In the hours after he announced he was abandoning the Bush-era European missile shield plans, the question seemed to be not whether President Barack Obama had made the right decision but whether this was the right moment to announce it. In the modern sound bite world, playing a political long game can be risky. Moscow’s obvious satisfaction at the move only empowered the president’s Republican opponents to claim he had thrown away a key part of US strategic policy on Europe’s defense for no obvious gain.
Yesterday, however, came the surprise call by NATO’s Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen that Russia, NATO and the US should explore the potential for linking their missile systems. Thus, far from being pusillanimous, as Republicans have claimed, Obama is clearly embarked upon a possibly groundbreaking initiative in Washington’s relations with Moscow in which America’s NATO allies are fully involved.
Moscow’s detailed response will be eagerly awaited. It must be suspected that the White House already has a good idea of what it will be. Russia’s reaction may indeed only come from President Dmitry Medvedev when he arrives at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh next week. Are the Russians prepared to join Obama in, as he declared, pressing the “reset button” in their relations? If they are, this will be the fruit of intensive behind-the-scenes talks the US president initiated almost immediately he took over the Oval Office. That “power breakfast” last July with Russian strongman Premier Vladimir Putin almost certainly covered more than the next round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT).
Yet serious obstacles do remain. Russia, already unnerved by the accession to NATO of all its former East European allies, is determined that Ukraine and Georgia shall not follow suit. Its brief but decisive demonstration of military might in Georgia was a warning. The Bush missile shield was no less worrying to the Kremlin, since it saw with some justice that the missile interceptors could be used just as well against its own rocketry as against any claimed threat to Europe from North Korea or Iran.
The irony is there is strong evidence that technically the shield would not have worked. The ground radar systems sited in the Czech Republic would reportedly have been unable to identify the difference between dummy and real warheads. The proposed system also seemed to ignore the far more accurate surveillance and interception data that would be provided by the network of US spy satellites, long configured to defend against missile attacks from the old Soviet Union. In short, the whole European shield was another piece of negative Bush bluster, long on aggression but short on common sense. It served only to bate the Kremlin.
Now we have the new Obama tack. At base the Kremlin may prefer dealing with a hard-line US president rather than a leader prepared to explore options that would undermine the external threat that has underpinned Russian revanchism. Will it, therefore, take the risk of exploring the unknown path of cooperation with Washington and its old foes in NATO?
