Via the BBC: US and Poland seal missile deal

The US and Poland have signed a deal to locate part of the US’s controversial missile defence system on Polish soil.

[...]

The agreement, which has yet to be ratified by the Polish parliament, was signed by Ms Rice and Poland’s Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski.

[...]

While Washington believes placing 10 interceptor missiles on a disused military base near Poland’s Baltic Sea coast will protect much of Nato against possible long-range attacks, Warsaw sees threats much closer to home, says the BBC’s Adam Easton in Warsaw.

That is why it demanded - in exchange for hosting the base - short-range Patriot missiles for its own air defences and a guarantee that the US will come to its assistance in the event of an attack, our correspondent adds.

While I suspect that a deal would have been hammered out eventually, I have little doubt that the Russia excursion into Georgia added urgency to the negotiations from the Polish side. No doubt to them this is a lot more than simply missile defense against as yet not existence long-range missile threats from rogue states. I really do think that the Russians overreached and have therefore driven much of their near abroad into a rush to get closer to the US and Western Europe. The irony there is that they could probably have gotten away with asserting themselves militarily in South Ossetia after the Georgian broke the cease fire, and perhaps even in Abkhazia, but by going into Georgia itself (and sticking around a while to flex its muscles) it not only brought broad international condemnation, but it made its former clients on its western border very nervous.

Then the question becomes what the Russians will do in response to the enhanced military relationship between the US and Poland.

Of course, there is the overarching question of whether the missile defense system is sufficiently proven to justify the cost of construction, deployment and maintenance. In truth, it seems to me that the system is based more on the power of wish than of empirical evidence of its efficacy. The only good thing about that, I suppose, is that the states against whom the system is being deployed (e.g., Iran) don’t have missiles that can reach that far as yet.

3 Comments

1. [...] party but is much less angry about it than John Cole) he writes about everything from the US-Poland missile deal to cement nationalization in [...]

   Pingback by Blog Love — Wednesday, August 20, 2024 @ 4:05 pm

2. General Obering held a press conference in July about the state of our missile defense system. Transcript is here: http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=4263

   I think when talking about the missile defense system it is important to remember that it is a phased plan. Some of its components have tested and work just fine, and others are still in development. BUT - all of its components have at least passed proof-of-concept testing, and therefore it is simply a matter of time before they are fully developed.

   Remember that when Kennedy told us to go to the moon, we had barely dabbled in space technology, and what dabbling we did was pretty sad. Ten years later, we’d been to the moon and back. In regards to the missile defense system, most of it didn’t exist just 4 years ago; and it was never planned to have the entire system operational in 4 years. There were short-term, near-term, and long-term deployment plans, and so far the system has met the short-term plans and is on track for meeting the others. With this type of aerospace technology, the main limiting factor is not what we know, but what resources we are willing to put into the project - i.e., how much are we willing to spend.

   Securing sites like the one in Poland is necessary no matter what stage of the deployment plan you are in.

   As far as the system being built on wishes - I’m not sure which tests you’ve been monitoring, but the ones I’ve read about have been pretty positive. Our terminal phase interceptors (the Patriot and THAAD) are extremely well tested, in the case of the Patriot under combat conditions; and we’ve been testing the THAAD since at least 1997. It hasn’t been combat tested only because no one has fired anything in combat that reaches the upper limits of the atmosphere where the THAAD is built to shoot; but if they did, and a THAAD was within a hundred kilometers or so of the target area, odds are good (better than 95%) that it would get a first-shot kill at the edge of the atmosphere. And normal protocol is to fire two interceptors in case one misses. The THAAD and the improved Patriot both work quite well.

   And the other parts of the system, the sea and land based components that engage missile at earlier stages, they are not yet totally reliable but the missile defense agency has met all of its goals and timetables for developing these systems, and assuming they continue to get the funding that has driven their success so far, there is no logical reason to think that they won’t meet their ultimate goals; we’re almost half way through the timetable for deployment and have met all of our goals so far. I can think of nothing but cynicism for its own sake that would make a person think this thing ultimately won’t work.

   Personally - whether the thing is protection from “rogue states” or Russia - I don’t care. As far as I’m concerned Russia has a long way to go to prove that it isn’t a threat to us and to its neighbors. I say if Russia has no ill will to its neighbors, why does it care if there is a missile interceptor there? This business in Georgia was not an anomaly; it just showed Russia’s true colors. It is still a bully state and the jury is still out on whether it is becoming more democratic or reverting to the bad old days of totalitarianism. Any state like that, unpredictable and rough, that has ICBM’s is a potential threat; just because they are acting like they don’t want to destroy us today doesn’t mean they won’t tomorrow. And while they haven’t directly challenged us militarily in quite a while (I submit that the only reason for this is that they couldn’t) they have been a real pain in the neck on the U.N. Security Council; they’ve opposed almost everything we’ve done since the Soviet Union broke up, and for no good reason except because they don’t want the US to have it’s way. And like some other security council members (ahem, France) they have continued to do business with nations like Iran, and Iraq prior to the invasion, that are known sponsors of terrorism and general turmoil and instability in the Middle East. These are not the things that friendly nations do for each other.

   I’m all for protection against Russia and I’m not afraid to say so.

   Comment by Captain D — Thursday, August 21, 2024 @ 12:20 pm

3. [...] the aftermath of the U.S. completing its missile defense system agreement with Poland, Russia has already begun to intimate that Poland is risking attack as a consequence. Which begs [...]

   Pingback by Provoking Russia Over Nothing? — Friday, August 22, 2024 @ 12:42 am

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