Anti-Missile Missiles in Europe:
A Weapon that Doesn’t Work for a Threat that Doesn’t Exist
As Sen. Jess Trussme (a mythical political leader played by our good friend Ira Shorr) is wont to say, the beauty of missile defense is that it is “a weapon that doesn’t work for a threat that doesn’t exist.” This is doubly true for the Bush administration’s plan to put missile interceptors in Poland and anti-missile radars in the Czech Republic.By optimistic projections, the system would cost $3.5 billion and would be ready to go by 2013. U.S. officials involved with the project argue that this is early enough to deal with the highly touted Iranian threat, since they believe that Tehran will not be able to develop a nuclear weapon and mount it on a ballistic missile until at least 2015. If this is so, there is much more time available to negotiate a cap on Iran’s nuclear program than Bush administration officials have officially acknowledged. Negotiations would not only be more effective, but they wouldn’t waste billions of dollars that could be used for far better purposes.
And what kind of system would exist by 2013, if - in a first for the missile defense program - it was actually developed on schedule? Most likely one that is no more effective than current missile interceptors, which have given no evidence that they can stop an incoming warhead under realistic conditions.
If the proposed system only wasted money, that would be outrageous enough. But it is also provoking a three-way political crisis among Europe, Russia, and the United States. One common objection has been raised by Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn of Luxembourg: “We don’t want to be a political football between Russia and the United States. We want the United States, Russia, and Europe to play together in a common defence project.” (Kristin Roberts, “Russian Official Dismisses U.S. Shield Cooperation,” Reuters, April 24, 2007).
While the Czech and Polish governments seem to be prepared to go along with the U.S. plans, nobody has asked the Czech and Polish people. A full 57% of Czechs oppose having U.S. anti-missile radars on their soil, versus 25% in favor. In Poland, the numbers are 68% against U.S. missile interceptors, versus 26% in favor.
As for the Russians, they are having none of US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates’ arguments that they can “share” the project with Washington. From Moscow’s perspective, a system of ten missiles now could be expanded in the future in an effort to blunt their nuclear deterrent vis-à-vis the United States.
Given the obscene nuclear overkill possessed by both countries, the threat of US missile defenses may not be all it is cracked up to be.
But Russian leaders see it in the context of other provocative moves by the United States, from expanding NATO right up to their borders, to building military relationships with former Soviet Republics (and bordering states) from the Ukraine to Georgia to Kazakhstan, to seeking military bases in Rumania and Bulgaria. As the Washington Post put it, “it’s hard to think of a better way to revive the Cold War” than getting the U.S. and Russia into a tangle over the administration’s proposed missile deployments in Europe (”Missile Fantasies,” Washington Post, February 25, 2007).
The real danger of the whole missile defense effort is that it serves as a rationale for maintaining large, ongoing nuclear arsenals. As long as the illusion of a “technical fix” to the nuclear threat is kept alive, the urgency for reducing nuclear stockpiles is diminished.
Combined with the Bush administration’s “Complex 2030″ plan, which calls for building a new generation of nuclear weapons, missile defense represents a threat to peace, and ultimately a threat to all human life. The truth is that the only way to be truly safe from nuclear weapons is to get rid of them - all of them. This is no easy task, but if the U.S. government expended a small portion of the energy it is throwing into its misguided missile defense program into promoting nuclear disarmament, substantial progress could be made in relatively short order.
William D. Hartung is a Senior Fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York.
Re “Anti-Missile Missiles in Europe”:
The only ones unhappy with scrapping the plans for this missile-shield in Europe will be the sellers of weapons of war. They are few but strong. And regrettably: they have all the weapons - soft and hard - to enforce their wishes.
It’s worse than Hartung implies in his sub head “a weapon that doesn’t work for a threat trhat doesn’t exist”. It would be more accurately characterized as “a weapon that soesn’t work in order to create a threat (a newly agressive Russia)to which to respond”.
I wonder how the US would feel if Russia placed missle batteries at operational bases of their own in some place like maybe Cuba. Hey wait a minute didn’t that already happen once upon a time?
Who makes and sells this stuff? I wouldn’t be at all surprised if these weapons were made and sold by corporations whose assets and profits added up to exceed those of entire nations.
Given such conditions, it makes you wonder where the loyalties of politicians REALLY lie, doesn’t it?
Round here the focus is people smoking, in bars or outdoors, anywhere practically. What kind of shit is this when nukes and missles. general exhaust from vehicles, and the list goes on and on that are dangerous to all and the Earth, and nothing is done to prevent it. Why can’t the US Stay Home and mind it’s own fucking business.
It is utterly futile to search for logical grounds when it comes to national security of the nation. It would be safe to say that interests of the overwhelming majority of the nation are at the bottom of the priority list, whether it American nation or, in this particular case, Polish, Czech or EU as a whole nations. Scientific psychology proved beyond reasonable doubts, what was intuitively had been known for ages: group (institutional) think superimpose individual think. Margaret Thatcher got it exactly wrong when she declared that “There is no such thing as a society.” The inconvenient truth is that with each passing decade there is less and less such a thing as individual thinking inside governments. It follows that with each passing decade there is less and less such a thing as individual freedom of choice from bottom to the top, and not another way around as some contributors to this forum think; beach boys are freer and more reasonable than people in the highest echelons of power. It follows that top of the pyramid is more thing that human and Bush is but the clearest example.
I made my own anti-ICBM defense system last week. Still have work to do on the marketing though.
Construction:
Empty washing-up liquid bottles coupled with double-sided sticky-backed plastic, all mounted on a charmingly eye-dodging camoflage grey dustbin and powered ecologically friendly biomass compactor.
It works twice as well as Mr Bush’s offering and costs half as much. A must for all former members of the CCCP, call immediately to reserve yours now.
M.A.D. not assured.