President Obama reversed course on missile defense this week, announcing a retreat from the Bush plan of stationing missile interceptors and radar bases in Eastern Europe:

In one of the biggest national security reversals of his young presidency, Mr. Obama canceled former President George W. Bush’s plans to station a radar facility in the Czech Republic and 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland. Instead, he plans to deploy smaller SM-3 interceptors by 2011, first aboard ships and later in Europe, possibly even in Poland or the Czech Republic. Mr. Obama said that the new system “will provide stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies” to meet a changing threat from Iran.

The move is widely seen as a reflection of Obama’s desire to “reset” relations with Russia and to remove a divisive issue between the two on the eve of talks over Iran’s nuclear program, where Russian cooperation will be instrumental in maintaining Western resolve. The decision prompted grumbles from our Eastern European allies as well as providing political ammunition for the opposition party in Congress.

For some analysis of the decision I call your attention to this article by James Lindsay, a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations:

The system that President George W. Bush proposed be built in Poland and the Czech Republic was mismatched to the threat it was designed to defeat. It would have deployed interceptor missiles that had yet to be tested under real world conditions to defend against long-range missiles that Iran had yet to develop. Meanwhile, the interceptors would have been useless against the short- and medium-range missiles that Iran is rapidly developing.

If we can accept that the new missile defense system will indeed be faster, cheaper, and better, I think we can conclude, contrary to this analysis in The New York Times, that this new effort will not be a hard sell. Will Russia reciprocate? There are some reasons for optimism, as this report notes, Russia has decided not to deploy missiles in Poland, as it has threatened to do if the U.S. went ahead with the planned deployment. It remains to be seen, however, if there will be reciprocity from Russia in next week’s meetings on Iran at the United Nations.

At the end of the day we are left with the prospect that the U.S. has traded missiles in Eastern Europe that did not yet exist for Russian assistance in deterring Iranian nuclear missiles that also do not yet exist. If Russia fails to step-up and use their considerable trade links to persuade Iran to negotiate on their nuclear program, or at least not veto sanctions,  then we will have traded nothing for nothing. Some may interpret that to mean that we’ve lost nothing, but somehow I doubt that our allies in Poland and the Czech Republic will see it that way.

President Obama has completed his first ever Russia Summit dealing with The Big Issue. Actually, I guess the status of nuclear forces used to be The Big Issue, those days are gone. Still, I have to admit to a certain sense of expectancy at seeing the U.S. and Russian presidents meet to discuss nuclear weapons (historic agreements could be in the offing, after all), and a sense of disappointment to find that few share this feeling. After all, how important could it be if it’s not even a trending topic on Twitter? I’m also rather disappointed at the outcome of the summit. Jaded cynics who pay attention to these things learned long ago that countries often craft the summit declarations in advance of the meeting so that even if they fail to find agreement during their deliberations they can at least release to the press a nice communique about what they did agree on, and everyone walks away a winner. In this case, President Obama and President Medvedev reached an agreement to agree in the future to cut nuclear arsenals by a fraction of current levels. No actual treaty was signed, it’s just a basic understanding of what they want to do when they get serous about doing it…in the future. In that way the headline can read “US and Russia agree nuclear weapons cut,” which is true, sort of, even as the reality is much more complex.

So, that’s the good news from the summit, the bad news is that there was no agreement on the Iranian nuclear program, no agreement on European missile defense, and no agreement about the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Georgia. And the worse news is that today Russia announced that the agreement of yesterday will be in jeopardy if the U.S. refuses to abandon missile defense. As summits go, I’m hard pressed to find the silver lining. Russia did agree to new transit rights to supply the war effort in Afghanistan, allowing up to ten flights a day through Russian airspace. So, we can point to one very practical accomplishment. Is that enough to call it a successful summit?

