Poland and the Czech Republic piss off Moscow–
The conversation turned Cold War today when Poland and the Czech Republic said they would gladly host two installations — the first foreign bases — for America’s spectacular, and long-time-coming, missile shield. Within hours of the two centre-right governments announcing their intention to help the US ward off the threat of Iran and other rogue nations in the Middle East — “It is in the interests of our countries to host the anti-missile shield,” said Mirek Topolanek, the new Czech Prime Minister — the Kremlin said it would have to start dusting off some of its old hardware.“If the governments of Poland and the Czech Republic take such a step… the Strategic Missile Forces will be capable of targeting these facilities if a relevant decision is made,” said General Nikolai Solovtsov, a senior officer in Russia’s missile agency.
Whoa. So will the Russians telling the Poles and Czechs that they are liable to be nuked be MORE of an incentive to base interceptors on their home soil, or less?
So lemme see if this makes sense. General Solovtsov says that Russia ditched all their medium-range and short-range ballistic missiles, which -back in the day- were used to hold Western Europe at risk. Now he’s saying that they are going to bring them back simply to knock out defense shield bases that pose zero threat to Russian long-range sorties in the first place? Yeah, it confused me too.
Ruskies always take news of the shield being deployed/upgraded personally, even though there isn’t a snowball’s chance in hell it could deter against a massive ICBM attack from over the pole. And the thing isn’t even postured against a pole attack, right now it’s exclusive to the west coast and Alaska, to defend against North Korea…and soon enough, Iran from these new Eastern European bases.
Doesn’t really give you that warm, fuzzy “Russia is still our ally” Hallmark-vibe does it? Quoting our shiny new blogger Bull Nav: “Cold War? As a submariner, I would say ‘when did it end’?”
Heh, yup.
The Russian’s comments speak volumes about their current position:
1. They know that they no longer have any sort of technological edge against NATO (not that they ever really had any), and that it exposes the Soviet/Russian nuclear strategy for what it is: massive saturation first and second strikes. Missile Shield doesn’t deny them that capability, even today- it just puts it front and center. They hate the veil being lifted.
2. It reminds them that NSC 68 is still in effect, and that Containment not only works, but will continue to work.
3. It’s an everyday reminder that they lost the Cold War, Eastern Europe went to the victors, and any chance of restarting it without open warfare are pretty much off the table.
4. It will limit their ability to sell weapons and scientific equipment (ie; nuke and missile tech) to rouge nations. Those rouge nations- won’t pose any real missile threat, unless the Russians give them hundreds of warheads and ICBMs. Which the Russians don’t have the money to do, and politically, would be suicidal to even attempt. Not to mention, it devalues their products- and the Russians hate losing out on a payday.
The Cold War never ended, you just need to watch the gov’t owned Russian TV.
As for Russia’s attempt to sell missiles and warheads to Iran and such, Russia always tried to sit on 2 chairs at once and does not perceives this as a suicide but as Russian-only ‘finesse’ (sp?) in international relationships…
As long as you have a former KGB officer in charge, you will have these responses coming out of Moscow…
I don’t know anything about the winds in Eastern Europe, but wouldn’t fallout from nuking the Czech Republic and Poland kind of fall back on Russia?
Memo to Gen. Solosov:
I’d worry more about Islam to your South and China at your back, if I were you.
“. . .[D]eter against a massive ICBM attack from over the pole.”
We all should be glad the remarks referred to confusion, for here is confusion of deterrent with countermeasure. The former is aimed at the enemiy’s will, the latter at his capability. Counter-value strike capabiility is a deterrent, missile defense is a countermeasure, got it?