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Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, Secretary General of NATO Andres Fogh Rasmussen said the alliance should bring Russia onboard as it plans to build a missile defense “roof” in Europe. Rasmussen pointed out that involving Russia in “building and operating” a common missile defense shield should become a priority if the West wants to ensure that security efforts are effective. “I believe that building missile defense in a way that includes Russia would help create the true European security architecture we would all like to see,” Rasmussen said. If the two parties do sit down to work together,...

Mideast: Israeli officials charge Syria with transferring ballistic missiles to the control of Iran's puppet militia, Hezbollah. It seems that another attempt to woo and appease a hostile power is not working. Last November we commented on reports in the Arab media in the Persian Gulf that Syria, apparently at the request of Iran, had turned about 300 long-range ballistic missiles over to Hezbollah control in Syrian territory. Hezbollah personnel were being trained to operate the Scuds. On Tuesday, Israeli President Shimon Peres confirmed these reports, publicly charging Syrian President Bashar Assad's government with transferring Scud missiles to the control...

Arms Deal: President Obama signs away U.S. nuclear security and gives the Russians a veto over whether we can defend ourselves. Our nuclear umbrella is in tatters as another piece of paper proclaims peace in our time. Completing a process of disarmament and appeasement that manifested itself in the dismantling and defunding of U.S. military power that began with his inauguration, President Obama signed a new strategic arms limitation treaty with a grinning and very happy Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday in the Czech capital. How fitting this document was signed in Prague, which isn't far from Munich where...

Building a missile defense shield to cover all European countries, including Russia, would help restore confidence in NATO, the Bulgarian foreign minister said on Saturday. Nikolay Mladenov said that would show the people that "the Alliance is really taking care of their security rather than just engage in operations at the other end of the world." Speaking earlier in the day at a NATO conference in Brussels, Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen called for a new Euro-Atlantic security architecture, "one security roof," in which Russia should be a full-fledged partner. He said one security roof "would be a very strong political...

NATO needs to develop an anti-missile defence system as a deterrence, the alliance chief said Friday, while seeking to assure Moscow that the organisation posed no threat to Russia. "We must develop an effective missile defence," NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told an international conference in the Polish capital. "In the coming years we will probably face many more countries and possibly even some non-state actors armed with long-range missiles and nuclear capabilities," he said. Rasmussen also insisted later during a press conference that "a nuclear capability will remain an essential part of a credible deterrence in the future."...

Poland on Tuesday agreed to a new version of a deal on stationing an American missile shield, a government statement said, adding it would be aimed essentially at potential threats from Iran. Warsaw "accepts signing a protocol modifying the accord signed by the Polish and American governments on the installation on our territory of anti-ballistic missile interceptors concluded in Warsaw on August 20, 2008," it said. In September, US President Barack Obama shelved a plan by his predecessor George W. Bush to deploy a missile shield in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic by 2013 that Russia...

After scraping the plans of building a missile defense shield in Poland and Czech Republic President Obama is working now on deploying defense missiles to another part of Eastern Europe: the Balkans. Romania and Bulgaria are both members of NATO and the EU. Last week Romania’s top defense body had approved Washington’s plan to deploy interceptor missiles. Bulgarian PM Boiko Borisov said Sofia should show solidarity and consider the Washington deal after negotiations with NATO and EU. After humiliating Poland the Obama administration realized they still need the land based defense structures designed to protect against current and emerging ballistic...

In an unexpected announcement, the president of Romania said Thursday his country would host missile interceptors as part of a new U.S. defense shield. President Traian Basescu said the Supreme Defense Council, Romania's top military and security body, had agreed to such a plan after a request by Washington. "Terrestrial interceptors will be placed on Romania's territory as part of the anti-missile system," Basescu was quoted as saying by Radio Free Europe. "According to the calendar agreed with the American side, the components located on Romania's territory will become operational in 2015." He said the missile defense system would "protect...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

The American decision to back out of a Bush-administration agreement has Europe worried that Barack Obama may sacrifice Central Europe to repair relations with Russia. The Los Angeles Times has reported that the Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski, said last week his country would now have to look inward rather to the US for security. Barack Obama in overturning the Bush-era plan for the missile shield in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe caused memories of the Cold War to come flooding back in Poland, which was once the casualty of Russian domination. In Poland and among other members...

