President Barack Obama on Thursday abandoned plans for a large missile defense shield in eastern Europe, promising instead a stronger, swifter defense system to protect U.S. allies against any threat from Iran.
In a brief announcement, Obama said he was dropping a plan to base interceptor missiles in Poland and build a radar system in the Czech Republic — a move that could ease tensions with Russia but fan regional fears of resurgent Kremlin influence.
Poland and Czech Republic took a big risk for us, annoying the Kremlin by agreeing to host those anti-missile bases. And keep in mind that those anti-missile missiles couldn’t do much to stop Russian missiles. First, there would have been too few of them. Second, most of Russia’s missiles would head north, over the pole and towards the US — safely out of range of the interceptors.
So what do you think will happen next time we need to ask something of Warsaw or Prague?
And there’s really nothing quite like a preemptive surrender, to Moscow and Tehran, on the eve of misguided talks with the Iranian government.
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