Photo Credit: The Associated Press

As President Obama heads to Russia to meet with the new and not so new Russian leadership to discuss nuclear arms control treaties, The New York Times offers this glimpse of the President’s vision for a nuclear-free world. I wanted to highlight this report because I’m rather interested in why the idea of a nuclear-free world appeals to so many people. After all, we have already had a nuclear-free world, been there, done that. A nuclear-free world leads to Napoleon and Hitler and wars of global conquest. If we eliminated all nuclear weapons, how long would it take until we had another world war waged with conventional weapons? I don’t know the answer to that, but I’m fairly certain that the deterrent value of nuclear weapons can’t be overestimated. That’s not to say that there isn’t merit in reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons to more manageable levels. If you are interested in learning more about nuclear arms reduction treaties, I recommend the Federation of American Scientists’ website, they have great coverage of START I & START II.

Photo Credit: Federation of American Scientists

I’m reading another review of President Obama’s trip to Europe, this one by Michael Shear and Kevin Sullivan writing in The Washington Post. I would recommend it for the casual reader, it’s balanced (noting comments from the both sides of the political spectrum) and it summarizes the highlights of the trip, allowing the reader to gain a quick recap of what happened on the way from London to Baghdad.

I’m starting to get the sense that the trip was a great success for Obama personally and for the image of the U.S. abroad, but it was something of a draw in terms of the substance of the trip. In the win column I would note that the U.S. was able to reboot the Bretton Woods-era financial institutions to deal with the global economic crisis rather than creating a new international financial regulatory system as France and Germany wanted; deflected talk of creating a new international reserve currency to replace the dollar, as suggested by Russia and China; announced plans with Russia to renegotiate key arms control treaties and then announced the lofty goal of working towards a world free of nuclear weapons (though, to be fair, other presidents have set this as an aspirational goal, the logical endpoint of the arms control treaties); announced new initiatives aimed at fostering closer ties with China; and, finally, continued to leverage Obama’s indecision on European missile defense to gain goodwill from both Russia and Eastern European countries (particularly impressed with the diplomatic finesse demonstrated here).

In the loss column I’d have to note that the U.S. failed to gain support from the G20 for a additional stimulus spending; and, at the NATO summit, the U.S. failed to gain allied support for additional combat troops for Afghanistan. I see that last item as the most glaring failure. I can’t help wonder how future historians will characterize this first presidential trip. If we call it a success are we being blinded by all the outstanding photo ops and demonstrations of Obama’s great personal popularity? If we note the failure to gain more combat troops from NATO and say this signaled a watershed for both NATO and the war in Afghanistan, are we being too pessimistic? Perhaps it is enough to say that the trip went well, there were  no major mistakes and the U.S. scored a few wins and a few losses, but on balance it was a good trip for the new president.

This report in The New York Times demonstrates why President Obama’s trip this week to the G20 Summit in London, the NATO Summit in Strasbourg, and the EU Summit in Prague will be fraught with difficulties and not at all like his campaign trip to Europe when he was the center of adulation and praise. The report notes that Obama will be challenged to demonstrate U.S. confidence and leadership at a time when that leadership has been called into question. International economic stimulus spending, troops for Afghanistan, weapons proliferation and missile defense will top his agenda. President Obama will conclude his European trip with a stop in Turkey, a predominantly Muslim country and member of NATO that hopes in time to become a member of the EU. Obama is expected to reiterate U.S. support for Turkish membership in the EU.

This is a follow-up to the previous post about the Russian decision to place short-range missiles in Kaliningrad. In this analsysis for ISN Security Watch, Sergei Blagov suggests that the Russian decision is not an attempt to challenge the new U.S. president (suggested by the timing of the announcement) but instead can properly been seen in the context of the moves and counter-moves by the U.S. and Russia over the issue of missile defense. It remains to be seen if today's test of a new Iranian long-range missile (the kind the American ABM system is designed to protect against) will have any impact on the Russian decision. The U.S. quickly denounced the missile test.

