What will Russia offer the U.S. in return for the Obama administration’s decision to cancel the U.S. missile defence shield installations in the Czech Republic and Poland?
At least four nothings, maybe more.
For sure, Russia will now withdraw her own threat to install new missile batteries in retaliation for any Czech or Polish desire to be protected from Russia. This will sound very generous to persons of the peacenik persuasion: for after all, what’s the difference between offensive and defensive arrangements? (The answer is, night and day.)
Moreover, Russia will be happy to offer increased cooperation with NATO in developing western anti-missile systems elsewhere. Again: cooperation! Peaceniks rejoice! But what this really means is that Russia is angling for fresh western missile technology—ideally for free, given an Obama administration that can be very generous with America’s security assets.
Russia will look more kindly on U.S. requests for overflights to resupply forces in Afghanistan. But Russia was already being quite co-operative on this front, for the simple reason that Russia feels even more threatened by the Taliban near her borders than the U.S. does by Taliban half a world away. Indeed, the Russians had already granted overflights to the Bush administration, last year.
The fourth nothing is “goodwill.” At the moment, it is a bit better than goodwill, as European media report downright euphoria in Moscow, quoting remarks from the Russian foreign policy establishment further tinged with triumphalism. Russia made clear to the U.S. all the former Soviet slave states—not just Ukraine and Georgia—were areas of “special Russian concern.” Finally, the Americans are showing the proper “sensitivity.”
At this point our list passes into the category of “nothing, squared.” The Bush administration looked favourably on the desire of Ukraine and Georgia to seek the protection of NATO and, to be frank, not against the threat of Iran. It hardly follows the Russians will now withdraw objections to any expansion of NATO; or anything the U.S. may offer Czechs and Poles to replace what they are taking away.
Having seen how effective mere verbal clamour can be, upon an Obama administration that accentuates the verbal, we can expect renewed Russian outrage about western attempts to, for instance, replace the defences the Russians destroyed during their invasion of Georgia last year.
Will there be more Russian co-operation in pressuring Iran? Will the Russians even withdraw their promise to veto in the U.N. Security Council any proposal to impose sanctions on the Iranian regime? For after all, they could do so cheaply, by relying on the duplicate Chinese veto to subvert any kind of organized effort to enforce the U.N.‘s own agreements on nuclear proliferation.
The answer to all that is no, squared. As Fyodor Luk-yanov, a Russian foreign policy authority told Der Spiegel Online: “The U.S. will be disappointed. The American idea that Russia holds the key to a solution to the Iranian nuclear problem is a fantasy.”
One might quarrel with the proposition a country which supplies Iran with the most reliable components of her nuclear and missile systems has no influence over Iran’s behaviour, but one would be wasting one’s breath. Iran’s threats to Israel and the West are in Russia’s interest.
The Russians, like the Chinese, feel threatened by the Taliban, and all related anarchic Islamist insurgencies, because both are plausible targets. The recent troubles in Chinese-controlled Sink-iang have brought this delicate point home nicely. But neither feels threatened by the Iranian regime, which is for all practical purposes their strategic partner.
The anti-missile defences that will not now be going into Poland and Czech Republic were not, incidentally, particularly designed to stop missiles from Russia. The Czech installation was in fact just a radar-tracking station, and the Polish one consisted of ten anti-missile emplacements. The Russians certainly retain enough offensive missiles to overwhelm any such defences, as we will be reminded by the resumption of the START talks.
They were instead to be the third point of a three-point global missile interception system, integrated with facilities that already exist at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. The primary function of that “third site” was to extend the ability to intercept an Iranian missile aimed at Europe; though such systems are flexible enough to adapt to any other potential threat within their range. It was going where it was going because the Poles and Czechs have, in the recent past, been easier to deal with than America’s other European allies.
The cancellation was announced on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland, that followed the signing of the Hitler-Stalin pact, at the beginning of the Second World War. That was a nice touch.
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