Russia Will Not Stop U.S. Missile Defense Plans, Envoy Says
Global Security Newswire
December 5, 2011
The U.S. ambassador to NATO on Friday said the Obama administration initiative to establish a missile defense system across Europe would go forward “whether Russia likes it or not,” Reuters reported.
The U.S. plan calls for deploying a web of missile interceptors and associated technology in nations such as Poland, Romania and Turkey. The plan would provide the backbone of a planned NATO missile shield, and the Western alliance has spent the last year trying to persuade Russia to join the effort.
Moscow, though, says the NATO system might be aimed at countering Russia’s nuclear forces. It has threatened to deploy short-range missiles in its Baltic enclave and to withdraw from the New START nuclear arms control treaty if an agreement on missile defense cannot be reached with Washington and NATO.
However, U.S. Ambassador Ivo Daalder informed journalists the Kremlin’s problems with the planned missile shield “won’t be the driving force in what we do.”
Since the Obama administration announced its “phased adaptive approach” for European missile defense in fall 2009 — a scaled-back approach to an earlier Bush administration plan — U.S. calculations of the danger of a ballistic missile strike from Iran have only increased, Daalder said.
“It’s accelerating and becoming more severe than even we thought two years ago,” Daalder said of the Iranian missile threat. …
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