President Barack Obama won NATO summit agreement Friday to build a missile shield over Europe, an ambitious commitment to protect against Iranian attack while demonstrating the alliance's continuing relevance — but at the risk of further aggravating Russia.
The problem is that unlike the Bush plan that he killed, President Obama's system won't protect America at all--so why should Russia object?
Under the arrangement, a limited system of U.S. anti-missile interceptors and radars already planned for Europe — to include interceptors in Romania and Poland and possibly a radar in Turkey — would be linked to expanded European-owned missile defenses. That would create a broad system that protects every NATO country against medium-range missile attack.
Medium range missiles can't reach America or Canada. Bush's plan would have shot down those that could reach that far. The new plan will not do that. So, no, not all NATO countries are protected. You can argue that Iran only poses a threat to Europe with medium range missiles and won't threaten America with ICBMs, but that is a different argument than implying that START has no impact on our national ballistic missile defense programs because the Russians are fine with our new, more limited plan.
The European missile defense plan is no argument for START. And the fact that the administration is trying to imply that this plan proves START won't affect national BMD seems to indicate that they are trying to pull a fast one on this issue.
Kill START. Russia's missile strength will go down whether we have a treaty or not because they can't afford to maintain them. We really do have time to make sure the treaty doesn't have provisions that hurt our interests.
