Posted on 07/27/2004 2:06:47 PM PDT by Grzegorz 246
“We’re interested in becoming a concrete part of the arrangement”, said Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Boguslaw Majewski, after it was revealed on July 10 that Poland has been in secret talks with the United States for the past eight months on locating elements of the US ballistic missile defense system, including interceptor missiles, on its territory. Then it came out that Washington has also been talking to the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria about it, but Poland is definitely the leading candidate.
Poland’s main problem has always been its geography: sandwiched between Germany and Russia, it was regularly conquered by them or partitioned between them. Poland lost twenty percent of its population in the Second World War, mainly in Nazi death camps, and then spent the next forty-five years under a Communist dictatorship imposed by its Russian liberators. You can see why it wants close links with a great power that isn’t in Europe, and giving the United States military bases that Washington sees as important is one easy way of doing that.
The project to protect the United States from ballistic missile attack is one of the great boondoggles of all time. After 20 years of development, there is still no evidence that it will ever work reliably -- even though the Pentagon is going ahead with the construction of two missile interceptor sites in California and Alaska, presumably to shoot down the ICBMs that North Korea doesn’t have, tipped with the nuclear warheads that it probably doesn’t have either. The main function of ‘Son of Star Wars’ in the US political system has been to serve as a kind of social welfare system for needy aerospace companies and recently retired Air Force generals.
The Poles don’t care whether the missiles work or not, and most of them don’t even believe the story that the Pentagon wants a site in Eastern Europe to intercept nuclear missiles fired at the United States by Iran or Syria. (Iran and Syria don’t have missiles that could get even a quarter of the way to the US, or any nuclear warheads to put on them, either.) They suspect that Washington really wants to intercept Russian missiles just after they launch, but that’s okay with them, too. Poles mistrust the Russians almost as much as they do the Germans.
All the Poles want is an important American base on their territory, so that Washington doesn’t forget about them in a crisis. They’ll make do with radar stations if they have to, but, as a former defense minister, Janusz Onyszkiewicz put it, “an interceptor site would be more attractive. It wouldn’t be a hard sell in Poland”. It’s a very understandable Polish reflex, given the history -- but it could greatly complicate Poland’s foreign relations closer to home.
Germany and France are not at all pleased to see the Americans seeking missile bases in Eastern European countries which have become, since this spring, part of the European Union. They see it as part and parcel of Washington’s strategy of splitting off the recently ex-Communist countries of Eastern Europe that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld described last year with typical sensitivity as ‘new Europe’ (good and strongly pro-American), to be distinguished from France, Germany and other parts of ‘old Europe’ (bad and allegedly anti-American).
It’s working, too. Most of the Eastern European states have sent token contingents to Iraq to curry favour with the United States, and most of them would be happy to have American bases on their soil (though they’ll never outbid the Poles). And it’s practically a cost-free strategy at the moment: the Germans and the French haven’t been nasty to them, and the Russians have been positively saintly about it all. But it could get ugly further down the line.
If the United States remains on a unilateralist course after this November’s election, failing to consult with allies, ignoring the United Nations whenever it gets in the way, and frequently violating international law, all the other great powers will start to respond by trying to create counter-balancing centers of power. They are on hold for the moment, because none of them really wants to go down that road, but it’s clear what they will do if they conclude that it is necessary.
They will start building up their arms, of course, and in the case of China this is probably all they will do. In Europe, however, the great powers will also start to come together in what won’t be called an alliance, but will gradually become exactly that -- and its chief members will be France, Germany and Russia. That’s the only combination big enough to say ‘no’ to overwhelming American power.
If it comes to that, five years down the road, life will get very hard for Eastern European countries that have become too closely bound to the United States -- especially if they have American missile interceptor sites on their territory. And if you think that this scenario hasn’t already occurred to the chief American negotiator on the potential deal with Poland, Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton, then you are seriously underestimating the man. The real question is whether it has occurred to the Poles.
"life will get very hard for Eastern European countries that have become too closely bound to the United States -- especially if they have American missile interceptor sites on their territory".
I'd love to take this "risk".
It makes sense that the Poles want to ally with a country that has NOT already occupied them before. They know what wide of World War V they want to be on.
ping
I think it is a internal question of Poland to deploy US anti-missle bases or not. Russia has the biggest problem with an anti-ballistic-missle deployment, because it would bring down the value of their own ICBMs as a treat to the western world a littebit.
The thing is, that I do not believe in missle-defense at all. Imagine the viewpoint of an insane mullah (or an north korean scumbag) for example, who wants to attack a major city in the US or elsewhere in the west with a nuclear warhead. It would be just crazy to fire one of their old soviet junk rockets towards the target, because everybody would know where it came from. The easiest way would be to hire an "martyr" from Lebanon and smuggle him with the bomb inside the poor town for dentonating...
The worst thing is a hard striking enemy that you can't even see or identify. I am afraid, that this ist the real nuclear treat we have to deal with in our new and young century.
The question is, what can be done. I doubt that the declaration of war in a preemptive strike towards Iran or North Korea is a solution. The possiblity that they already have nuclear warheads (they would use them for sure) is quite high and -in complete difference to Irak- they are enemys with a big potenical. Even Americas war-machine would have to pay a real high price.
There were plans to attack Germany??! That is something really new to me. Sad thing (even for the "arian" Germans) that they didn't do it. In 1934 it would not been such a big problem for the French and the Poles, because the "buildt up" of the Wehrmacht was just in its beginnings. It must have been a strange situation for everybody these days. One of the main reasons for Hitler to begin his crazy war in 1939 was the fact, that the German Reich was near insolvence. His policy of building autobahns and weapons was paid over depts. He wanted to refinance over pushing his neighbours into slavery. You see - economic stability even in very unfriendly contries can be in the interest of everybody.
The mullahs and Kim Jong Il are very calculable as long they are not standing with their back to the wall. They are cowardly, they don't want to loose their privileges and they would never start a war with very predictible result. But: One of our problems is, that we don't know where a major terrorist strike in the future comes from. They would not tell you, if they have detonated a A-Bomb in New York or in London. Was it Bin Laden, Kamenei, Hisbollah or Kim Jong Il? We do not know their technological stand either. I would not trust our western intelligence services anymore. To me it is quite possible that Iran has the bomb since a long time. What will the US do, when after an Israeli air strike on Iran they make a sucessful nuclear test there and tell the world that they have deposed their bombs in all big cities throughout the West? They don't need any rockets to threathen the world. America could do nothing, if the Hisbollah would send their idiots with VX-belts into the towns of Israel in the future. It is a very difficult situation without fast solutions. I believe that in Iran the population has to get rid of the mullahs by themselves. We can try to help them, but a declared, open war would be far too dangerous. Same thing with North Korea.
BTW - the left media in Germany supposes that the same motives like Hitler had (money, arabic slaves, oil and power) lead the US and GWB to their action in Iraq. We both know that this is wrong, but the bad signs like Abu Gahib, Halliburton and the ongoing uprise of wide parts in the Iraqi population confirm the bad picture in the European west. Poland could be a credible witness in Europe, that this war was fought because of freedom, happiness and peace. The German and French society knows, that Poland has not the big economical reasons for this war like the US or the UK. If it comes to political changes in "old" Europe, this could be very important to get all powers of the western world togehter again.
As a WWII buff I have always admired the pluck of the Poles. The relatively few who made it to the UK contributed so much to the war effort. Including being the first to begin breaking the Enigma code.
It was credible enough to scare the beejeebers out of the Kremlin to the point where they knew there was no way they could continue to compete militarily against the West, some boondoggle.
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