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2 Iran rises to its missile
defense By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
The Russians are calling it
"destabilizing" and have warned of dire reactions,
and even some members of the US Congress are
questioning its wisdom and the stated rationale
behind it. Yet, heedless of such negative
reactions abroad and at home, the United States is
proceeding with its plan to install a large radar
system and "interceptor" missiles in Eastern
Europe, under the pretext of a clear and present
danger from Iran.
Congresswoman Ellen
Tauscher, chairwoman of the House of
Representatives Subcommittee on Strategic Forces,
is opposing
the
Pentagon's US$310 million request to begin
construction of the anti-missile defense next year
and is joined by a number of US lawmakers,
including Democratic presidential hopeful Dennis
Kucinich, who are concerned about the potential
for a new arms race triggered by such initiatives
rattling the Russians.
Officially, the US
insists this has nothing to do with Russia, yet so
far, despite assurances provided by Secretary of
State Condoleezza Rice and others, Moscow has
hardened its stance, with Defense Minister Anatoly
Serdyukov and other top Kremlin officials "drawing
a line in the sand" over the matter.
General Staff Chief General of the Army
Yury Baluyevsky said Russia will plan a military
response to US plans to deploy elements of its
missile-defense system in Europe. "If we see that
a threat is coming from the facilities [elements
of the missile-defense system] that could be
created in Europe, we will definitely plan action
against them," he told Interfax news agency on
Monday.
This has come as a minor shock to
US policymakers who had underestimated the depth
of Russia's resistance, with some pundits betting
that Moscow's intention was to garner some
advantages in bargaining over the matter. Not so,
and the shock is even bigger to Pentagon and other
US officials who have habitually dismissed critics
of the anti-missile doctrine that harks back to
the presidency of Ronald Reagan and the Strategic
Defense Initiative known as "Star Wars" in the
1980s.
In fact, the seriousness of the
Russian reaction confirms what those critics had
maintained all along about the destabilizing
impact of this doctrine, by causing insecurity on
the part of (post-Cold War) Russians whose
confidence in their missiles would be undermined,
prompting them to embark on a costly catch-up,
with serious geostrategic ramifications.
Since the United States' abrogation of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2000, there has
been a semblance of debate, and now for the first
time the opponents of the anti-missile initiative
have the potential upper hand. The latter,
including many developing nations in the United
Nations General Assembly, have been pushing for
some time for improved international instruments
on missile technology, sorely lacking today.
Indeed, the scope of international
cooperation on missiles, as opposed to warheads,
is in serious need of an immediate upgrade.
Everyone in the arms-control business agrees that
the existing initiatives, such as the Hague Code
of Conduct against Ballistic Missile
Proliferation, as well as a couple of UN panels of
experts on missiles, are insufficient and what is
needed are new norms governing the proliferation,
testing, transfer, deployment and use of missiles.
Recent military operations in Iraq,
Afghanistan and Kosovo, featuring the extensive
use of "smart" or "tactical" precision-guided
cruise missiles, have added to the urgency of the
global search for a new regime to control missile
technology. But this is unlikely to materialize
for various reasons, including the US military's
growing reliance on "state of art" weapons, both
conventional and nuclear.
Sadly, in the
discussions under way on the future of the nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the issue of
missiles themselves is often sidelined. The
controversy generated over the United States' plan
mentioned above underscores the need to prioritize
this subject at NPT review meetings as a sine
qua non for an integrated approach toward arms
control and disarmament.
Yet, the
missile-proliferation trend is only a subset of
larger global security trends and, in the Middle
East context, the latter reflect myriad security
concerns over regional actors such as Saudi
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