Missile shield, down

Rumors, rumors, rumors... For the whole week there have been rumors around the American missile shield and Obama’s decision to withdraw it. Well, finally they got confirmation: the US backs off and won’t install the ground missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic.

Of course, Russia is cheering with this shift and right now a bunch of crazy Ivans are for sure getting drunk in a bunker under the Kremlin to celebrate it. Konstantin Kosachev, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Duma (Russian Parliament), has said that “now we can talk about restoration of the strategic partnership between Russia and the United States”. Clearly, a huge step ahead. Na zdorovya!

But in Poland and the Czech Republic there are mixed emotions about it. On one hand there is the relief for not becoming the primary target in a nuclear war. Which is a big relief, I have to say. But there are concerns that the US and NATO are letting them down. They fear that Russia, encouraged by this partial withdraw, might want to re-enact his influence in the area.

To solve that, American, Polish and Czech diplomats are undergoing through negotiations for other solutions and kinds of collaboration. In fact, the missile shield idea is not completely thrown away but redefined into something more versatile, mobile and lighter, consistent of a ground radar and ten small mobile interceptor launchers. Obama is trying hard to tranquilize the ex-communist NATO allies. And to state clearly that no NATO member will be let alone, President Obama mentioned NATO's article 5 in his announcement -an attack on one will still be an attack on all.

The official statement says that the reason to cancel the deployment is that Iran is not the threat we thought it was going to be. However, the poor performance of the ground defense system might have had some role played in this decision too. So far, the sea-based twin of the program, the AEGIS system, has shown much better results and lacks of the inconvenient of fixing it into a foreign country. Not to mention the economic struggle and cuts everywhere in the American military, and specially, in the Air Force.

Whatever it is, Russia now has lost his American menace on their backyard (yay!). But this is a tricky bet for everyone. Also for the Russians -bad luck for the drunken crazy Ivans, back to the thinking. Sure, they might think now that the hard-line approach they had to the missile shield initiative worked and try to implement it into another problems.

But it’s true too that now the ball is on their court and they will have to move next. The US is seeking more support from Russia with the sanctions against Iran and North Korea, involvement in Afghanistan and further collaboration in disarment.

Of course; trades and millitary alliances with Cuba or Venezuela won't be so justified now. And both have had a huge boost in the last week. As for the first one, Russia's top military commander visited Cuba this Monday. Venezuela fireworks were way more spectacular: a big $2.2b deal which includes 92 T-72 main battle tanks; Smerch rocket artillery systems; and the Antey 2500 anti-ballistic missile system.

Time to move on for Medvedev and Putin.


Photo: Xinhua/Reuters Photo


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