A little over 6 months after cancelling deployment of the missile defence system in Eastern Europe to encourage the Russians to engage in Nuclear Weapons reduction, the US slips a Patriot Missile battery into Poland at a base just 70km away from Russian enclave Kaliningrad.
The Guardian reported the cancellation last September :
Under the Bush administration the Pentagon spent years planning and negotiating to place 10 silos with interceptor rockets in northern Poland and to build a large radar station south of Prague to defend against a perceived ballistic missile threat from Iran.
The central European countries were keen to acquire the US installations and other military hardware as partial security guarantees against a resurgent Russia. Moscow claimed the project was aimed against Russia and threatened to deploy short-range nuclear weapons in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, which sits inside the European Union.
Obama’s climbdown is likely to be seen by Russia as a victory for its uncompromising stance.
Today, however, analysts pointed out the decision would help Obama secure Moscow’s co-operation on a possible new sanctions package against Iran and would further his desire to “reset” relations with Moscow following a dismal period under the Bush administration.
It would significantly boost the chances of a new treaty on strategic nuclear arms reduction between Washington and Moscow, they said. Both the US and Russia have agreed to come up with a successor treaty to Start 1 by December, when the current agreement expires.
“Hardliners in Russia don’t want an agreement on Start. It will be very difficult now for Russia to avoid an agreement,” said Ruben Sergeyev, a defence analyst in Moscow. “It [the decision to drop the US shield] creates a very positive ambience, despite the fact it was really an artificial thing.”
The decision strengthens Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, who is due to make his first presidential trip to the US next week for the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh. The Obama administration has been keen to boost Medvedev’s standing and authority at home, seeing him as a more moderate and less hostile interlocutor than Putin.
Today the Nato secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said Obama’s decision was “a positive step”. Rasmussen said he had been briefed by the US envoy to Nato about it.
But the timing of the announcement is regarded as disastrous by the Poles. Eugeniusz Smolar, a former chief of Warsaw’s Centre for International Relations, said: “We are disappointed.” But he added that the Polish government had been assured by the Americans that promises of training with Patriot missile batteries and help in modernising the Polish military remained valid.
There was also a little hint of diplomatic blackmail from the Czech Republic :
Alexandr Vondra, a former Czech deputy prime minister and ambassador to Washington intimately involved in the negotiations with the Americans, said he was surprised. “This is a U-turn in US policy,” he said. “But first we expect the US to honour its commitments. If they don’t they may have problems generating support for Afghanistan and on other things.”
No real surprise then that just over 6 months later, we find that the promised Patriot missiles have appeared :
A battery of US Patriot missiles appeared on May 24 in Morag, Poland. This town with the 15,000-strong population is situation only 70 kilometers from the border with Russia’s Kaliningrad enclave. The battery of missiles is supposed to become a replacement for the US missile defense system, which the Polish administration was eager to deploy for several years.
US President Barack Obama decided to shelve the plans to deploy elements of the national missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic in the autumn of 2009. The Polish government was very disappointed about such a turn of events. US official later said that they considered Poland to be one of their key NATO allies. As a result, the USA and Poland signed an agreement to deploy a battery of Patriot missiles in the Eastern European nation.
So, announce a ban to placate Russia and get a deal on reducing nuclear weapons and then after that’s agreed and the dust has settled, position a missile battery a stones throw from Russian territory to keep Poland on board in Afghanistan.
Wonderful.
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