It would be interesting to know if the military’s top brass are drinking champagne as they sit in their offices on Smolenskaya Ploshchad and Arbat, or if they are cursing those cunning Americans for outmaneuvering Moscow. U.S. President Barack Obama announced late last week that he had made the difficult decision to cancel long-standing U.S. plans to deploy elements of a global missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. The prospect of Washington creating a so-called “third position region” (after California and Alaska) close to Russia’s borders had been a main stumbling block in U.S.-Russian relations for the past several years.
During that time, Russia’s leaders had been screaming at every street corner that the deployment of 10 U.S. interceptor missiles constituted a dire threat to Russia. Efforts by Washington to explain that 10 interceptor missiles could hardly disrupt the strategic balance — Russia currently has about 3,000 nuclear warheads, and even after negotiated reductions, the number will drop to no fewer than 1,500 — were like talking to a brick wall. Moscow insisted that a “third position region” could become the first step in an aggressive program that could end with Russia encircled by hundreds of interceptor missiles. Russian officials even used the unusual argument that the sly Americans could refit the interceptor missiles with nuclear warheads and turn them into medium-range strategic missiles aimed at Moscow. The officials ignored efforts by defense specialists to explain that the need to first test such refitted rockets would make it impossible to conduct the operation in secret.
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