For the past several months, the editorial
and oped writers of the Washington Post have
railed against Russia as expansionist and assertive
toward the West and have argued against improving
bilateral relations between the United States
and Russia.
President Barack Obama’s plan to scrap
a proposed anti-ballistic missile shield in
East Europe has given them a new hobby horse
to ride. In an editorial titled “Missile
Strike,” the opinion writers predictably
excoriated President Obama’s decision
to scrap the shield as a concession to Kremlin
hardliners who “implausibly claimed to
feel threatened” by U.S. interceptors
and radars.
These writers ignore three fundamental facts
that have nothing to do with Russia: the unproven
anti-ballistic missile system could not distinguish
between an intercontinental ballistic missile
(ICBM) and a decoy; Iran is not working on an
ICBM; and the notion of an Iranian threat to
Europe is purely fanciful.
They also fail to mention that the East European
countries that were to accept the missile interceptors
and radars (Poland and the Czech Republic) never
expressed concerns with Iran’s capabilities
and intentions and were never concerned with
missile defense. In fact, public opinion in
the Czech Republic was overwhelmingly opposed
to taking part in the program, and the government
of prime minister Mirek Topolanek toppled after
agreeing to do so.
The Post writers also ignored Secretary of Defense
Robert Gates admission last week that the radar
for the Czech Republic “looked deep into
Russia and actually could monitor the launches
of their ICBMs as well.” Gates was the
first U.S. official to acknowledge that the
radar would be able to see as far as the Caucasus
Mountains inside Russia.
In addition to their own editorial, the Post
ran two opeds that reified the paper’s
position. Ronald Asmus, a former assistant secretary
of state in the Clinton administration,criticized
the United States for preventing NATO from stationing
its military forces in Central and East Europe.
Such a step would have been a gratuitous swipe
at Russia. Asmus also ignored U.S. sponsorship
of NATO membership for former members of the
Warsaw Pact, a gratuitous act that betrayed
former secretary of state James Baker’s
commitment to avoid “leapfrogging”
over East Germany to recruit new members for
NATO. Baker’s commitment was part of the
unwritten agreement that led Moscow to withdraw
its military forces from East Germany. This
withdrawal paved the way for the unification
of Germany and the membership of a unified Germany
in NATO.
The Post followed up with an oped from David
Kramer, a former deputy assistant secretary
of state in the Bush administration, who called
President Obama’s decision a “capitulation
to Russian pressure” that marked a “serious
betrayal of loyal allies in Warsaw and Prague.”
Both Kramer and Asmus are with the German Marshall
Fund of the United States; they are major opponents
of arms control with Russia. Accordingly, they
do not mention that the scrapping of the missile
shield of the Bush administration would improve
the prospects for U.S.-Russian arms control
negotiations that are currently underway. These
negotiations could produce significant reductions
in strategic and intercontinental missiles—a
positive step for both countries as well as
for West and East Europe.
The New York Times, on the other hand, termed
Obama’s actions a “sound strategic
decision” in an editorial titled “Missile
Sense.” Nevertheless, the Times followed
up with an oped from Secretary of Defense Gates,
who took credit for both the U.S. decision in
2006 to deploy ground-based interceptors in
Poland as well as the U.S. decision in 2009
to discard the Bush administration’s plan
for a missile shield.
In an incredible exercise in bureaucratic chutzpah,
Gates, who politicized intelligence for the
Reagan administration throughout the 1980s,
said he was “all too familiar with the
pitfalls of over-reliance on intelligence assessments
that can become outdated.” Gates, the
self-described “pragmatist,” certainly
knows of what he speaks.
Before genuine pragmatists, progressives, and
arms control advocates chortle over the decision
of the Obama administration, however, several
facts should be kept in mind. In stopping the
missile shield technology for East Europe that
was nowhere near ready and would have directed
$5 billion to the Boeing Corporation, the Obama
administration has endorsed dozens of interceptors
for U.S. ships in the North and Mediterranean
Seas in 2011 as well as interceptors for West
and East Europe in 2015 that will direct $5
billion to the Raytheon and Lockheed corporations.
The Iranian threat may be non-existent and the
missile shield unproven, but the military-industrial-congressional
complex has triumphed once again. The United
States has spent more than $100 billion over
the past 50 years in its pursuit of a national
missile defense. So much for pragmatism!
Our only hope at this point is that someone
in the Obama administration will read or reread
President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell
address in 1961. Eisenhower, who prevented the
unnecessary spending of precious dollars on
unnecessary weapons systems, described the Pentagon’s
pursuit of taxpayer money as “virtually
a substitute for intellectual curiosity.”
He also expressed concern to his granddaughter
that future presidents, not schooled in military
culture, would fall prey to the military’s
insatiable pursuit of such systems.
Unfortunately, his concern was prescient as
one naïve or willful president after another
has caved to U.S. military’s demands.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy and adjunct
professor of government at Johns Hopkins University,
is The Public Record’s National Security
and Intelligence columnist. He spent 42 years
with the CIA, the National War College, and
the U.S. Army. His latest book is Failure of
Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA.
Copyright 2009 The Public
Record
