"Then, using that 'threat' as an instrument, the US managed to alter the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty that Russia was pushing for into a more favorable one for America." [16]
The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty was signed in 1972 by the U.S.'s Richard Nixon and the Soviet Union's Leonid Brezhnev, and the George W. Bush administration unilaterally withdrew from it in 2002. The first threat to the treaty, though, was the Reagan administration's Strategic Defense Initiative.
The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) expires this December 5. "The United States plans to let a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia expire in 2009 and replace it with a less formal agreement that eliminates strict verification requirements and weapons limits, a senior US official says." [17]
In both instances U.S. missile shield - and space war - policies are designed among other purposes to place Russia at a strategic disadvantage in regards to negotiations over nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
To compound the threat, the U.S. hasn't even renounced plans for missile deployments in Poland, as Missile Defense Agency chief O'Reilly informed the U.S. Senate on September 24.
On September 18 Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski - former resident fellow of the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, executive director of the New Atlantic Initiative and adviser to Rupert Murdoch and husband of American journalist Anne Applebaum - said that the 100 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles the Pentagon still plans to station in his country will be combat ready. Sikorski affirmed that "Poland has been promised by the U.S. that it will go ahead with the deployment of a Patriot battery in Poland and that the missiles will be armed." [18]
Six days later Slawomir Nowak, adviser to Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, announced that the U.S. could task his nation to base short- to medium-range missiles as part of "its new, flexible missile system."
Nowak was quoted as saying, "If this system becomes a reality it would actually be better for us than the original missile shield programme." [19]
Polish Radio announced that "Washington may ask Poland eventually to host SM-3 anti-ballistic missiles, currently being manufactured by Lockheed-Martin." [20]
Nowak confirmed the information, saying: "We are familiar with the SM-3 system and the Americans have assured us that Poland is one of the countries where they want to place this system." He also offered an ex post facto refutation of the American missile shield rationale by stating "We were never really threatened by a long-range missile attack from Iran." [21]
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was even more blunt in a column she wrote for the Financial Times a few days before.
She reiterated comparable claims by President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates in writing, "We are enhancing our capacity to protect our interests and our allies. We are not walking away from our allies but are deploying a system that enhances allied security, advances our cooperation with NATO, and actually placing more resources in more countries."
Clinton mentioned in particular American military commitments to fellow NATO states, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, and as Obama had done on September 17 invoked NATO's Article 5 military assistance clause, fraught as it is with the prospect of nuclear confrontation and even war.
"An attack on London or Warsaw is an attack on New York or Washington. NATO demonstrated this commitment after the September 11 terrorist attacks." [22]
Western media accounts over the past ten days have been replete with a steady refrain that Czechs and Poles feel "betrayed" by the new U.S. missile plans.
Such claims are easily enough refuted by surveys demonstrating that 70 percent of Czechs and 55 percent of Poles were opposed to the deployment of third position missile shield installations on their soil.
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