By JOHN CHERIAN
The United States ’ decision to suspend the plan to set up missile bases in eastern Europe signals a strategy to achieve its policy goals.
CZAREK SOKOLOWSKI/AP
In this March 2007 photograph, a Polish woman protests against the U.S. plan for a missile defence base in Poland , during a demonstration in Warsaw .
PRESIDENT Barack Obama’s decision to suspend the plans to set up new missile bases in the Czech Republic and Poland is being viewed as the first important foreign policy step by the new United States administration. The George W. Bush administration had, in 2002, announced with fanfare that it planned to install a new anti-ballistic missile silo in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic . In August 2008, five months before the Bush administration went out, the U.S. signed agreements with the two countries to operationalise the bases in 2012. The outlandish rationale for this given by the neoconservative administration was that the bases were essential to counter the alleged threat that Iran posed to European security.
The Obama administration, too, insists that threats to Europe from “rogue states” continues to exist. However, Obama, in his live television address in the third week of September, said that his administration would continue to depend on “proven, cost-effective missile systems” using existing bases and sea-based interceptor systems. He said that it was necessary to deploy a defence system “that best responds to the threats that we face”. Such a system, he said, would take the form of a “stronger, smarter and swifter defence” of the U.S. and its military allies.
The President did not, however, spell out the details of the new plan or its possible location.
Robert Gates, the U.S. Defence Secretary, who held the same post in the previous administration, also emphasised that the U.S. had not completely given up its missile defence plan for Europe . Speaking after Obama’s announcement, Gates said that the Pentagon was still in negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic on the deployment of SM-3 missiles on their territory from 2015. The U.S. , Gates went on to say, would continue to deploy its “proven missile defence systems in Europe ”.