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.
Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community
These states border Russia, so they might be sad to have a legitimate interest in good and stable relations with them. But precisely what legitimate interests does the US have there?
North Korea- we are the guarantors of security for Japan and South Korea. We also are a critical element in any multinational effort at non-proliferation.
Ukraine- We want to assure that the Ukraine remains an independent country, consistent with our rhetorical commitment to self-determination.
Georgia- The same.
Caucuses- we have oil and gas rights and some military bases in the Caucuses. There is a pipeline that we want to protect that runs through the caucuses into Turkey and others that go to the Black Sea.
Those would be the simple answers.
Self-determination, or vassal state creation?
The US does not have a right to Oil, gas, or military bases anywhere outside the US. Private companies may have oil and gas rights – subject to the laws of host states. Putting military bases in nominally independent countries is a form of imperialist control – even if the local elite has invited you in – which they generally did in most colonial situations anyway…
Why is there so little difference between Democrats and Republicans in the belief that the US has a right to own/control/manage or otherwise coerce sovereign states almost anywhere in the world and to maintain military bases in most of them? Was the US not founded to end imperialism?
I don’t think the USA was founded to end imperialism. I don’t know where you would get that idea at all. It was founded to end the monarchal system on the eastern seaboard of America and to hold out a beacon to others who wanted to be free of that system. Then we immediately went about seizing control of as much of the continent as we could, and kicking Spain out of the hemisphere to the maximum extent possible.
The USA stands for the principle of self-determination, but within obvious limitations.
Finally, you are a bit naive to think that the USA doesn’t consider it part of its right and its strategic mission to safeguard our corporate investments overseas. Nowhere is this more true than in the energy sector. Having fought the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese and largely won because of our ability to deny them gasoline, we were not going to be put at risk in any war against the USSR. Outside of Latin America and Vietnam, most of our imperial ambitions since World War Two have been related to securing energy for ourselves and denying it to the Soviets. Some of our Latin American policy has been related to that too.
Ah – so it was right to kick the British and Spanish imperialist out of the nascent USA in the name of self-determination, but not right for anyone else to kick the US imperialists out of their 100’s of military bases elsewhere in the world?
And oil and gas anywhere in the world is the USA’s rightful property – on the off chance that the Russians might get their hands on it – despite the fact that the Russians have more than enough of their own?
And how is it that private corporations from almost every other country in the world can turn a buck without needing their countries army for back-up? You don’t see European armies backing up their “strategic” investments anywhere else in the world – in the post colonial era at least.
What the US calls its “strategic interests”, everyone else – and objective observers – calls naked imperialism. I’m surprised, Boo, that someone with your analytical skills should be so ideologically blind to everything outside a US centric view of the world.
I’m as pro-Obama as anybody (in Europe), but I do not wonder why so many others make so little distinction between Obama and Bush. Obama, in their eyes, is just an awful lot better at PR – a bit like Blair.
I actually think Obama could be to the left of you on this – although he obviously has a lot less room for manoeuvre…
You mistake my description of American political reality for advocacy.
Booman Tribune ~ U.S. Abandons Eastern Europe Missile Shield
Sounds like you accept that the US has strategic interests in e.g. Ukraine and the Caucusus which justify military US military bases and engagements there… My argument is that the US has no legitimate strategic interests there.
Too often those bases are used to buttress the rule of corrupt dictatorships in return for favourable terms for private US corporations. Self determination doesn’t enter into it – or only when the selves doing the determination are working hand in glove with US corporate interests.
Can Russia regard US bases in former Soviet Republics as anything other than provocative – as provocative as Soviet Missiles in Cuba?
Good point. Using the self determination of the US as an example does give jusitifaction to the peopel of any occupied country to find ways to drive the occupier out if that is what they desire if their self determination.
That however, doesnt mean we will like it or wont try to characterize it as something else but those actions would only be hypocrisy (sp).
Having bases in foreign countries can in the final analysis lead to a very real undernmining of the security of the occupying power’s interests.
Can you think of a major case where the US stood up for self-determination that went against its “strategic”, ie economic/military/corporate interests? I can’t. In which case there’s a whole lot more “limitations” than “standing up” going on.
The Suez Canal crisis.
Good answer, Booman.
Good example, probably the only one, and the moment when Eisenhower decided the Brits should stop their imperialistic adventures. Unfortunately his warning of similar tendencies in the US military industrial complex were not heeded…
Arguably the US was just telling the Brits to stop messing on their pitch and leave the global domination to the US…
Shouldnt the rhetorical commitment to self determination extend to the break away regions of Georgia whose citizens not only want to not be part of Georgia but have also been brutally attacked by the georgian military apparatus? May as well throw the Bosnia precedent in there even it were kind of illegal under international law as by defualt it has been accepted!
North Korea;
North Korea is a failed state. With poor leadership. If it falls there has the be some sort of plan on how to pick up the pieces. Or at least a plan on how not to make things worse. While the US may have limited influence in exactly what China and Russia would do, even knowing their plans helps us to formulate our plans.
