The Agreement on installation of the US ABM radar in Test Range Brdy 90 km south-west of Prague was signed on July 8 by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg. Under the Czech-American Agreement the radar will be “exclusively under American control”. The staff of the station will include up to 250 US militaries. Czech militaries will be allowed to enter the radar site only to receive radar monitoring data. The agreement remains ineffective until and unless it is ratified by the Czech Parliament and approved by the President. The ratification is scheduled for this September.
Simultaneously with the Radar Agreement the parties signed an agreement on scientific and technological cooperation. An agreement regulating the presence of the US radar military specialists and security personnel is still pending.
It was expected that after Prague Condoleezza Rice would visit Warsaw to sign an agreement on deployment of ten GBIs in Poland. But this visit failed, and the US State Secretary left for Tbilisi to sort out the Georgian problems. It means that the US-Poland talks on the ABM system are again at the deadlock, and the prospects of US-Polish bargaining remain still unclear.
The failure of the last round of the talks between Warsaw and Washington confirms that the Polish leadership strongly defends its national interests. Prime Minister of Poland Donald Tusk claimed on July 4 that “the deployment of the US ABM systems in Poland would evidently strengthen the security of the United States, but Poland may be exposed to bigger risks, and I cannot afford that the decision-making on US ABM system deployment would be governed by any issues but the security of Poland… It is incorrect to speak about failure or termination of the talks between Poland and the USA. Poland is expecting new proposals of the United States”. Since the US Secretary of State did not visit Warsaw after Prague the United States has no such “new proposals”. Americans were especially offended by the fact that Donald Tusk claimed about unacceptability of the American proposals in public on July 4, i.e. on US Independence Day.
So, what may we expect further? Expressing the official standpoint of the US State Department, Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, claimed that in spite of the Poland’s refuse to sign the agreement, the talks will proceed in any case. According to Washington the deadline for consent of the Polish Government to deployment of the US ABM systems is the end of this July. On emergence the United States is exploring the prospects in Lithuania. At the talks with Lithuanian Prime Minister Gediminas Kirkilas US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that Lithuania is a “good alternative” to Poland for GBI deployment. But in fact the Lithuanian option does not suit to Washington.
It is not excluded that Washington understands that deployment of the GBI base in Lithuania would become a more aggressive “challenge” of the United States to Moscow versus GBIs in Poland and radar in Czechia. Moreover, it seems that so far Washington did not formally notified Moscow about such plans. And therefore it is expected that Washington will do its utmost to settle the bargaining with Poland. According to General Stanislaw Koziej, US SecDef Advisor, in this context “the signals on ABM system deployment in Lithuania may be regarded as an American dud for the Polish party to make its position softer”.
However, during a Lithuanian Seim delegation visit to Moscow Russian legislators expressed their concern over the information on Lithuania’s readiness to provide its territory for the US base. Later, on July 2, the RF State Duma made a statement titled: “On activities of the Lithuanian Republic aimed at deterioration of Russian-Lithuanian relations”, in which the Lithuanian authorities were warned that deployment of the US ABM systems in the territory of this Republic “will result in changing the Russian approach to provision of security in the Baltic region and evoke an adequate response, i.e. upgrade and reinforcement of the Russian military force in the Kaliningrad Region”. Russian militaries specified that it may result in deployment of MRBM Iskander with nuclear warheads or missile-interceptors in Belorussia.
Meanwhile the stand of Russia with respect to this issue remains unchanged. Moscow still believes that the judgments of Washington about a hypothetic Iranian missile threat are strained. In so doing, the RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs points out that Americans do not want to hear a viewpoint even of their NATO allies on this issue.
Deputy Foreign Minister of the Russian Federation Alexander Grushko addressing an international OSCE conference on current security problems said in particular that the third US ABM Defense site was declared by Washington as “a remedy against missile threats”. And that this project is implemented “privately” ignoring the interests of not only Russia but other European countries too. “In fact, our continent became an outpost of the strategic potential, and a hostage of military and political ambitions of one country. Is it a real partnership?” the Russian diplomat claimed.
According to the Deputy Minister, today we witness a trend to “fragmentation of the common and undividable security space”, which generation was promoted by the Charter for European Security. Eventually, according to him, Europe is fragmented resulting in isolation of individual states or groups of states that deteriorates the common security.
Facts confirm that these judgments and stand of Russia are understood in Europe. For example, at the EU-US Summit the European Union did not support the American plans of ABM system deployment in Eastern Europe. The United States made efforts to enlist Europeans in this issue but the deployment of the US ABM defense elements was not even mentioned in the joint statement made by US President G. Bush, European Commission Chairman Jose Manuel Barroso and Slovenia Prime Minister Janez Janša. As a compromise, Europeans proposed to amend the text with a phrase that we welcome the EU efforts to be more active and consistent in making its contribution to provision of the international security. That’s all…
Hans Blix, Chairman of the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, believes that Russia and the European Union should be in position to control over the US ABM elements in Eastern Europe. Addressing the Luxemburg forum H. Blix said that such projects of Washington “affect the international security” and may provoke “an extremely undesirable arms race worldwide”. According to him, “the negative assessment of the US ABM system by Russia is absolutely justified”.
On July 3, Finnish Minister of Labor Tarja Cronberg claimed that Europe becomes a hostage of the US plans to deploy its strategic ABM elements in the European continent. According to her, direct talks between the USA, Russia and European Union would be the best security guarantee. She also blamed on the USA for unilateral decision-making on GBI deployment without any talks even with the NATO member-states, and urged to conduct multilateral negotiations on this subject.
The aforesaid confirms that not everybody in Europe supports the US ABM Defense plans. It means that the signing of the agreement by Czechia is not a final solution. More than 70 per cent of Czech citizens oppose this agreement. Nobody can be sure that it will be ratified by the Parliament where the ruling party lacks a majority of votes. Meanwhile many Czech legislators speak against the American radar and demand to conduct a national referendum on this mater.
Nevertheless, the first objective on the way to deployment of the strategic weapons near the Russian borders has been won by the United States. The USA insistently promote its mad project despite the statements of the Russian leadership that it poses a real threat to Russia and makes it to look for “options for independent provision of its own security” and adequately respond to the US plans. After the signing of the Radar Agreement in Prague Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said at the G8 Summit in Japan that “we dislike it but we will not be hysterical about this, we will think of retaliatory steps.”
