Europe warms to US missile shield

Concerns about Iran have reduced opposition to US plans to extend its 'star wars' defense system.

from the February 26, 2007 edition

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The shift away from opposition to US plans for a missile shield has been subtle and easy to miss, experts say. In a largely unnoticed speech about his country's nuclear strategy, for example, French President Jacques Chirac said last year for the first time that there was room in it for missile defense.

The US plan is moving ahead outside NATO, whose own shield proposal – the Active Load Theater Missile Defense – has dragged on for years in feasibility studies.

But it is NATO, experts say, which sheds some light on Russia's truculent opposition to a US missile base in Europe.

Since the fall of communism, Moscow watched as NATO continued to expand almost to its borders, incorporating most of the countries in the former Eastern Bloc.

"There is a moment when you suddenly remember all the bad things that have been happening for some time. You look at them and you see an array of negative signals, and you cannot ignore them," says Ivan Safranchuk, director of the Moscow branch of the World Security Institute.

But Russia watchers see little likelihood that Moscow will act.

"Russia's response is totally political," says Alexander Golts, who covers security issues for Yezhednyevny Zhurnal, an online newspaper in Russia. "To all serious experts it's obvious that this missile defense cannot threaten Russia's nuclear forces."

Don't look for referendums

The Czech and Polish governments seem poised to move on the US plan without putting it to a public vote, despite a growing call in both countries for a referendums. A Czech poll last week put 60 percent of the country against hosting any part of the shield, and in Britain, antinuclear groups are already criticizing the Blair government for wanting to be involved in the US shield.

"What we're seeing now is the product of near on seven years of diplomatic effort led by the Bush administration to get European governments to leave behind the cold-war version of missile defense," says Tom Karako, director of the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank in Claremont, Calif.

"Now that the cold war is over, these governments have come to the realization that that version ... won't suffice in the future."

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