|  Although
US President George W Bush tried hard to pacify Russia that
his sponsored missile shield in Europe was by no means any threat
to Moscow, President Vladimir Putin did not buy Washington's
version. At the weekend, Putin told Western media that Russia
may point its own missiles at European targets should the US
push ahead with missile shield bases in Poland. Foreign minister
Sergei Lavrov slammed a US plan to deploy missile defense hardware
in Poland and the Czech Republic, which has infuriated Moscow
in spite of Washington's insistence it poses no threat to the
Russian mainland.
After repeated warnings from Russia that the US plan would
set off a new "arms race," Russia tested a new multi-warhead
missile last week that President Vladimir Putin said was a direct
response to US actions. Tensions over the plan have helped send
relations between the two states to what many analysts call
a post-Cold War low just before Putin and US President George
W. Bush meet at this week's Group of Eight summit.
 Russia's
Defense Ministry, meanwhile, announced that the new intercontinental
ballistic missile was featuring multiple warheads designed to
overcome Western missile defense systems, such as to be deployed
in Poland and Czechoslovakia. According to intelligence reports,
monitoring the launch, which took place, last Tuesday, from
the Russian missile test base at the Plesetsk cosmodrome in
northern Russia, it was claimed that the missile hit its target
3400miles away in the Kamchatka peninsula. The missile, designated
RS-24, can be armed with up to 10 warheads and was designed
to evade missile defense systems, the Russian defense ministry
says. According to an official Moscow statement, the missile
is aimed to replace two aging ICBM systems - the RS-18 and RS-20,
known in the West as the SS-19 Stiletto and SS-18 Satan, respectively.
Western intelligence analysts claim, though, that the latest
Russian missile test has more to do with Russia's plans to modernize
its aging nuclear force than its complaints about the proposed
US missile defense shield in Europe, which US officials say
could not intercept Russian missiles. Of particular concern
to Russia is the treaty between the US and the then Soviet Union
that banned intermediate range nuclear weapons, he writes. This
treaty is still in force and applies only to the US and Russia.
However, in Washington's latest political game of theater of
the absurd, the Bush administration recently announced its extended
ballistic-missile-defense program, a wildly expensive and no
less ineffective venture, under which the Pentagon plans to
deploy a new set of interceptors in Europe, probably in Poland
or the Czech Republic, for the purpose of shooting down Iranian
missiles. Already becoming a hot topic in Europe, the new Bush
Plan involves the same rocket boosters and interceptors that
the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency is currently fielding
at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California,
with the same grave flaws and incalculable uncertainties. The
obvious result is, that it has already created one of the most
sensitive issues in US-Russian relations and even among NATO
partners in Europe.
In fact, Moscow is raising highly suspicious eyebrows at the
prospect of U.S. missile bases appearing near the Russian borders,
not even pretending to be satisfied by the official story of
the need to repel potential Iranian and North Korean ballistic
missile attacks. But if this ambitious project is not enough,
according to a US official, the Pentagon plans further to deploy
mobile radar stations in the Caucasus, probably in Azerbaijan,
Armenia or Georgia, which could detect missile launches in Iran
and North Korea and transmit data to a radar station in the
Czech Republic. Although the official did not specify which
of the three countries would likely host the radar units, Russian
officials believe that the host would be Georgia. Last Friday,
an official source in Moscow warned former Soviet republics
in the Caucasus against hosting any parts of a controversial
U.S. anti-missile shield.
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 According
to the Pentagon project, a powerful tracking radar will be installed
in the Czech Republic
and PAC-3 Patriot
anti-missile defense systems specially designed to intercept
ballistic missiles and their warheads will be deployed in Poland.
Further plans include expanding the European part of the antimissile
system and integrating it into the U.S.-created global ‘missile
shield.’ European analysts suspect, that the proposed
system could hardly enhance European security, as the skeptic
named, "Son of Star Wars" umbrella, will entirely
work to protect US territory.
U.S. strategic doctrine, a philosophy that long predates the
Cold War, has always aimed to push threats away from the continental
United States. This was achieved initially by securing U.S.
sovereignty over the North American land mass, gaining strategic
depth and controlling sea approaches. Eventually, this strategy
would call for the United States to project power into Eurasia
itself, in order to establish as much stand-off distance as
possible. In the early 20th century, naval power alone, allowed
the United States to achieve this aim, but in the early 21st
century, with the proliferation of intercontinental ballistic
missile technology, by so-called "rogue' states, a changed
concept became imperative.
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Each time Moscow sees itself threatened
by outside aggression, as in the case of the U.S. proposed
missile shield, it has always, in the past, taken effective
countermeasures to ensure its territorial integrity
and security is maintained
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 The
ultimate United States missile defense concept is seeking a
layered network. The first layer of defense - which most likely
would include airborne lasers at some point - would be sited
as close to the launching states as possible, allowing the system
to target any missile launches during the boost phase. The second
layer involves missile interceptors or AEGIS systems to strike
during the midcourse of the missile's flight, followed by terminal
phase engagement with anti-missile systems, such as the PAC-3,
the latest incarnation of the Patriot system.
