A Pentagon spokesperson said "U.S. Army Europe will help the Polish Armed Forces develop their air and missile defense capabilities. Considering the cooperative training we already do with the Polish Armed Forces, this Patriot training program is just another extension of that effort." [13]
If earlier plans to deploy ground-based mid-course missiles to Poland evoked, however implausibly, an alleged Iranian missile threat, the Patriots can only be meant for Russia.
Russian Lieutenant-General Aitech Bizhev, former commander of the United Air Defense System of the Commonwealth of Independent States, told one of his nation's main news agencies:
"It's completely unclear why the air defense group of the northern flank of NATO needed strengthening - NATO has manifold superiority over Russian conventional armaments as it is.
"It can't be ruled out that the stationing of the Patriots in Poland may be followed by other actions in building up the American military infrastructure in Eastern Europe...." [14]
The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on the Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms expired on December 5 and has been extended, but no agreement has been reached on a new pact, over fifty days later.
At the end of last year Russia's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin was asked about the delay and identified the main impediment to resolving it: "What is the problem? The problem is that our American partners are building an anti-missile shield and we are not building one."
He further defined the problem: "If we are not developing an anti-missile shield, then there is a danger that our partners, by creating such 'an umbrella,' will feel completely secure and thus can allow themselves to do what they want, disrupting the balance, and aggressiveness will rise immediately."
In respect to how prospects for the reduction, much less elimination, of nuclear arms in Europe and North America were faring, Putin added, "In order to preserve balance...we need to develop offensive weapons systems," [15] reiterating a statement by his nation's president, Dmitry Medvedev, a week before. The timing of the announcement that the Pentagon will soon station Patriot missiles so close to Russian territory will not help matters. Nor was the State Department's contention that "the START follow-on agreement is not the appropriate vehicle for addressing" the issue of "missile offense and defense." [16]
A month before, Russian news media revealed that "Russia's Strategic Missile Forces (SMF), the land-based component of the nuclear triad, will put on combat duty a second regiment equipped with Topol-M mobile missile systems by the end of 2009.
"The Topol-M missile, with a range of about 7,000 miles (11,000 km), is said to be immune to any current and future U.S. ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] defense. It is capable of making evasive maneuvers to avoid a kill using terminal phase interceptors [for example Patriot missiles], and carries targeting countermeasures and decoys." [17]
Just as supplying Taiwan with Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) theater anti-ballistic missiles led China to conduct a ground-based, mid-course missile interception on January 11, so moving U.S. military hardware and troops nearer Russia bodes poorly for a nuclear arms reduction agreement.
On the non-strategic front, the 1990 Treaty On Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) limiting the amount and expansion of major armaments on the continent is also seriously jeopardized by U.S. and NATO missile shield plans. The adapted CFE (Agreement on Adaptation of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe) of 1999 has not been ratified by any member of NATO, which has linked it with so-called frozen conflicts in the former Soviet Union. The August 2008 Georgia-Russia war was a consequence of that obstructionist and belligerent policy. The establishment of permanent U.S. and NATO military bases in Kosovo, Bulgaria, Romania, Lithuania and now Poland is a gross violation of and may prove the death knell for the CFE.
Russia suspended the observance of its treaty obligations under the CFE on July 14, 2007 because of "extraordinary circumstances...which affect the security of the Russian Federation and require immediate measures." [18]
The circumstances alluded to were the U.S. project of establishing missile interception facilities in Eastern Europe and the general movement of NATO bases and forces to the Baltic and Black Sea regions.
On November 29 of last year Russia "released a draft of a proposal for a new European security agreement the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)." [19]
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