White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield/Putin Applauds ‘Brave’ U.S. Decision on Missile Defense

White House to Scrap Bush’s Approach to Missile Shield
By PETER BAKER and NICHOLAS KULISH
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 17, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/world/europe/18shield.html?hp


WASHINGTON —President Obama announced on Thursday that he would scrap former President George W. Bush’s planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic and instead deploy a reconfigured system aimed more at intercepting shorter-range Iranian missiles.

Mr. Obama decided not to deploy a sophisticated radar system in the Czech Republic or 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland, as Mr. Bush had planned. Instead, the new system his administration is developing would deploy smaller SM-3 missiles, at first aboard ships and later probably either in southern Europe or Turkey, officials said.

“President Bush was right that Iran’s ballistic missile program poses a significant threat,” Mr. Obama told reporters at the White House. But he said new assessments of the nature of the Iranian threat required a different system that would use existing technology and different locations. “This new approach will provide capabilities sooner, build on proven systems and offer greater defenses against the threat of missile attack than the 2007 European missile defense program.”

The decision amounts to one of the biggest national security reversals by the new administration, one that has upset Czech and Polish allies and pleased Russia, which has adamantly objected to the Bush plan. But Obama administration officials stressed that they were not abandoning missile defense, only redesigning it to meet the more immediate Iranian threat.

“We value the U.S. president’s responsible approach towards implementing our agreements,” President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia said Thursday in an address on national television, news agencies reported. “I am ready to continue the dialogue,” he said.

Mr. Obama called the leaders of both Poland and the Czech Republic before making his announcement and said he “reaffirmed our deep and close ties.” In speaking with reporters, he also reiterated America’s commitment under Article V of the NATO charter that states that an attack on one member is an attack on the entire alliance.

But he also repeated that Russia’s concerns about the original missile defense plan were “entirely unfounded” because both then and now it is aimed only at Iran or other rogue states. He offered again to work with Russia on a joint missile defense program.

The decision drew immediate Republican criticism for weakening the missile defenses Mr. Bush envisioned.

“Scrapping the U.S. missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic does little more then empower Russia and Iran at the expense of our allies in Europe,” said Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader. “It shows a willful determination to continue ignoring the threat posed by some of the most dangerous regimes in the world, while taking one of the most important defenses against Iran off the table.”

Anticipating the criticism, Mr. Obama said the decision was based on the unanimous recommendation of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and he sent Mr. Gates, a Republican first appointed by Mr. Bush, to discuss the decision with reporters.

Mr. Gates said the new system would actually put defenses in place sooner than the Bush plan and noted that land-based interceptor missiles would eventually be located in Europe, including possibly Poland or the Czech Republic.

To say that the Obama administration was scrapping missile defense, Mr. Gates said, is “misrepresenting the reality of what we are doing.” He added that the new configuration “provides a better missile defense capability” than the one he had recommended to Mr. Bush.

Administration officials said the Bush missile defense architecture was better designed to counter potential long-range missiles by Iran, but recent tests and intelligence have indicated that Tehran is moving more rapidly toward developing short- and medium-range missiles. Mr. Obama’s advisers said their reconfigured system would be more aimed at that threat by stationing interceptor missiles closer to Iran.

It was only clear late last month that the Obama administration was seriously considering alternative plans.

In arranging post-midnight calls by Mr. Obama to Czech and Polish leaders, and quickly sending a top State Department official to Europe, the administration was scrambling to notify and assure the European allies early Thursday morning as word of its decision was already leaking out in Washington. The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday that the administration would jettison the Bush architecture.

But it made for unfortunate timing, as Thursday is the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland at the start of World War II, a date fraught with sensitivity for Poles who viewed the Bush missile defense system as a political security blanket against Russia. Poland and many other countries in the former Soviet sphere worry that Mr. Obama is less willing to stand up to Russia. Mr. Bush had developed a special relationship with Eastern Europe as relations between Washington and Moscow deteriorated. The proposal to deploy parts of the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic were justified on the grounds that they would protect Europe and the eastern coast of the United States against any possible missile attacks from Iran.

But the Polish and Czech governments also saw the presence of American military personnel based permanently in their countries as a protection against Russia. Moscow strongly opposed the shield and claimed it was aimed against Russia and undermined national security. The United States repeatedly denied such claims.

Mr. Obama’s advisers have said their changes to missile defense were motivated by the accelerating Iranian threat, not by Russian complaints. But the announcement comes just days before a private meeting between Mr. Obama and Mr. Medvedev that is schedule to take place on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly opening in New York.

