The Polish government signed a deal Aug. 14 to host a 10 interceptor missiles at a site along Poland [2]'s Baltic Sea coast as a part of the US "missile shield" plan. The site, staffed by US forces, would complement a US radar installation to be based in the Czech Republic. Washington says those facilities, to be operational by 2013, would complete an anti-missile system already in place in the US, Greenland, and Britain. In return, Poland will receive "enhanced security cooperation"—most significantly, a separate missile defense system for its own armed forces. A US Patriot missile battery is to be relocated to Poland from Germany for this purpose, to be initially operated jointly with the US. (NYT [3], RFE/RL [4], Aug. 15)
Although the US insists the "missile shield" is intended to protect Europe form "rogue states" like Iran, the move has drawn an angry response from Russia [5]. "When one party agrees to host [a foreign facility], of course, it assumes certain responsibilities. And we're talking about a military facility in this case, so there is additional [responsibility]," said Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff. "Certainly, any facility is the target—excuse me, I mean the subject of the interests of another country. So, of course, one has to be careful with that. A bordering country always makes it its priority to strike such installations [in case of conflict]. So, it is not simply—it cannot go unpunished from the point of view of [its] military use and so on." (RFE/RL [4], Aug. 15)
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last month that "these installations...only worsen the situation. We will be forced to respond adequately." That was before the current crisis over Georgia [6], which has strained US-Russian ties further. US and Polish officials refused to say whether the Georgia crisis helped to spur the signing of the deal.
See our last posts on nuclear fear [7] and the "missile shield [8]."
