U.S. Abandons Missile Shield—And Eastern Europe
The headline on the front page of Poland’s Fakt newspaper Friday said it all: “Betrayal! The U.S. sold us to Russia and stabbed us in the back.”
“No Radar. Russia won,” cried Mlada Fronta Dnes, the largest Czech daily, on its front page.
Thursday’s announcement by the Obama administration that it has scrapped plans to construct a Ballistic Missile Defense (bmd) system in Poland and the Czech Republic caused a political earthquake in Eastern and Central Europe. Two weeks ago, we wrote:
In essence, the bmd program is a measure of the strength and commitment of U.S. foreign policy, and especially America’s willingness to invest time and resources into amplifying its voice in European affairs, confronting Russian ambitions on its periphery, and checking Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Now the bmd program is gone.
The effects of this decision are momentous. “By trading the loyalty of Poland and the Czech Republic to satisfy Russia’s security concerns, the United States is signaling that it no longer contests Moscow’s right to assert its interests in Eastern Europe,” wrote the Times Online.
On the other hand, it continued (emphasis mine throughout),
The Kremlin can barely believe its good fortune. Mr. Obama has pressed the “reset” button to improve relations without obtaining anything more than permission for U.S. aircraft to cross Russian airspace on resupply operations for troops in Afghanistan.For Mr. Putin, the lesson of today’s decision is clear. Intransigence pays dividends because the U.S. and the European Union lack the patience or determination to face Moscow down. That is a lesson that send[s] alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power of Russia’s former Soviet dominions.
While there is some validity to the tactical rationale for ending plans to deploy a high-tech radar system and anti-missile interceptors in Eastern Europe, observed columnist Ralph Peters, “in strategic terms, the decision’s a disaster.”
He continued,
The move to kill this program was a White House attempt to toss a bone to the extreme left, which has always hated missile defense. (Why defend ourselves, when we’re the enemy?) For that, Obama betrayed the trust of allies who’d done all they could to please us.
The worst thing is how this concession is being read in Moscow, noted Peters: “Putin, Russia’s new czar, sees this as a triumph of his will over Obama’s weak, retreating U.S. And he’s right.” We can now “add Poland and the Czech Republic to the list of allies, such as Israel and Honduras, that we’ve thrown to the wolves,” he says.
With America’s presence in Eastern and Central Europe clearly on the decline, it is vital that we watch Europe, and particularly Germany. America’s absence in Eastern and Central Europe will create a power vacuum. Geopolitics abhors a vacuum. The Trumpet has warned for years of the potential for a security pact akin to the pre-World War ii Molotov-Ribbentrop pact to be formed between Russia and Germany. Will the leaders of Germany and Russia, like Hitler and Stalin in 1939, get together and divide Eastern and Central Europe between themselves?
Whatever happens, America’s abandonment of the bmd program has empowered Russia. Now we must watch to see if Russia’s rise will trigger a more aggressive Europe. For more information, see our article “Russia: Triggering Europe to Unite.”