The administration’s four-phase plan would deploy existing SM-3 interceptors using the sea-based Aegis system in 2011, then after more testing deploy in 2015 an improved version of the interceptors both on ships and on land along with advanced sensors. A still more advanced version of the interceptors would be deployed in 2018 and yet another generation in 2020, the latter with more capacity to counter possible future intercontinental missiles.

By doing so, officials said, they would be getting the first defenses actually in place seven years earlier than the Bush plan, which envisioned deploying in 2018 the bigger ground-based interceptors that are still being developed. The Obama review of missile defense was influenced in large part by evidence that Iran has made significant progress toward developing medium-range missiles that could threaten Europe, even as the prospects of an Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the United States remain distant.

In May, Iran launched the Sejil-2, the first successful test of a solid-fuel missile. With an estimated range of around 1,200 miles, it could strike Israel or many parts of Europe. Unlike Iran’s liquid-fuel missiles, a solid-fuel missile can be stored, moved around and fired on shorter notice, and thus is considered by military experts to be a greater threat.

The Obama team relied heavily on research by a Stanford University physicist, Dean Wilkening, who presented the government with research this year arguing that Poland and the Czech Republic were not the most effective places to station a missile defense system against the most likely Iranian threat. Instead, he said, more optimal places to station missiles and radar systems would be in Turkey or the Balkans.

“If you move the system down closer to the Middle East,” it would “make more sense for the defense of Europe, Mr. Wilkening said in an interview.

Mr. Wilkening said the new administration did not want to simply abandon missile defense but orient it for a different threat than the Bush team saw. “The Obama administration is more interested in missile defense as a valuable instrument, a valuable aspect of our military posture than I would have thought,” he said.

Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the foreign affairs committee in the upper house of Russia’s Parliament, said in an interview on Thursday that the decision would give a major boost to relations between the two countries. Mr. Margelov said it would in particular help negotiations when Mr. Obama meets with Mr. Medvedev at the United Nations next week.

“For Russia, it is a victory for common sense,” Mr. Margelov said. “It another positive signal that we have received from Washington that makes the general climate very positive.”

But Mr. Margelov expressed doubt that the decision would make Moscow more willing to support a push by the United States to increase sanctions against Iran over its nuclear activities. The Kremlin said last week that it would essentially block new sanctions, playing down Western concerns that Iran had made progress in its bid for nuclear weapons.

Peter Baker reported from Washington and Nicholas Kulish from Berlin. Judy Dempsey contributed reporting from Berlin, and Clifford J. Levy from Moscow.



Putin Applauds ‘Brave’ U.S. Decision on Missile Defense
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY and PETER BAKER
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: September 18, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/19/world/europe/19satisfy.html?ref=global-home


MOSCOW — Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin praised President Obama Friday for canceling a plan for an antiballistic missile system in Eastern Europe that Russia had deemed a threat, suggesting that the move would lead to improved relations between their countries.

“I very much hope that this correct and brave decision will be followed by others,” Mr. Putin said.

The Obama decision on Thursday replaced the Bush administration antimissile plan with a reconfigured system focused on short- and medium-range missiles. Mr. Putin and other Russian officials who spoke to reporters on Friday did not say whether Russia would respond with concessions to the United States, particularly on the issue of Iran’s nuclear program and its overall military capabilities.

The Obama administration has indicated that it believes Iran has made significant strides in recent months in developing a nuclear weapon, but Russia, which has veto power in the United Nations Security Council, has resisted increasing sanctions against Iran.

The Russian officials did indicate that the Kremlin would withdraw its threat to base short-range missiles on Russia’s western border, in Kaliningrad.

Also on Friday, in another sign of warming in relations, NATO called for new cooperation between the alliance and Moscow, including possible coordination between antimissile systems.

In his first major foreign policy speech, which was coordinated with the White House, NATO’s new secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, called for a “genuine new beginning of our relationship with Russia” and said the West and Russia have a shared interest in opposing the proliferation of ballistic missile technology in other countries.

“We should explore the potential of linking the U.S., NATO and Russian missile defense systems at an appropriate time,” Mr. Rasumussen told an audience invited by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Brussels. Russian officials privately acknowledged that the Obama decision changed the dynamics of relations with the United States, but said they were reluctant to do anything before Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, meets with Mr. Obama at the United Nations next week.