I mentioned yesterday the Russian challenge to Obama, an escalation in the dispute over missile defense in Europe. Why is Russia mounting a nuclear challenge to a candidate who promised to dramatically change the U.S. nuclear policy by seeking a ban on the production of fissile materials, a reduction in nuclear stockpiles, a reaffirmation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and securing loose nuclear materials worldwide? One would think that this is a nuclear agenda that Russia would welcome. Of course, we don't necessarily have to cast this in terms of nuclear policy, the U.S. ABM interceptors will not be nuclear and the Russian missiles probably won't be nuclear either (they have stated that the missiles will be Iskander missiles, a nuclear-capable short-range mobile ground-launched missile), but the question remains, why alienate a president-elect that by all accounts is willing to adopt a more flexible and moderate approach than his predecessor? Stratfor suggests that the Russian action has less to do with missile defense and more to do with dividing Europe:

We expect Ukraine will have shifted its political alignment toward Russia, and Moscow will be rapidly moving to create a sphere of influence before Obama can bring his attention ‚ and U.S. power ‚ to bear.

Obama will again turn to the Europeans to create a coalition to resist the Russians. But the Europeans will again be divided. The Germans can't afford to alienate the Russians because of German energy dependence on Russia and because Germany does not want to fight another Cold War. The British and French may be more inclined to address the question, but certainly not to the point of resurrecting NATO as a major military force. The Russians will be prepared to talk, and will want to talk a great deal, all the while pursuing their own national interest of increasing their power in what they call their "near abroad."

President-Elect Obama will need to tap into every bit of the European goodwill they offered him during his campaign if he hopes to forge a united allied response to this Russian strategy.

I’d like to recommend the Strategic Security blog of the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) to you as a resource for keeping up with national security issues, particularly arms control of proliferation issues. The successful signing of the missile defense deal with Poland this week means that this issue has now returned to the forefront of the international agenda and it's important that Americans understand this issue. Here is how FAS describe themselves from their About page:

The Federation of American Scientists (FAS) was founded in 1945 by scientists who had worked on the Manhattan Project to develop the first atomic bombs. These scientists recognized that science had become central to many key public policy questions. They believed that scientists had a unique responsibility to both warn the public and policy leaders of potential dangers from scientific and technical advances and to show how good policy could increase the benefits of new scientific knowledge.

I like this blog because it offers more technical information than the standard mainstream news media reports, it's written by scientists and allows you to appreciate some of the complex issues that get forgotten in the popular debate over these issues. If we are headed toward a new Cold War, we will need to be educated all over again about nuclear weapons, warheads, ICBMs, MIRVs, and all the other terms that have faded from our national consciousness over the last few decades and this is a great place to start.

The United States is now officially in the business of protecting Poland from missile attack (The Wall Street Journal - U.S.-Poland Deal on Missile Base Riles Russia):

The U.S. signed a pledge to protect Poland as part of a missile-shield deal, cementing the former East bloc country's ties with Washington but thrusting it into the middle of a widening dispute with Russia.

The deal signed in Warsaw Wednesday to establish a battery of U.S. interceptor rockets on Polish soil is part of President George W. Bush's plans to develop an intercontinental missile-defense shield. The shield's stated aim is to protect the U.S. and its allies from attacks by U.S.-deemed “rogue states” such as Iran and North Korea.

Although this deal has been in the works for some time, it comes after the dramatic Russian - Georgian crisis set the entire region on edge. Poland gets 10 ground-based missile interceptors as well as Patriot missiles to defend against Russian missiles (Russia has already said that Poland will now be targeted for a missile strike, potentially nuclear, as a result of hosting the interceptors). The U.S. gets a forward base from which to take out any future ICBM launches from Iran and/or other rogue states destined for Western Europe or the East Coast of the U.S. This used to be called deterrence. However, because of the proximity to Russia, it's now called provocation. How provocative is it to base interceptors so near Russia? How likely is it that 10 interceptors would diminish the nuclear deterrent of Russia, which, like the U.S., has a triad of air, sea and land based nuclear missiles numbering in the thousands?

For a Russian perspective on this, I’d like to recommend this report from RIA Novosti, it's always instructive to remember that geopolitics means that things look very different depending on where you stand. One thing is certain, the U.S. has made a major strategic move, we can now expect a strong counter-move from Russia. There are early indications that this will involve a renewed Russian presence in the Middle East, perhaps basing Russian weapons in Syria. If these moves follow the pattern of the Cold War we can expect similar tit-for-tat moves leading up to new arms control summits that will either draw-down these weapon placements or codify a new era of superpower rivalry.