Last March, during a visit to Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was made to look foolish when she presented her host, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with a box festooned with a button marked “reset” in English. The idea was to have a photo-op designed to symbolize President Barack Obama’s ambition to put United States relations with the Kremlin on a new, more positive footing after the bilateral strains of the George W. Bush years.
Unfortunately, for the secretary, her crack State Department team mistranslated the term and the word on the box in Russian meant “overcharge” not “reset.” Based on the president’s decision announced to scrap the planned deployment of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, however, we now know that Team Obama’s version of resetting would best be translated as “capitulation.”
Obama came to office evincing the reflexive hostility of many partisan Democrats to the idea of anti-missile protection for the United States. This bizarre, not to say dangerous, attitude has its roots in the theology of the Cold War during which the left embraced arms control in general and, above all, the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In practice, that accord precluded the United States from deploying any missile defense of its territory — a state of grace Democratic legislators and operatives were horrified to see Bush abandon in December 2001 with the formal abrogation of the ABM Treaty and the subsequent installation of interceptors and radars at two sites, one in Alaska and the other in California.
In addition, to enhance the protection of American territory and to provide at least a modest defense of Europe against the growing threat of ballistic missile attack, Bush proposed a so-called “Third Site” in Eastern Europe. The Polish and Czech governments saw this collaborative effort as a means not only of contributing to their own security and that of their NATO allies (who voted twice unanimously for the Third Site) against Iranian missiles. These key post-Cold War allies also saw it as a tangible expression of the U.S. commitment to their security in the face of assiduous Russian efforts to reassert a sphere of influence that would turn the clock back, reestablishing in some form their unhappy status under the Kremlin’s thumb.
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10 comments:
Blow to security? What the hell has Poland or the Czech Republic done for us? Our missle defense systems can't protect us from the type of ICBM's that would be fired from Russia/China. And maybe without an Eastern European shield, the rest of Europe would stop acting like chumps and actually do something concrete to help stop nuclear proliferation. And just maybe there are diplomatic agreements where Russia will stop supporting Venezuela's military initiatives if we disengage from Russia's neighbors. Why should we be putting ourselves at risk over eastern europe?
hey are members of NATO. We protect(or use to) fellow members of NATO.
It never worked. It was not going to work.
Think of it in GOP terms: the missile defense system was a person on welfare. You dump all this money into something that is never going to work at all. Does that make you happy?
9:38, which is why they are largely leaving us high and dry in Afghanistan. We're begging for more help to fight against the guys who directly attacked us and still pose a threat. Some ally.
Pony up some troops, pony up more reconstruction money, then we'll talk missle defense. I bet their refusal is part of the reason Obama pulled the plug on this project.
10:19
They both have troops in Afghanistan. How many troops does Obamas buddies like Chavez, Castro and other socialist have in any war zones. NONE
10:48 another delusional repub. I guess in your world a gathering of world leaders at an international forum to discuss world issues is considered being "buddies". Saying that you will directly engage in a dialogue with people you disagree with is being "buddies". You rather make angry rants of "bomb Iran" over here where its safe instead of engaging your opponents directly.
the Czechs have less than 400 troops in Afghan. Poland has 2000.
By comparison the US has 30,000 NATO troops alone. Our real allies the british contribute 9,000.
Way to go "partners". Sounds like that phony "coalition of the willing" we had going into Iraq. Leave the Czechs and the Polish out to dry.
Our allies' fears that the U.S. will not be there to support them are well founded. Eastern Europe is sacrificed as Obama throws in with thug dictators, his first love.
The worst possible position to be in is to be a friend of America. It has become the policy of this government to screw our allies while praising our enemies. Why would any country want to help us?
blow to security= cheaper, more dependable sea-based system with more flexibility and utility. Great logic Repubs. Shows how you hate anything Obama does without even looking at the logic
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