The buzzwords around the Department of Defense these days are pragmatic and realistic. President Obama, supported by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, is firmly entrenched behind a conciliatory, non-confrontational foreign policy, a far cry from former President Bush's ideological, pre-emptive policy of intimidation. Despite infuriating western Europe and liberal internationalists, this made a lot of nations happy.
Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in Obama's view of the Eastern European antiballistic missile defense system, which denies a need for it at all. On Sept. 17, which was ironically the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union's invasion of Poland, the White House announced that it was scrapping the program, which would have placed a radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland. The governments of both countries were staunch supporters of the plan, which would have given them long-desired security and bargaining power in the face of Russian interference.
Eastern Europe, especially Poland, has been a strong supporter of the United States since 9/11, at a time when the U.S. had few strong European allies. In 2003, Poland went so far as to send 2,460 soldiers to Iraq, a number only outdone by the U.S., the U.K. and Italy. Obama's decision to scrap the missile defense shield is rational, but it threatens to dampen the extremely warm ties the U.S. has enjoyed with eastern Europe since the fall of the Soviet Union and embolden our authoritarian rivals who do anything but act rationally.
Obama can make a fairly convincing argument that Bush's antiballistic program was too big, too expensive and technologically unfeasible. What Obama fails to understand is that the program was intended to be like Ronald Reagan's Star Wars program that, though highly implausible, scared the pants off of the Soviet Union. Bush wanted to intimidate Russia, which despite current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's dreams of revenge, has little going for it other than a considerable nuclear stockpile. Russia, a nation officially led by President Dmitry Medvedev but controlled by the ambitious Putin, does not think logically. It has been significantly humbled economically and internationally since its loss in the Cold War, and it harbors a strong desire to return to the world stage, bigger and better than before. It was Russia that invaded the tiny country of Georgia in 2008 in a savage act of saber-rattling. It is Russia that has been sending weapons to Iran during both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars.
Upon hearing Obama's announcement, Putin announced that he "[anticipates] that this correct and brave decision will be followed by others." Putin is not only happy, he wants more. And if Putin likes something that the U.S. has done, we can safely bet that the decision will help not the U.S., not Eastern Europe, but Russia alone.
There are, however, silver linings in Obama's decision to end the missile program. Though a spokeswoman for the Polish Ministry of Defense called the program's suspension "catastrophic for Poland," only 31 percent of Poles disapprove of Obama's defense policy U-turn. Obama has also created a new four-phase defense plan that would deploy and update interceptors over time, as well as deploying smaller missiles in Poland starting in 2015.
Despite Obama's assurances that the U.S. is not abandoning eastern Europe, questions of intent and timing remain. The original defense system was meant to not only counter Russian aggression, but Iranian hostility as well. Hapless Vice President Joe Biden revealed the connection between the White House's decision and Iran's nuclear ambitions shortly after news about the program's demise broke.
"The whole purpose of this exercise we are undertaking is to diminish the prospect of the Iranians destabilizing the region in the world," he said. "They have no capacity to launch a missile at the United States of America."
Such a statement is woefully na've. No, Iran could not launch a missile at the U.S. per se, but it could hit Israel, Iraq, Jordan or Afghanistan, thereby plunging the entire region into catastrophic war.
Iran continues to pose a major threat to world security, both in word and action. Not only was it recently discovered that Iran has the capability to produce a nuclear bomb, but on Friday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again questioned the Holocaust as a "real event" and labeled it "a lie and mythical claim" fabricated by Jews. If Iran does not pose a threat both to the international order and to history itself, no nation does.
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