Reporting from Warsaw - It hardly seems to matter anymore that Poles had long been leery of hosting U.S. missile interceptors aimed at defending against long-range threats from Iran. Now that Washington has backed out of the missile shield agreement forged by the Bush administration -- and opposed by Russia -- people here are reeling. Washington says it is changing plans in response to new intelligent assessments about Iran. But the Obama administration has undeniably been courting the Kremlin in hopes that Russia will ramp up pressure on Iran and North Korea, and cooperate with efforts to pacify Afghanistan. Just...

Complex of America? Not with us! Poles do not have the slightest reason to feel worse than the Americans. Quite the contrary. We are sending them to the head in almost every field. In our food is healthy - strawberry tastes like strawberry and tomato like tomato. And in the U.S.? Sam shocker! Americans wcinajÄ… Crap and the power of Tiya. How do they look? When you enter the elevator, wait for the next, so as not to be flattened on the cake. And that's not all. Presuming the citizens of the United States can only envy us ponadtysiÄ…cletniej history,...

WARSAW — The United States aims to establish missile bases in Poland, after having scrapped plans fiercely opposed by Russia to deploy a missile shield in the country, a Polish newspaper reported Friday. Citing Polish diplomatic sources who spoke on condition of anonymity, Gazeta Wyborcza said Washington aimed to set up a permanent short- and medium-range missile base as well as deploy mobile missile batteries. The plan is set to take shape within days, said Gazeta Wyborcza, a leading daily that is considered well informed on the issue. It said Andrzej Kremer, Poland's deputy foreign minister, was due to travel...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Defense: A ballistic missile launched from Alaska is shot down by an interceptor launched from California. With threats from North Korea to Iran, it's time to ignore the skeptics and fully fund missile defense.It was the most realistic and most successful missile defense test ever in a Strategic Defense Initiative that could one day save an American city from a rogue missile strike. Yet the "yeah, but" media greeted this triumph with claims the concept is still unproven. It was as if the Wright brothers had announced man's first flight, only to be greeted with cries that they hadn't built...

Vicenza, Italy. President Obama’s decision to cancel our European ground-based missile defense system will prove to be very costly and his public rationale -- changed intelligence and improved technologies -- is far from the whole truth. This is a geopolitical disaster and risks our security as well. Last year, President Bush said “Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles of increasing range that could deliver them.” His administration successfully negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic to install a ground-based anti-missile defense system in those countries to counter the accelerating Iranian threat.

Strategic Defense: The Air Force's airborne laser program passes yet another test, proving "unproven" missile defense once again. The question is not whether we can get it to work, but whether we can afford not to.The news that Iran has enough nuclear material to build a nuclear weapon in relatively short order and is well along on missiles to deliver its nukes has put a sense of urgency on the proposed missile defense system slated for Poland and the Czech Republic. Fortunately, another answer to the threat posed by rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea has just passed a...

Defense: The Air Force airborne laser program successfully completes a simulated kill from a plane able to find, track and destroy a live ballistic missile. We can shoot down enemy missiles. Instead, we're shooting down the laser program.The Aug. 10 effort was the third such test — sort of like a sniper sighting the target with the red dot of a laser without actually pulling the trigger. In early June, the airborne laser (ABL) program engaged two un-instrumented missiles. This was the first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile. A modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft took off from Edwards Air...

Security: An Iranian mullah once said "a world without America and Zionism" was a real possibility. Our sellout of Eastern Europe and missile defense brings that dream closer to reality. It would take only one warhead."Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked at a "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran in 2005. "But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved." He added that Iran had a strategic "war preparation plan" for what it called "the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization." A...

Strategic Defense: A new report says the United States must develop robust missile and space defenses to counter China. If you think the current economic crisis is something, imagine the effects of a nuke over Iowa.Imagine a world in which you can't get money from your bank or can't get a loan. You can't get money from your ATM even if it's within walking distance. You can't drive to one because your car won't work. No, it's not what would happen if the Congress doesn't pass a bailout bill. This is a small snapshot of what would happen if a...