Citing possible attacks from countries like Iran or North Korea, the US has pushed ahead a plan to install a missile defence shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. Besides these two countries, Britain has also embraced the plan, agreeing to host parts of the shield.
Under the plan, a radar system will be built in the Czech Republic and a corresponding base with 10 interceptor missiles in neighbouring Poland. After years of talks, the US last month approached the Czech and Polish governments about hosting the shield.
Development has come quickly since then, with a meeting between Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and his Polish counterpart Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Warsaw resulting in agreement to go along with the plan.
Czech President Vaclav Klaus is to travel to Washington this month to discuss the matter with US Vice President Dick Cheney, while President Bush is considering a trip to Poland this summer.
Britain, in the meantime, has also confirmed that its prime minister was in talks with the US about stationing anti-ballistic missiles in the country as part of the shield.
Mixed messages
The plan has drawn approval as well as strong opposition, from not only other countries in Europe but also from within Poland and the Czech Republic. Inhabitants of Trokavec, a small village 60km from Prague, voted against the US plan to construct the anti-missile radar station on a nearby army base.
According to a March survey by the official agency CVVM, six out of 10 Czechs are opposed to hosting the X-band radar. The country’s Communist Party is also against the proposed radar. The main opposition party, the Social Democrats, demands a referendum on the matter, and the Green Party, which forms part of the centre-right governing coalition, wants the base integrated in EU and NATO defence plans.
In Poland, while top leaders still support the plan, many Poles say hosting new US weapons could make their country a target for Russian rockets and Islamic terrorists, reports the Los Angeles Times.
The coalition government says it will probably accept the US proposal, although many officials in Warsaw and in other European capitals prefer a wider system integrated with NATO defence plans.
Russia has strongly opposed the plan, with its generals hinting that Russia might withdraw from a 1987 treaty with the US that limits medium-range nuclear missiles.
They also warn that Poland and the Czech Republic will fall within the sights of new Russian missiles if the two nations go along with the US defence plan, the LA Times reports.
Russian news agency Ria Novosti quotes Colonel General Yury Solovyov, commander of the Air Defence Forces Special Command, as saying the US missile defence deployment in Europe could drag Russia into a new arms race.
Solovyov says the deployment "could be bad for Russia because our potential adversaries will constantly monitor Russia’s territory". The chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Yury Baluyevsky, says that unilateral US action could damage the balance of power in Europe and undermine Russia’s nuclear deterrence potential.
These considerations have led to a recent telephone conversation between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart George W Bush, with Bush saying he was ready for detailed discussions on the subject with the Russian side.
Conforming to the union
After the Czech Republic agreed to start negotiations with the US on the radar station, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana says placing components of the shield on EU soil could "affect our relations with third countries, namely Russia".
"On security matters, the treaties in force allocate sovereignty to EU member states, but that sovereignty must be compatible with the Union’s general interest in security," Solana tell the European Parliament.
Meanwhile, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says the shield should be brought within the ambit of the alliance. NATO officials suggest that talks among the allies could focus on combining the short-range NATO system with the separate US shield to provide missile defence for all 26 allies. Austria and NATO members France, Germany, Slovakia, and Spain have all expressed reservations about the project which the US wants operational by 2011.
The US’s missile defence shield currently has two bases, one in Alaska and one in California, hosting 13 and three missiles, respectively. The US says the Czech and Polish bases, aimed at preventing long-range missile attacks from the Middle East, are aimed at completing coverage from installations already in place in the US, Britain and Greenland.
With US$18.5 billion earmarked for missile defence spending by 2009, and $118 million alone for the base in Central Europe this year, the United States’ military priority has never been more obvious. Recalling the arms race before the end of the Cold War and the more recent arms programmes in North and South Asia, one might hope a new arms race will not be on the horizon. — VNS
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