The projection of ICBM is also the key to understanding Washington's
logic. Any missile launched from Iran and bound for the continental
United States would have to fly over Central Europe - which
is why the United States has pending agreements to set up an
interceptor base in Poland and a radar station in the Czech
Republic. Similarly, any North Korean missile would have to
fly over Alaska, the other major BMD interceptor locale, where
the present missile defense system is established.
 A
question, which has been asked repeatedly, is why European nations
have sofar been reluctant to develop their own missile umbrella.
The unquestionable fact is, unfortunately, that America's European
allies have sofar failed to support their own national missile
defense, traditionally due to a strategic concept, that most
European states are unlikely to wage war against the emerging
ballistic missile powers, including Iran and North Korea. Thus
Europe has not invested the necessary funding priorities to
pursue national missile defense systems that could counter long-range
ballistic missiles of the kind that North Korea, Iran, and formerly
Saddam's Iraq were expected to wield.
A single European project, called Medium Extended Air Defense
System (MEADS), a joint
U.S.-German-Italian program, built around the latest modification
of the U.S. Patriot air-defense missile, called PAC 3 is the
only venture in this domain. Compared with the exotica of the
multiphase missile-defense program, MEADS is fairly simple technology,
consisting of a radar network which tracks the enemy missile's
flight; an anti-missile missile tries to shoot it down. Yet
even this project has been stalled by political and technical
obstacles. One has to wait and see, Whether German Foreign Minister
Frank-Walter Steinmeier's declaration, last Monday, that Europe
was considering its own missile defense system, parallel to
a shield the United States wants to put up in Eastern Europe,will
finally mature into a new initiative.
But even President Bush's European Missile Shield project will
not meet "plain sailing" in its implementation. To
consider Moscow's verbal response to the anti missiles scheme
as mere "sabre-rattling", would be too cursory. In
fact, a glance at the map demonstrates or highlights the nature
of the perceived threat in Moscow. Looking at it from Russia's
angle the country will be practically surrounded as almost never
before in its history. The problem is, that each time Moscow
sees itself threatened by outside aggression, as in the case
of the U.S. proposed missile shield, it has always, in the past,
taken effective countermeasures to ensure its territorial integrity
and security is maintained. There is little doubt that establishing
a BMD system on Russia's doorstep would indeed be perceived
as a potential long-term threat by Moscow.
The commander of Russia's strategic bomber force, Lt. General
Igor Khvorov, said March 5, that his forces could easily disrupt
or destroy any missile defense infrastructure in Poland and
the Czech Republic - where the United States is preparing to
set up parts of a ballistic missile defense system. And Khvorov
was hardly the first Russian official to make such a threat:
On Feb. 19, statements by Strategic Rocket Forces commander
Colonel General Nikolai Solovtsov left little doubt that Moscow
would target U.S. BMD sites with its nuclear arsenal if Washington
pushes ahead with its plans.
However, as strange as it may sound, the more aggressive the
Russian rhetoric sounds, the more willing Europeans will be
to see strategic U.S. policy in their homeland. It seems that
Russian sabre rattling no longer convinced the post-Cold War
Europeans as before. But the "Russian Bear" should
not be underestimated entirely either. In recent months Vladinir
Putin’s rhetoric against the U.S. - supported by his notion
of the U.S.’s overbearing, hegemonic, influence in global
affairs - has risen to a near fever pitch. Experts on Russian
politics, wonder, if Putin's warnings are good old ex-Soviet
paranoia- after all they remind, that Vladimir is a product
of the Soviet KGB? On the other hand, although Moscow is sending
warning messages to its former vassal states in Europe, at the
same time Putin said that Russia has nothing to fear from US
missile defense systems because the new Topol-M intercontinental
ballistic missile has stealth characteristics that enable it
to penetrate the American shield.
But a return to Cold War scenarios, although seemingly unrealistic
should not be taken lightly altogether as intercontinental tension
rises. Only three days before Putin’s bellicose speech
in Munich, Sergei Borisovich Ivanov, Russia's first deputy prime
minister, unveiled a 5 trillion rubles ($189 billion) military
rearmament program. According to Ivanov, 45% of Russia's weapons
will be replaced with new ones by 2015. Ivanov boasted that
17 new ICBMs would be procured in 2007. Although experts doubt
that the Russian defense industry will be able to produce the
modern weapons Russia military needs, there is a marked escalation
in tension between Moscow and Washington these days. Russia’s
General Nikolai Solovtsov has even gone so far as to threaten
an effective withdrawal from the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear
Forces treaty, which forced the US and the Soviet Union to ban
nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise
missiles.
Under these dubious circumstance, one must really wonder, whether
on the two sides of the Atlantic another Cold War scenario is
currently enfolding. With two eccentric politicians, a Russian
and an American, both under growing internal pressure and closing
in on new elections next year, are these men really willing
to drag this already unstable world back into the long forgotten
days, when MAD was created between the two nuclear superpowers?
Read David Eshel's past commentary here
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