What did Putin do against Poland?
The missile defense system in Poland was NEVER about Russia. At least not the way most people think. There are numerous reasons to think this.
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10 interceptor missiles are no threat to over 5000 ICBMs.
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Their placement guarantees that they were never any use against Russian ICBMs. (If Russia launches ICBMs at the US they will be fired over the North Pole and not over Western Europe and thus making the interceptors useless for that purpose.) Firing their ICBMs over Western Europe almost doubles the distance needed and greatly reduces the number of missiles that can reach US soil.
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Because of their design the interceptor missiles are not effective against cruise missiles. (Their flight envelope just isn’t effective against those kinds of targets.) This means that they are not going to be effective at protecting Western Europe against the Russians either as they can just use cruise missiles instead of ICBMs for attacking Europe.
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In the lastest defense budget for this year Obama\Gates actually added an additional 10 interceptors above and beyond the 40 that Bush purchased to be placed in alaska. This is coupled with several successful tests of the system in the last year.
So what are they about? I will skip the Iranian nuke part as that is obvious. This was at least partly about the US gaining influence in Eastern Europe and about Russia trying to prevent that.
However it is the timing of the announcement that bothers me. To make this announcement on the anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland during WWII is a monumentally stupid idea. I can only assume that Obama got some really bad advice from his advisers who were all clueless about the historical realities of the situation.
The only reason the Eastern Europeans are pissed about this is that they caved in to Cheney’s pressure to agree to install these worthless boondoggles, as a favor to the United States, and they pissed off Russia when they did, only now Russia is still annoyed at them and it turns out that since we aren’t installing the systems they didn’t do us any favors.
Thing is, it was all a lie that this system was supposed to protect Europe from Iranian missiles. Even once they get a couple nukes, you think Iran is going to lob them at Bratislava? Iran doesn’t threaten Europe. It threatens Israel, the Gulf States, Iraq, Afghanistan, so forth. So why are we building a missile defense in Europe? Because those are really defenses against Russian missiles. Which is why it pissed off the Russians. But the defenses were so tiny they couldn’t defend against a real Russian missile attack, so they annoyed the Russians without protecting against the Russians. Lose-lose.
Wanna buy a bridge?
Make that less than 400 ICBM’s in service and dropping rapidly as old ones are taken out of service at a faster rate than they can replace them. You might be right about issues of interceptor placement, as I am not sure how far off the trajectory the interceptors are effective. Though I found some article where some MIT professor claims that the interceptors are fast enough to catch up to Russian ICBM’s when placed in Poland, but I don’t know who is correct. What about ICBM’s aimed at western Europe, the interceptors should work against that?
The missiles were even configured only to shoot down Iranian missiles, thus was not about Russian defense at all (and before anyone says someone can just push a button to switch that to Russian missiles, I’d like to see their military weapons ID badge). This was a dumb system that didnt protect anyone in Eastern Europe against attack (the missiles were actually for Iranian missiles flying over Europe on their way to the US) and served to piss off the Russians at the same time. Bush was an ass for defending it, no wonder people hate him.
Its no surprise that Obama’s officials, along with Bush’s, and Secretary Gates all disliked the system. Unfortunately, we have too many people who only see things in ideological terms. Newsflash, the Cold War is over, we won. Russia is no longer an enemy. We should be making friends with them, not tiny, barely-there countries in Eastern Europe that have nothing to offer us.
If the Iranian situation is ever going to get solved, it will not be because Lithuania and Romania decide to sanction Iran. It will be because Russia does. That’s who we should be befriending, not Poland. Poland can come along for the ride but that country figures little into world politics.
“Missile shields” (kind of a misnomer since they’re only more missiles) don’t work anyway. They’re a waste of money. There’s no reason to spend ten cents on them. They serve no purpose. They protect nothing.
You do realize that Poland was taken over by the Soviet Union didn’t you and that people were arrested and jailed for political opinion? And that they fought their way out of this to become a free country? And that, after watching Russian tanks occupy parts of Georgia (another state freed from Soviet rule) they are a little concerned for their well being. That the same country that has been blackmailed by Rusia over natural gas prices and had their supply cut off might feel threatened?
