Thursday 17 September 2009
Why Obama's Decision to Scrap the Proposed "Missile Shield" was a Correct but Difficult Choice ☀
President Obama’s decision to scrap a controversial “missile shield” in Central Europe (see here; here, and here) is the correct one to make, but, like many difficult decisions, comes with costs. To understand why the decision was correct, we need to look at the supposed justifications for the missile defense system. On one hand, the missile system was supposed to protect the US from an Iranian threat. Exactly how it was going to do this was never to clear to me, but the most compelling argument was that the defense system – if it worked – could prevent Iran from exerting power over the US by threatening Europe with a missile attack. On the other hand, the system was seen as a way of providing important security commitments to our important allies Poland and the Czech Republic. The problem here, of course, is that East European countries, and especially Poland, are not worried about the Iranians; they are much more worried about the Russians. So the underlying question always was, was the system really aimed at the Russians? We knew this, the Poles knew this, and the Russians knew this; hence the tension this interjected into US-Russian relations. Furthermore, within Russia the missile defense system was practically a gift on a silver platter to anyone who wanted to stir up or play on anti-American sentiments in an effort to justify a more antagonistic foreign policy towards the US (as well as more nationalistic behavior at home). But given the “unstated” nature of the potential for the missile defense system to provide protection to Poland and other East European nations against Russia, we could never really get into a discussion about whether 10 missile interceptors in Poland would actually have any sort of deterrent effect against any remotely likely Russian actions. As a corollary, the Russians never had to really provide any justification for why they were so angry: they could just define the interceptors as a generic threat to Russian national security. So the bottom line is: (1) it is unclear how these interceptors would have improved US national security; (2) it is unclear how the interceptors would have improved the security of US allies in Eastern Europe; (3) they would have been expensive (note Obama’s mention of “cost-effectiveness” in his speech this morning); (4) we don’t know if they would have worked (note Obama’s emphasis on the effectiveness of his proposed alternative, stating in this morning’s statement that “This new approach will provide capabilities sooner, build on proven systems and offer greater defenses against missile threats than the 2007 missile defense program.”); and (5) they would have continued to provide a serious impediment to improving US-Russian relations. All in all, this does not seem like a program worth going forward with simply because people in the previous administration saw fit to initialize it. When you are the president, you ultimately need to take decision that will improve the national security of your nation, and, in my opinion, on balance the proposed missile shield would not have done so.