One of the HUGE failures of the Bush administration was its complete inability to realize (or is it ‘care’?) that what we do in one part of the world hurts our influence in another, perhaps more important, part of the world.
All knowledge is worth having.
nalbar
Booman Tribune ~ U.S. Abandons Eastern Europe Missile Shield
How about self-determination? Is it the USA’s right and duty to pick up the pieces and engage in nation building every time a Government/state fails?
I don’t have a problem with humanitarian intervention for a limited period. But you are talking about building a US empire in competition with Russia & China. I don’t recall the US reacting very well when the USSR sought to arm Cuba. Why should China/Russia react any differently when the USA arms their neighbours and rings their countries with military bases…?
Could you find my quote where I was ‘talking about building a US empire in competition with Russia & China.’? That is so different from what I said that I assume you did it for discussion purposes.
South Korea is our ally. We are ‘powerful’ in the sense that we can speak to China and Russia and they will take what we say with careful consideration (if we have credibility). So it makes sense that we engage in talks on what they will do, and what they expect us to do, if North Korea falls.
You are turning that into some sort of advocacy of occupying North Korea as a balance against China and Russia.
nalbar
Perhaps I am behind the times, but is there any evidence that anti-missile defense systems even work? Or are we still taking the word of the military-industrial complex?
Does someone have a link?
nalbar
No link, but it doesn’t work and Bush wanted to build it anyway. I say this as one who believes in the concept.
They don’t work once missiles have reached ballistic speeds/altitudes and only to a very limited extent during the boost stage of the launch. The anti-missile missile therefore needs to be launched from within about 100 miles of the launch site which always made the “Missile shield to counter Iranian Treat to Europe” argument risible. But it was never about the physics and always about the politics.
The systems do not work. Every test was cooked. In some cases, the target had homing beacons. The targets never were realistic (no decoy chaff deployed, etc).
The entire thing was based on flawed data. In Gulf War I, supposedly the Patriot anti-missile batteries shot down 20 missiles or something. In reality, all the strikes were false, and there was maybe MAYBE 1 confirmed kill.
It turns out John Cole has a link.
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2004/12/i-miss-republicans.html
Pretty old, but yes John, his word-fu is very strong.
nalbar
And a heart “Thank God” from this atheist.
Still, Obama probably just gave it away like the public option. It would be nice to have received something in exchange but just dumping this Russia-provoking White Elephant is good.
I don’t mind if he ‘just gave it away’. After the Bush foreign policy we will probably have to ‘just give away’ quite a few things to get back to being trustworthy and worth listening to.
And this ‘giveaway’ did not work, was in the wrong place for its stated goal, and was not so secretly designed to threaten Russia.
Almost like it was designed to ‘just give away’. Which it wasn’t, because Cheney is a moron.
nalbar
I agree with all of your points! Just wanted something for nothing.
Good start. Now how about getting our bases out of Europe and Japan?
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Remember the Kyrgyz government kicking the US out of the Manas AFB earlier this year?
Moscow – The Kyrgyz government’s order to close the Pentagon’s Manas air base, which is a vital link in the supply chain to NATO forces in nearby Afghanistan, is “final” and there’s nothing further to discuss.
So declared several top officials of the mountainous ex-Soviet state Friday, indicating that they expect the 1,000 or so US personnel who’ve occupied the sprawling facility for the past eight years to be gone, along with all the hardware they’ve parked there, by this summer.
Though Moscow officially denies any connection, Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced his decision to close the base after receiving a generous aid package from the Kremlin, including a $2 billion loan, a $150 million gift, and a full write-off of Kyrgyzstan’s $180 million debt to Moscow. That compares with annual US assistance to the impoverished Central Asian nation of around $150 million, including $63 million for rental of Manas.
The closure could strike a serious blow to President Barack Obama’s plan to double US force levels in Afghanistan by the end of this year, and it comes just as sabotage threatens to cripple the main supply route used by NATO forces via Pakistan.
Well, Medvedev signed a new deal with the US to have the Pentagon goods travel across Russia to supply allied forces in Afghanistan. Quite a turnaround from Bush/McCain policy on Georgia and its war with South Ossetia a year ago. My, oh my. Kyrgyz president Bakiev also has a change of heart about the Manas airbase.
MANAS, Kyrgyzstan (Reuters) — Kyrgyzstan’s President Kurmanbek Bakiev has praised the role of the U.S. airbase in his country that he had sought to close down earlier this year.
At a ceremony to mark the victims of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, which triggered the Afghan war, Bakiev said the Manas base had helped secure the Central Asian region.
The base lease was extended after Washington agreed a $180 million payment to Bishkek and renamed the base as a transit center to supply troops battling the Taliban in Afghanistan.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I haz a happy at this news. Congrats, Mr. President.
Good move by Obama. Time to come into the 21st century with missle defense technology. Now, Obama must sit down with Medvedev, and Putin, and the Russians now must reciprocate in some fashion. They can start with Georgia.
The world is now more complicated than the short duration we had of uni-polar dominance. A new balance remains to be found but the US will again have to give as well as take