastern Europe. As a candidate, Obama didn't rule out keeping the Bush plan to put a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic and interceptors in Poland, but he did place the onus on the technology--i.e., it had to be viable. True to his campaign promise, upon taking office, he ordered a review of the program, which is about to be completed.

No matter how critical the report is--and most expect it to be highly skeptical of the Bush plan--it won't be easy for Obama to reverse course on European missile defense. Poland and the Czech Republic would hate to see their 15 minutes of fame end as key U.S. allies when it comes to missile defense, and other NATO allies would certainly wonder how seriously the United States takes its commitments. And if the change goes too far in accommodating Russian concerns, Republicans would be all-too-happy to accuse Obama of appeasement. As a result, Obama may make only minor modifications to the Bush plan--the radar, for example, might stay in the Czech Republic, but the interceptors could be moved offshore or to a less controversial location such as somewhere in the Balkans.

More largely, it will be tough for Obama to let go of missile defense because until now, the discussion has been framed in such a way that it's implicitly assumed that missile defense is a fundamentally useful thing--as long as it can be made efficient and built at reasonable cost without damaging the prospect for nuclear disarmament, of course. In short, the argument often is that the current missile defense system is flawed, but if those flaws could be solved, missile defense would be a great boon to international security. Missile defense proponents, of course, go much further, stating that missile defense provides a reliable (and some insist the only) way to counter emerging missile threats. The notion of missile defense as a good thing even entered the nuclear abolition debate earlier this year, with many experts ready to grant it a useful role at the final stages of disarmament, arguing that it might provide protection against those who cheat the system and attempt to build/use a nuclear weapon.

The fundamental problem with this argument is that missile defense will never live up to these expectations. Let me say that again: Missile defense will never make a shred of difference when it comes to its primary mission--protecting a country from the threat of a nuclear missile attack. That isn't to say that advanced sensors and interceptors someday won't be able to deal with sophisticated missiles and decoys. They probably will. But again, this won't overcome the fundamental challenge of keeping a nation safe against a nuclear threat, because it would take only a small probability of success to make such a threat credible while missile defense would need to offer absolute certainty of protection to truly be effective.

This was fairly easy to grasp during the Cold War. At that time, it was clear that no defense could realistically protect people against thousands of warheads. But now that the Cold War is over and the threat involves a handful of warheads (if that many), the goal of building a working missile defense system seems within reach. Indeed, how hard would it be to intercept a rudimentary missile launched by North Korea? The answer seems simple: Not easy, but definitely doable. But it's the wrong question to ask. Instead, we should ask: Would missile defense change Washington's strategic calculation in a potential conflict with North Korea or Iran? The answer to this question is a firm no.

In a real confrontation, missile defense would be irrelevant at best. For starters, the probability of a country such as North Korea successfully launching a missile capable of delivering a nuclear warhead to U.S. territory is low. So when all of the uncertainties in missile and warhead performance are added up, the chance of success probably wouldn't be higher than a few percent (which, by the way, is considered a highly potent threat worthy of a multibillion dollar investment in missile defense). Missile defense eventually might be able to reduce that chance, maybe even considerably, but it will never reduce it to zero. In other words, the defending side would still face a threat that isn't much less credible than it was without missile defense. So the best missile defense can do is to replace one small probability with another. Yet, since nobody knows what exactly these probabilities are in the first place, it would just add one more level of uncertainty to an already uncertain situation without making a fundamental difference.

It's understandable that people often talk about European missile defense as one of the ways in which to deal with the missile threat posed by Iran. Or that someday missile defense could provide insurance for nuclear disarmament--this is the vision that Ronald Reagan had. When framed in this way, missile defense seems like a promising way out of difficult situations. But this promise is false. If a real confrontation ever comes about (and let's hope it never happens), we quickly would find out that missile defense offers no meaningful protection whatsoever.

[Surlethe]

Fuck Zero and the horse he road in on, He as just done more to weaken American Geo-political influence in Eastern Europe than Bush ever did, and all to appease Putin.

Ooor ... maybe it will provide a better outcome for the United States to be able to work with Russia and use a missile shield as a bargaining tool to extract concessions from Russia in negotiation, rather than declaring unilaterally that we will build our shield? You know, rational people (and countries) respond to tit-for-tat, and appreciate not being trodden all over.

PS- "Appease" is a loaded word; you shouldn't use it unless you're absolutely certain that Putin will be as impossible to negotiate with as Hitler.

PPS- Why is it important for America to assert strong geopolitical influence in eastern Europe? Maybe having a better negotiation position with Russia is worth the price?

[Starglider]

Good riddance.

It's a brief reprieve at best. The system as deployed wasn't going to significantly degrade the effectiveness of the Russian nuclear arsenal; it may well have shortened the deployment time for a successor that would do so, but probably not by that much. ABM in Europe has now gone from politically inconceivable to a real, if currently shelved, possibility. Long term, the writing is still on the wall for ICBMs.

[Guardsman Bass]

Fuck Zero and the horse he road in on, He as just done more to weaken American Geo-political influence in Eastern Europe than Bush ever did, and all to appease Putin.

Ooor ... maybe it will provide a better outcome for the United States to be able to work with Russia and use a missile shield as a bargaining tool to extract concessions from Russia in negotiation, rather than declaring unilaterally that we will build our shield? You know, rational people (and countries) respond to tit-for-tat, and appreciate not being trodden all over.

"Bargaining tool" for what? The usual thing is "Iran", but the Russian government has repeatedly said that they reject tying the removal of the Missile Shield and support for sanctions on Iran together. We've already got permission from them to send non-combat goods through to Afghanistan, and we've kept the Manas Air Base.