Or do you want to redirect the argument that Putin wasn’t responsible for political prosecutions in Poland because he worked as a KGB agent in East Germany. That is job at the Fifth Directorate of the KGB was to combat political dissent in the Soviet Union.
There isn’t any Soviet Union anymore. Who gives a shit what happened 60 years ago. What a shallow pretense for outrage.
That happened before Putin was even conceived, so I don’t see his involvement. Also, Putin recently condemned the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, as well as the Katyn massacre, on the 70th anniversary of the Nazi invasion in Gdansk.
I don’t see much in common between Poland’s situation and what happened in Georgia. The war with Georgia is completely unrelated and a totally different beast.
Do you mean when most Russian gas transports were cut to Europe? That was due to Ukraine failing to pay their gas debt. The Russians are planning to build new pipelines, for example Nord stream together with Germany, and South stream together with other European countries, to avoid problematic transit countries like Ukraine. That should help stabilize gas transports.
To be honest I don’t know much about his KGB career except for what I caught in his Wikipedia article, though what makes you believe he had much business in Poland?
You’re complaining that we’re coddling Putin, when Putin and the Russkis are assholes. Of course they’re assholes. And so what?
Were the systems supposed to protect against Russian missiles? No.
Were they supposed to protect against Iranian missiles? Yes.
Except, why in hell are we putting missile defenses to protect against Iranian missiles (which don’t yet exist) in Eastern Europe? What was the point there? To annoy the Russians at the same time we annoy the Iranians and the Eastern Europeans?
You’re annoyed because Putin is happy this program has been canceled. But if it wasn’t worth doing in the first place, it certainly isn’t worth continuing just because it annoys Putin. This isn’t a zero-sum game, where everything that annoys Putin is good for the United States, and everything good for the United States annoys Putin, and everything that makes Putin happy is bad for the United States and everything bad for the United States makes Putin happy.
Are Eastern European countries worried about Russia? Of course they are, and rightly so given Russian history of imperialism in Eastern Europe. So what are we going to do about that? Put in weapons that annoy Russia but don’t protect Eastern Europe from Russia? If they annoyed Russia but protected against the Russkis, then fine. But they don’t protect against the Russkis, and therefore are useless.
And they’re also useless against the Iranians. Who, it should be mentioned, don’t have any ICBMs or nuclear bombs yet. Which I guess is why it didn’t matter if the antimissile system actually worked. We’ve got to get the non-working system in place to defend against non-working Iranian missiles, because pretty soon the Iranians will get those missiles working. Well, sure. It’s pretty clear that if the Iranians are willing to pay the price they can build nuclear bombs (if Pakistan can do it), and maybe even an ICBM. But nuclear bombs and ICBMs are proven technology. So when Iran get’s their working bombs, we’ll still have non-working defenses. And then what?
We’ll annoy the Russkis. We’ll annoy the Eastern Europeans because we annoyed the Russkis for no reason. We’ll annoy the Iranians. And we’ll annoy the American taxpayers, because we’ll have spent hundreds of billions of dollars (remember those trillion dollar deficits) on a system that doesn’t work. So to sum up, that’s lose-lose-lose-lose. How does that make sense?
And would you look at that: Russia suspends Baltic missile plans.
Or that it matters now?
Quoth Magiver:
The missiles which are capable of shooting down enemy ICBMs don’t exist. The missiles which are supposed to be able to do that do exist, but they don’t work, and don’t accomplish anything except pissing off people we’d rather not have pissed off.
Just watch. This will be spun into something terrible that Obama did. The right wing will be OUTRAGED that Russia is no longer going to deploy short-range missiles in Kaliningrad.
You’re internet assessment of their performance not withstanding, they do exist, they do work, and they are part of our inventory.
Cite?
Maybe this has been part of the new plan and negotiations behind the decision to scrap the European part of the shield?
NATO seeks missile-defense cooperation with Russia
Moscow praises NATO’s proposal to link missile defense systems
Maybe the info is so supertopsecret that it can only be discussed in Cheney’s old bunker under the Naval Observatory?
Nice current review at the Council on Foreign Relations:
National Missile Defense: A Status Report Updated: September 17, 2009