A senior foreign policy adviser to Mr. Medvedev, Sergey E. Prikhodko, said at a news conference that he was not aware of the details of the new American proposal, but described the cancellation of the system in Poland and the Czech Republic as a “serious step.”

Pavel Y. Felgenhauer, a military analyst who writes a column for Novaya Gazeta, an opposition newspaper, said he doubted that the Kremlin would be able to raise new objections.

Mr. Felgenhauer said that the Kremlin had fiercely opposed the Bush plan because it believed, based on the advice of the Russian military, that the system was intended not to bring down Iranian missiles but to give the United States the potential to make a crippling first strike against Russian targets.

“That was their real grievance — that there was this attack capacity and the Americans are lying,” Mr. Felgenhauer said. “But now, it is much harder or even impossible for the Russian military to present this new system to the political leadership as an imminent and very serious threat.”

However, some here were already trying. Reflecting what may be the view of Kremlin hawks, Maksim Shevchenko, a news anchor and commentator on state-run television, said on the Echo of Moscow radio station that he was suspicious of the American goals in setting up the new system.

Mr. Shevchenko said: “This is like when somebody puts a Colt gun to your forehead and says, ‘This Colt is an obsolete one. I will take it away from your forehead and will put to your forehead a more rapid-firing, more modern and larger-caliber one.’ ”

The original Bush plan to counter Iranian missiles called for a sophisticated radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland. As written, it arguably did not pose any real threat to Russia’s nuclear arsenal, which even in its shrunken post-cold war state could easily overwhelm such a system.

So Russian complaints fell into two broad categories, one geopolitical and the other technical.

In part, Russia found the Bush plan so provocative because it involved placing American weapons systems — and the American military personnel to run them — in two Eastern European countries that used to be satellites of Moscow.

The Kremlin often cited its understanding of what the United States promised at the end of the cold war, to not deploy weapons systems in former Warsaw Pact countries, although American officials have denied such an explicit commitment.

The fact that both Polish and Czech officials viewed the American missile defense system as a security blanket against feared Russian adventurism, rather than against the Iranian threat, only deepened the suspicion in the Kremlin.

The Kremlin also viewed the plan in the context of NATO’s march to Russia’s borders as it admitted more members over the past decade or so, just one more part of what seemed in Moscow to be a plan to hem Russia in.

The more specific, technical Russian grievances against the missile defense plan involved not so much the system the Bush administration developed but its potential down the road.

Russian officials acknowledged that the system could not thwart its hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles. But they argued that 10 interceptors could be eventually expanded to 100 or more. And they contended that the interceptors could be fitted with warheads and turned into offensive weapons close to their territory.

Perhaps even more disturbing from the Russian perspective was the plan to install an advanced radar called X-band in the Czech Republic.

The radar has the potential to “see” 360 degrees and deep into the European part of Russia, where many of its missile silos are based. Russian officials protested against the intrusion and assumed that America wanted the radar to keep track of Russian missiles.

The cancellation of the radar in the Czech Republic could thus be considered the most satisfying aspect of the new plan from the Russian perspective.

Mr. Obama also ordered the development of a system that would deploy smaller SM-3 missile interceptors in 2011, at first on ships, but later on land in Europe. They are aimed more at short- and medium-range Iranian missiles

The SM-3s, at least as currently designed, are not capable of taking out Russia’s intercontinental missiles.

Down the line, though, the potential for more tensions with Russia exists. The Obama administration said it planned to deploy the SM-3s in as many as three land-based sites in Europe starting in 2015, and offered Poland and the Czech Republic the chance to host those missiles.

Since Poland was willing to host the larger interceptor missiles as part of the Bush plan, it presumably might accept the smaller ones. And even if Poland and the Czech Republic do not, other former Warsaw Pact countries, such as Romania or Bulgaria, might.

And the Obama plan calls for dozens and eventually possibly even hundreds of the smaller interceptors, not just the 10 larger ones included in Mr. Bush’s plan.

Moreover, advisers to Mr. Obama said they hoped to upgrade the SM-3 interceptors so that by 2020 they could be used to knock down intercontinental missiles as well as the shorter-range missiles now being countered.

And officials said they would continue to develop the ground-based interceptors from the Bush plan on the chance that they might be needed later.

“The Russians are probably not going to be pleased that we are continuing with missile defense efforts in Europe,” Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Thursday.

Still, he asserted that they cannot argue that the new system “bears any kind of threat to Russia.”

Clifford J. Levy reported from Moscow, and Peter Baker from Washington. Stephen Castle contributed reporting from Brussels.