PPS- Why is it important for America to assert strong geopolitical influence in eastern Europe? Maybe having a better negotiation position with Russia is worth the price?

They're a market, and since much of the area is now part of the EU it affects Western Europe.



I've got a business for you, check that forex trading online

[Omega18]

PeZook - Yes you guys whould have gotten an upgraded IADS to go along with the site. The Question now is, will the Patriot Battery still be deployed?

Yes, and it won't be with dummy missiles either. (Unless Poland suddenly says they don't want the system.)
http://www.reuters.com/article/politics ... I820090917

The fact of the matter is the system based in Poland and Czechoslovakia would be worthless in of itself against the Russian nuclear force because any ICBM firings would be right over the Artic region, which is the route they would always have taken, so the interceptors were not going to be in a position where they could have intercepted any of those missiles. Russian leadership always knew this so their whole concerns about the missile shield were just silly posturing. In other words, the US didn't actually back down in this area against Russia in a way that actually matters.

[Simon_Jester]

Do the Russians not have shorter-ranged ballistic missiles that they might reasonably want to shoot over Poland in a war? I could have sworn they did, but I could be wrong.

EDIT: on top of that, if the US is putting missile defenses in Poland and supplying them with AA weapons, it means closer ties between the US and Polish militaries, which is obviously not in Russia's interests. Their ideal Poland is a relatively isolated Poland.

[Guardsman Bass]

Okay, that's annoying. Please ignore the little piece of Forex spam at the bottom of my post - occasionally for some reason, when I post at my work, that appears at the bottom of my posts. I didn't see it in time this round to delete it.

I'm going to virus-scan it, but I never seem to get the time.

[MarshalPurnell]

The Russians threatened to deploy IRBMs in Kaliningrad oblast to take out the radars and ABM emplacements.

Yeah, I'm not in the slightest surprised if Obama does cancel deployment of the Eastern European system and for that matter freezes ABM development altogether. The deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic never made much sense for its stated goals. Iran has never directly threatened Europe and is far more likely to launch a suicidal nuclear attack on Israel than on Western Europe, if it does. In truth we can almost certainly deter the Iranians with our own nuclear weapons. If the Iranians do go crazy once they obtain nuclear weapons we'll still have years of lead-in time before they have a sufficient arsenal to cause real problems and even longer before they actually mate a nuclear warhead with an IRBM capable of reaching Europe. That would offer plenty of time to do something about it, and a preemptive strike would probably work better than a reactive defensive system anyway.

Much the same calculus applies to the DPRK. Continuing missile development with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan makes more sense for a variety of strategic reasons, but there is no need to rush deployment. We have to cut costs with the military and ABM is ultimately superfluous. It can't really stop or even significantly degrade a full scale attack by Russia, and it isn't necessary to deal with minor powers like Iran and North Korea. The PRC is virtually the only opponent deployment against would make sense for the time being, but we cannot afford the resulting political dispute with our largest creditor, or the arms race to keep ahead of a Chinese nuclear buildup. The technology may very well mature, which is why the program should be frozen rather than disbanded, with research in particular focused on the SM-3 missile as by far the most promising system since it can be deployed on our existing AEGIS equipped warships. The land based interceptors are, though, white elephants at this time and the benefit to canceling them and securing better relations with Russia far outweigh any strategic cost we incur by not having them.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The maintenance of a thin shield as a guard against accidental / rogue launch scenarios, however, does make perfect sense.

[Tanasinn]

Naturally. The cost in loss in life and infrastructure from even ONE "oops!" in raw damage alone is a good argument for an anti-missile system.

I don't have any real expectation that a missile shield isn't in the long-term plans of the government, and pulling back like this DOES make it a bargaining tool, but the voting base won't see it that way, and I'm loathe to give the Republicunts even the slipperiest handhold for 2010 or 2012.

[PeZook]

More to the point, if the DPRK or Iran or whoever gets crazy/has a catastrophic error in judgement/launches due to technical errors, then without a shield, the only option is to kill millions of people with a retaliatory strike.

With a shield, you get to keep all your options open, and at worst, there's a million less dead people after the exchange is over.

I'm also not sure why GBI is a "white elephant": it hasn't been as succesful as, say, THAAD or the SM-3, but there's nothing stopping it currently from having all the technical issues solved; IIRC, it passed 2/3 of all intercept tests, so it's not a hopeless case.

EDIT: Though with new plans and promises, it does indeed seem that Obama just wanted to throw the Russians a bone. There's now talk of building a more decentralized defence system incorporating all European militaries - which is a pretty smart move, since France and Germany also disliked the idea of building those GBI installations. It may yet help rebuild trust between Europe and the US - it's kinda hard to say you're bad when you're offering means to defend European cities from NUCLEAR DEATH.

This new approach would probably use SM-3 and THAAD or something similar.

[Stark]

Wait help me out here.

Is someone really referring to the President as 'Zero' in HPCA-hilarity and expecting to be taken seriously? This is the first I've seen of it here.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Wait help me out here.

Is someone really referring to the President as 'Zero' in HPCA-hilarity and expecting to be taken seriously? This is the first I've seen of it here.

I used it, but in another thread as a condemnation of his refusal to demand a public option or nothing for health insurance.

[Tanasinn]

It's not, effectively, much different than referring to Bush as "Shrub" or whatever in disdain for his decisions at a given time and being taken seriously.

Granted, George was a certifiable moron, but...

[Stark]

Of course it doesn't change the statements made; I just think it's funny, especially used without explanation.

More right-wing frothing please.