The United States rankled some of its European allies and delighted Russia on September 17 when President Barack Obama cancelled plans to build missile defense bases in the Czech Republic and Poland.
The decision makes practical sense – the bases “were to use unproven technology against a threat that does not yet exist,” as the former national security adviser during the Carter administration, Zbigniew Brzezinski put it. But the decision carries some risks as well. Obama will look naïve if Moscow does not reciprocate by cooperating in American efforts to put an end to Iran’s nuclear program. There is also a chance that a triumphant Russia will conclude that with enough bluster and bravado, the United States can be threatened into abandoning its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Whatever may be the outcome, the Obama decision would mark a watershed in Europe’s relations with the two former Cold War adversaries – the United States and Russia.
The decision has been long in coming. The Democrats have always suspected former President George W. Bush of overselling the technical capabilities of missile defense. When he was in office, the president claimed credit for deploying two bases in the United States even though the defense system had performed poorly in tests. The proposed new third site in Poland was to employ a missile that has yet to be developed or even tested (the Czech Republic was to host the radar installation).
“We already have two sites that don’t work. Do we need a third one that doesn’t?” asked one senior American official close to Barack Obama.
Instead, the US president has proposed to deploy a number of simpler, already proven Navy missiles in and around Europe. These can only intercept short- and medium-range missiles. However, experts respond to this by arguing that Iran, the principle party the missile defense network was supposed to defend against, will not have intercontinental-range missiles for at least another decade anyway. The new missile defense architecture could actually make Europe more secure against a threat from Iran. That is because the missiles originally planned for deployment in Poland were designed to destroy missiles bound for the United States, not Europe. But this turnaround will be cold comfort to the Eastern Europeans, who now have to worry about Moscow’s reaction.
The White House’s announcement says little about Russia, but it lurks in the background. Obama will hope that Moscow’s delight at the cancellation of the much-loathed bases will translate into closer cooperation between the United States and Russia in order to stop Iran’s nuclear program. Not coincidentally, the US administration cancelled the Polish and Czech bases only a week before the crucial United Nations meeting on Iran in early October.
Obama’s new approach will not be tested for a few more months yet. For now, however, the US and Russia pursue similar policies on Iran. A few weeks ago, the US president accepted Iran’s offer of wide-ranging negotiations. These, the White House says, will be allowed to run at least until the end of the year before the United States decides whether Iran is serious about stopping its nuclear program or whether it is merely buying time to build nuclear weapons. There is a small chance that Israel may upset the schedule by striking at Iran’s nuclear facilities first, but it would take a major new advance in Iran’s nuclear program for the Israelis to risk openly undermining the preferred approach of the United States.
The trouble for Washington may come if and when it determines that Iran is not serious about nuclear talks. That would prompt the United States to seek new United Nations Security Council sanctions and Obama, having offered to “reset” relations with Russia and after having cancelled the bases in Eastern Europe, would hope for Russian support. But Moscow has sent mixed messages at best on whether it will play along. Last week, President Dmitri Medvedev said vaguely that sanctions “may be necessary in some situations.” But Russia also sold Iran its latest anti-aircraft missiles, which will make it more dangerous for Israeli or American pilots to strike at Iran’s nuclear facilities should all other options fail.
American officials are unimpressed. “The Russians are gaming us,” has said one senior State Department diplomat. “They create problems and want us to thank them for making them go away.”
Should Russia not “reward” the decision of the United States to cancel missile defense bases with greater cooperation on Iran, we can expect the East Europeans to be especially irked. The previous Czech and Polish governments put much political capital into selling missile defenses to their reluctant publics. A whole generation of politicians now feels let down by Washington.
The official reaction from the Czech and Polish capitals after the cancellations was relatively muted. That is because the Poles in particular have been quietly “resetting” their own relations with Russia in recent months. They have also long ago begun to distance themselves from the United States while also repairing their ties with the rest of the European Union.
Whereas the Polish government earlier this decade built its security policy around close links to Washington, the new administration, which came to power in 2007, thought Poland’s reliance on a single ally too risky, especially because the George W. Bush era was so evidently drawing to a close. The incoming Polish foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, knew better than most Eastern Europeans that United States foreign policy can be fickle: He spent years in Washington as a foreign policy pundit.
So Poland has set out to rebuild ties with Russia and the rest of Europe. Sikorski and Prime Minister Donald Tusk have travelled to Moscow on several occasions. They recently hosted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in Gdansk at ceremonies commemorating the outbreak of World War II. A senior Polish government official described the country’s policy as one of “getting rid of our image as the Russophobes of Europe.”
In doing so, the Poles hope to convince the rest of Europe that Poland can be a constructive ally. The idea is to encourage countries like Germany to pursue a joint EU approach to Russia, instead of bypassing the European Union (and, by extension, Poland). Warsaw’s efforts have already paid off in modest ways: the Germans and the Poles are jointly leading EU efforts to prevent a Russo-Ukrainian conflict over Crimea. Yet cooperation between Berlin and Warsaw over an issue as sensitive as Ukraine would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
Because the Polish leadership has been hedging against cancellation of a missile defense shield for years, they will not view Obama’s decision as a great calamity. But that does not mean they will not have some concerns. Their predecessors in power in Warsaw and George W. Bush turned missile defense into the yardstick by which to measure the American commitment to Eastern Europe. The US, Eastern Europe, and Russia have all understood it in those terms. Obama cannot remove bases from Eastern Europe now without risking sending a wrong signal to Russia. There is a real possibility that Moscow will misread the change as a blank check to reassert its might in Eastern Europe. The Russians have opposed the bases in Poland and the Czech Republic primarily because they view Eastern Europe as a part of their natural sphere of interest. Now that the US has backed away from both countries, Russia will assume that with sufficient pressure, the United States can be bludgeoned into abandoning allies.
This is almost certainly not what Barack Obama has in mind. He has warned Russia repeatedly against carving out “zones of influence” in Eastern Europe. In April, the US president came out in support of NATO resuming its contingency planning for a possible conflict with Russia (against opposition from Germany, France and other countries that traditionally lean Moscow’s way). More gestures of similar sort are needed. If NATO planners find that the alliance needs to reinforce bases in Eastern Europe, Washington ought to champion the idea (which is certain to be unpopular in Berlin and Paris). It should also press for military exercises in Eastern Europe, of the sort that Norway holds regularly with NATO allies to rehearse its defense against a possible Russian aggression.
Naturally, these steps should go hand-in-hand with attempts to engage Moscow, as Washington and Warsaw have been trying to do recently. But the United States should take the lead in drafting contingency plans for Eastern Europe nonetheless – to provide a backup in case engagement fails, and to signal to Russia that the United States remains committed to the region, even after abandoning the Polish and Czech missile defense sites.
Tomas Valasek is director of foreign policy and defense at the Center for European Reform in London. This commentary first appeared at YaleGlobal Online, which is published by the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. Permission has been granted for republication.
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