Tehran to DC
Masshad to Washington, DC
Masshad to San Francisco
Masshad to Rome
Masshad to Madrid
Masshad to Istambul
Masshad to Athens
Masshad to Chicago
Obama has canceled plans for missile defense installations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Basically, they determined that the threat is not there, and the Russians find it provocative, so they are dropping it.
The Russian response is positive, if somewhat muted, probably because they have been aware that the signals that Obama has sent on this issue for some time, and do now want to stir the pot.
Notably, they mention cost a number of times in their official statement.
I think that this is a combination of a number of things:
- Recognition that there were no real benefits to the system beyond playing to the right wing in Eastern Europe, and to upset the Russians, because it was thought that a hostile Russia would play well for Republicans in domestic politics.
- The fact that there are technologies that allow for non-permanent installations to serve the same purpose, most notably THAAD and a potentially larger derivative, and various flavor of interceptors based on the Navy Standard, which won’t have the effect of leaving Turkey, Italy and Spain, as shown in my analysis from earlier this year.
In the case of a diplomatic crisis, you can have a THAAD or a ground based Standard interceptor battery in place in less than 72 hours in northeast Europe, and have an Aegis destroyer off deployed near Cyprus, or possibly in the Black sea, in order to protect the southern tier of NATO in less time than that.
This is a remarkably sensible and sane decision, and it appears that SecDef Gates is fully behind this, so I expect Republicans to start screaming “Munich
if they haven’t already.
I think that we will see more support from the Russians on a number of issues as a result.