Radar shield quest
By A. Wess Mitchell
Published in: THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Date: July 8, 2008
Today, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will arrive in Prague to sign a treaty with the government of Mirek Topolanek on the placement of U.S. radar installations in the Czech Republic. She originally planned to head for Warsaw on Wednesday for talks with the government of Donald Tusk on placing missile interceptor sites in Poland, though this now looks increasingly doubtful.
Miss Rice's trip is the parting salvo in the Bush administration's four-year push to add a "third site" to the Pentagon's global U.S. missile defense system. In American football terminology, it looks an awful lot like a "Hail Mary" - a long-distance, fourth-quarter pass thrown in a last-ditch attempt to beat the clock.
Except in Miss Rice's case, there may not be any receivers to catch the ball. Mr. Topolanek wants the shield but lacks the votes to get the treaty past the parliamentary goalpost. Mr. Tusk and his foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, leaders of a country long seen as Washington's best wide receiver in Europe - sulk on the sidelines, waiting for a better signing bonus.
The shield's few remaining Czech and Polish fans can be excused for feeling downcast. In addition to mounting opposition at home, they also see signs of hesitation in Washington. After four years of diplomatic toil, the unhappy prospect presents itself of a new American president withdrawing the U.S. request, leaving Atlanticist leaders in Central Europe vulnerable to the claim they were water-carriers for a fickle superpower.
They need not worry. Though hard to see now, the momentum is still on the shield's side. Viewed from a long-term perspective, Miss Rice's Hail Mary pass, Czech parliamentary math, Polish hard-bargaining, and the U.S. presidential election are just the latest tactical details in what will be a long - and probably successful - march toward a Central Europe-based third site. Regardless of what happens in the remaining months of 2008 or who is elected president, missile defense is still the insider's pick, for at least three reasons:
(1) The shield enjoys growing support from NATO. At the Bucharest summit in April, the shield received the unanimous backing of all 26 members in the Alliance. While the summit communique may not have convinced anti-shield holdouts in the Czech Parliament and U.S. Congress, it nevertheless dramatically improves the shield's long-term political prospects. Europe's four most powerful leaders - Britain's Gordon Brown, France's Nicholas Sarkozy, Italy's Silvio Berlusconi and, yes, Germany's Angela Merkel - now back the project. Their support, and that of NATO more generally, greatly increases the odds that Barack Obama (who views the lack of NATO backing as a main impediment to keeping the shield) will continue the program if elected.
(2) As Mr. Obama and his Republican rival John McCain are both likely to sense, the shield could improve the odds of a diplomatic breakthrough in coming negotiations with Iran. While the shield is unlikely to play a direct role in negotiations, it could alter the psychology behind the talks to America's advantage. By providing a credible option if negotiations fail, the shield will help convince Tehran Washington is able to walk away if Iran behaves intransigently. As anyone who has ever bought a used car can tell you, having the ability to "walk" (and making sure your opponent knows it) is a vital prerequisite to effective diplomacy. Keeping the shield helps the next administration enter into talks from a position of strength - a commodity in short supply in the wake of military setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan and with Russia and China backstopping Tehran in the Security Council. The very knowledge that Washington is concocting an antidote - however imperfect the technology may still be - forces Tehran to re-examine the costs and benefits of a program, the whole point of which was to have a free hand in the region and a tool for blackmailing the West. The shield erodes both, lessening the potential payoff of the investment.
(3) Finally, the shield is here to stay because, quite frankly, it is all that the West has got. If negotiations fail, what other cards does Washington have for coping with nuclear-armed failed states? Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) will not work against a small revisionist power with a single bomb the way it worked against a status-quo Soviet superpower with an arsenal of 10,000. The attempt to create a new, non-nuclear deterrent - pre-emptive war - lies discredited in the sands of Iraq. That leaves one option: traditional defense.
Add these strategic considerations together, and you have a case for keeping missile defense in general and the third site in particular that is likely to carry far more weight with future U.S. administrations, Democrat or Republic, than any momentary parliamentary, pecuniary or political setbacks. At most, 2009 will likely bring a pause for reflection and reckoning of costs and benefits, followed by the same steady flow of financial, diplomatic and technological investment that the United States has poured into the program, with increasing urgency, mounting technological confidence and only occasional interruptions, since the days of Ronald Reagan.
Miss Rice's pass may not get through this time, but the missile defense game is far from over.
A. Wess Mitchell is director of research at the Center for European Policy Analysis, a Washington, D.C., policy institute dedicated to the study of Central Europe.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Center for European Policy Analysis.