"Obama abandons missile defence shield in Europe" (Golden Oldie)

"US president shelves scheme in Poland and Czech Republic, citing new intelligence on threat from Iran....Barack Obama has abandoned the controversial Pentagon plan to build a missile defence system in Europe that had long soured relations with Russia....Obama said the new approach would offer 'stronger, swifter and smarter' defence for the US and its allies."

This was a long-term project of Donald Rumsfeld.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumsfeld_Commission

The Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, commonly called the Rumsfeld Commission,[1] was an independent commission formed by the US Congress to evaluate the ballistic missile threat posed to the United States.

The group began work in January 1998 and issued their unanimous final report on July 15, 1998, within the six-month mandate. The report warned of a growing threat of ballistic missiles and the inability for US intelligence to keep track of developments. This contrasted with the views of previous US intelligence estimates, which stated that the threat of ballistic missiles was still 10 to 20 years away.[1] The commission further fueled the debate over a national missile defense system, and may have contributed to the coining of the phrase axis of evil.
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https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2008-08/issue-briefs/rethink-european-missile-defense

For instance, in 1998 an influential commission chaired by Donald Rumsfeld dismissed earlier intelligence findings and warned that any nation with a well-developed, Scud-based missile infrastructure would be able to flight-test a long-range missile within five years. A decade later, neither Iran nor North Korea have successfully flight-tested intermediate-range or long-range missiles.

Rumsfeld’s report spurred missile defense acolytes to argue that testing and development of strategic missile defenses should no longer be constrained by the U.S.-Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Over Russian objections, Bush withdrew from the treaty in 2002. Since then, the administration has poured roughly $8 billion a year into the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, conducted limited testing, and rushed a handful of ground-based strategic interceptors into Alaska and California ahead of the 2004 election.

In 2007 the administration announced plans for a new ground-based, long-range anti-missile system in Europe. It wants 10 interceptors in Poland and a new radar in the Czech Republic by around 2011. In response to sharp objections from Moscow, Bush has said the deployment is not intended to counter Russia and would be limited. Leaders in Moscow remain unconvinced, and Congress has withheld full funding until the interceptors can be proven to be effective and the host countries approve basing agreements.

Like Bush, presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain enthusiastically supports missile defense as a way to guard against rogue-state “blackmail.” He has gone even further and asserted that missile defenses also serve “to hedge against potential threats from strategic competitors like Russia and China.” The presumptive Democratic nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, has voiced doubts about the effectiveness of strategic anti-missile systems and called for a greater emphasis on more capable short- and medium-range interceptors. Neither has addressed the European missile defense issue directly.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/22/world/middleeast/22missiles.html

U.S. Is Proposing European Shield for Iran Missiles

By Michael R. Gordon
May 22, 2006
WASHINGTON, May 21 — The Bush administration is moving to establish a new antimissile site in Europe that would be designed to stop attacks by Iran against the United States and its European allies.

The administration’s proposal, which comes amid rising concerns about Iran’s suspected program to develop nuclear weapons, calls for installing 10 antimissile interceptors at a European site by 2011. Poland and the Czech Republic are among the nations under consideration.

A recommendation on a European site is expected to be made this summer to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Pentagon officials say. The Pentagon has asked Congress for $56 million to begin initial work on the long-envisioned antimissile site, a request that has run into some opposition in Congress. The final cost, including the interceptors themselves, is estimated at $1.6 billion.

The establishment of an antimissile base in Eastern Europe would have enormous political implications. The deployment of interceptors in Poland, for example, would create the first permanent American military presence on that nation’s soil and further solidify the close ties between the defense establishments of the two nations.

While the plan has been described in Congressional testimony and in published reports, it has received relatively little attention in the United States. But it is a subject of lively discussion in Poland and has also prompted Russian charges that Washington’s hidden agenda is to expand the American presence in the former Warsaw Pact nation.

Gen. Yuri N. Baluyevsky, the chief of the Russian military’s general staff, has sought to stir up Polish opposition to the plan.

“What can we do?” General Baluyevsky told the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza in December. “Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterward. I do not foresee a nuclear conflict between Russia and the West. We do not have such plans. However, it is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk.”

The proposed antimissile site is the latest chapter in the long-running saga of the United States missile defense program, which began with President Reagan’s expansive vision of a space-based antimissile shield.

More than 20 years and billions of dollars later, the Bush administration is proceeding with a limited antimissile system, one that is no longer intended to make nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete,” as Mr. Reagan famously put it. Instead, it is designed to counter prospective dangers from nations like North Korea and Iran.

President Bush made the program a top priority soon after taking office and cleared the way for antimissile deployments by withdrawing from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. . .
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