U.S. Senate Assumes Missile Defensive
// Creating the missile defense system was declared a national policy
The U.S. Senate declared it a national policy of the United States to create a missile defense system in Europe. Now, regardless of who wins the election in 2008, the system will be built. A delegation of heavyweight U.S. politicians, headed by Henry Kissinger, visited Moscow on Friday, so as to assure the Russian president that the missile defense system is inevitable. Apparently, Washington also believes that Vladimir Putin will control the situation in Russia no matter who wins the election in 2008.
Covert Threat
“The Senate today acknowledged that we must build missile defense systems that ensure we are able to protect our country and our allies,” said Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) on Thursday night, after the U.S. Senate had adopted his amendment to the defense authorization bill for 2008.
According to the new law, creating a missile defense system will now be an official national policy of the United States. Moreover, the law officially proclaims the defense system will be created for counteracting the Iranian threat. This way, the Senate confirmed by law the U.S. administration’s statements that deploying a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in Poland is aimed against Tehran only, and not against other countries.
Declaring missile defense deployment to be U.S. state policy was almost unanimous: 90 senators out of 100 present spoke in favor of the amendment (just 5 senators were against, and 5 more abstained). So, the U.S. political forces finally determined their attitude to the missile defense system: both the Democrats and the Republicans support this project.
New York Senator Hillary Clinton, one of the chief favorites of the presidential race among the Democrats, voted for the amendment as well. It means the missile defense system will be built anyway, no matter who wins the presidential election in November 2008.
The Russian authorities could be consoled only by the fact that Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) did not support the amendment. Obama is another favorite of the presidential race, quite capable of competing with Clinton for the Democratic nomination. However, even if Obama wins the 2008 election, his personal opinion will hardly be able to change the White House’s policy on missile defense, considering the present consensus in the U.S. political elite.
Star Wars Shadow
Passing the amendment can be called a landmark decision of the U.S. Senate. So far, the American politicians had been unable to reach agreement on the missile defense issue, although it is not the first year that the project is being discussed in Washington. First of all, many doubted the proposed system’s reliability, because nearly all missile defense tests carried out in the early 2000s failed. Those who criticized the project doubted it was necessary to spend billions of dollars on a system which might fail to implement its task.
Another argument was that deploying missile defense in Eastern Europe could put the U.S. at odds with Russia and European partners. In May, similar attitudes prevailed in the Congress when discussing the budget for 2008. Back then, the Congress suggested the administration should discuss the missile defense system with European states, and take into account the opinion of “protesting Russia” (Kommersant wrote about it on May 5th).
However, the system’s supporters obtained in the last two months stronger arguments in favor of deploying it. Since May, U.S. servicemen carried out a number of successful interceptor missile tests in New Mexico. The last tests were held just a week ago, above the Pacific Ocean, not far from the Japanese Islands.
Moreover, U.S. diplomats won important victories: NATO, at its summit in Brussels in June, unanimously supported the project to create a pan-European missile defense system, whose key elements will be U.S. facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.
The Russian authorities gave an extremely nervous response, that is they promised to re-target missiles towards Europe and to deploy short-range missiles in the Kaliningrad region if Washington implements its plans. Later, Putin’s conciliatory offers at the G8 summit in Heiligendamm and at the meeting with George Bush in Kennebunkport could hardly change anything.
After 2008
Moscow took the amendment declaring missile defense deployment to be U.S. national policy as Washington’s refusal to Putin’s current offers to create a joint missile defense system including Russian radar stations and new emergency centers in Moscow and Brussels.
“This decision is politically motivated, and we strongly disapprove of it,” State Duma deputy Andrei Kokoshin, who is former secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, said on Friday. “U.S. Senators do not understand quite well how dangerous the consequences of their step might be for the U.S. interests themselves.”
Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs made more careful comments. “The issue can be finally solved only during negotiations with the United States. If we had no hopes for persuading Washington to give up its missile defense plans in Poland and the Czech Republic, there would be no negotiations,” the Ministry said. Mikhail Margelov, head of the Foreign Affairs Committee at Russia’s Federation Council, was even more hopeful: “It is a very important turn. Senators correct the White House’s estimations, and for the first time dot the i’s: the missile defense system will be against Iran, and not Russia.”
However, Margelov added the level of U.S.-Russia distrust is so high now that the amendment passed by the U.S. Senate might meet the tough opposition of the Russian authorities: “Six months ago, the senators’ decision could be taken positively. Actually, before the landmark speech of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney in Vilnius.”
While the U.S. Senate was discussing the missile defense system, a delegation of heavyweight U.S. politicians, headed by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, visited Moscow on Friday. In the recent months, Kissinger has been one of the key mediators in the Moscow-Washington talks on the missile defense issue. For instance, he visited Moscow last time in April 2007. Back then, one month before the G8 summit, Putin discussed with Kissinger the possibility of joint use of the Gabalin radar and other ways of missile defense cooperation.
Putin received Kissinger in his Novo-Ogarevo residence on Friday. The U.S delegation also included influential lobbyist politicians, such as former Secretary of State in the Reagan administration George Schultz, former Senator-Democrat Sam Nunn, former Secretary of the Treasury in the Bill Clinton administration Robert Rubin, and Chevron head David O’Reilly. None of these figures is directly linked to the current U.S. administration, and none of them will lose their positions after George Bush leaves. On the contrary, they all will preserve their influence, no matter who becomes the next U.S. president.
Apparently, the main task of the U.S. delegation was to assure the Russian leader that the missile defense system will be created anyway, and that nothing will help to change this fact, neither inner political processes in the U.S., nor in Russia. After talking to the delegation behind closed doors, Putin told journalists: “We cannot allow that our relations with the U.S. should depend on the current political situation in the pre-election period in both countries.” Thus, he confirmed that the negotiators had discussed the U.S.-Russia relations of the post-election period. Unlike his U.S. counterpart, Putin believes that he will keep influencing the situation even at that time.
Alexander Gabuev, Mikhail Zygar
All the Article in Russian as of July 14, 2007
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