The Obama administration has informed the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic that we will not be pursuing Bush’s stupid plan to deploy anti-long range missile defenses in their countries. It turns out (surprise, surprise) that our intelligence reveals that Iran is building short-range missiles and the whole rationale for the program was bullshit. The administration is spinning the decision as being based on the best intelligence, and we will still be providing some defense against short-range missiles (possibly in Turkey or the Balkans). But we are definitely not responding to vociferous Russian opposition to the long-range missile defenses.
These kinds of stories usually only become clear a couple of decades later when the backroom negotiations get declassified and the parties begin writing their memoirs. What we do know is this:
Mr. Obama’s advisers have said their changes to missile defense were motivated by the accelerating Iranian threat, not by Russian complaints. But the announcement comes just days before Mr. Obama is scheduled to meet privately with Russia’s President Dmitri A. Medvedev in New York on the sidelines of next week’s United Nations General Assembly session.
I think making the decision to abandon the program was pretty easy. But we had to worry about maintaining our good relations with Poland and the Czech Republic. Smart diplomacy would mandate they we obtained something from the Russians in exchange for doing what we wanted to do anyway. But, what might that be?
It’s most likely that we got some agreement on how to deal with Iran and their nuclear energy program. But it’s also possible that we acquired assistance in other areas, like Afghanistan or its northern (former Soviet Socialist Republics) neighbors. There are a lot of areas where we have mutual or competing interests with the Russians, including North Korea, Ukraine and the Caucusus, and even the Middle East peace process.
My hope is that this conciliatory (and sane) move by the Obama administration will be reciprocated in more than one way by the Russians. But we’ll probably have to wait awhile to learn the real backstory.
