Role reversal

Not so long ago, the Bush administration appeared to be leaning hard on its reluctant allies in Central Europe to agree to the stationing of parts of a US antiballistic missile defense shield in their backyards. With time running out before the November presidential elections, George W Bush was intent on getting signed deals with the governments of the Czech Republic and Poland that would, in theory, guarantee that the backbone of a shield could be part of the Bush legacy.

After much to-and-fro, and a multitude of sweeteners, the two governments caved in, first the Czechs, and then, soon after the Russia-Georgia war, the Poles. Political leaders in both countries have invested an enormous amount of domestic political capital in the process and taken a major risk, because the majority of their respective populations have opposed the plans.

One of the main arguments from the anti-radar camp is that Russia isn’t worth provoking. The Kremlin has been infuriated by the plans to place a radar station in a town southwest of Prague and the related stationing of 10 missile interceptors across the border in Poland. Questioning US claims that the missile defense shield would simply protect North America and Europe against “rogue states” (such as Iran), Moscow says the system is aimed at containing Russia and runs counter to the country’s strategic interests. 

The strenuous efforts to rally support in the Czech Republic and Poland helps explain the dramatic role reversal taking place these days, as the new Democratic leadership seems at best lukewarm to the “Star Wars” plans, as they have been called. The Czechs and Poles, on the other hand, appear to be increasingly antsy that all the time and energy invested in negotiating the agreements with the United States could come to nothing.

The day after Barack Obama’s election victory, the prime ministers of both countries issued statements denying that they had received any indication that Obama would scrap the missile plans. But a bit of wishful thinking was also evident. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, for example, said, "Already during the election campaign, Barack Obama said his attitude toward the missile shield did not differ from that of the Bush administration."

In fact, while White House officials have never wavered in their belief that the shield’s technology would eventually work, Obama and leading Democrats have expressed their doubts. After the US elections, Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski admitted in a radio interview that Obama had questioned, in a conversation two months earlier, whether the system would be functional and whether it wasn’t actually targeted against Russia. 

“If he is assured that it is not directed against Russia then he would lean toward doing the usual thing, which is to honor the agreements of his predecessors,” Sikorski said, as reported by Reuters.

The rush to decipher some positive sign in Obama’s outlook on missile defense took on absurd proportions the first weekend after the US elections. Polish President Lech Kaczynski took a call from the president-elect, asked him about missile defense, and concluded, somehow, that Obama had definitively said the project “would continue.”

That would have been big news, except that Kaczynski had apparently misrepresented Obama’s reaction. Almost immediately, Denis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser for the president-elect, countered Kaczynski’s claim, saying Obama had “made no commitment.”

"His position is as it was throughout the campaign, that he supports deploying a missile defense system when the technology is proved to be workable."

The Polish president’s office later acknowledged that Obama had not said the “c” (continue) word. Kaczynski’s website also reported that US Vice President-elect Joe Biden had subsequently called to reaffirm that everything would "depend on the assessment of a national security team, which at this time is being drawn up, as well as the effectiveness and the value of the project," AP reported.

In any case, the exchange allowed conservatives in the US to take Obama to task over correcting a foreign leader - even before he took office. In a 13 November opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, gave Obama a taste of what he can expect in the coming months:

“… [Obama’s] conversation with Mr. Kaczynski points toward a weakening of the US defense posture, indifference to allies under duress, and the need to satisfy his natural constituency within the Democratic Party. Let us now await the next pieces of evidence.”

Obama will have much more than anxious Czech and Polish politicians to consider when he reassesses the missile shield. Raining on Obama’s parade - hours after his victory - Russian President Dmitry Medvedev used his first state of the union address to announce the deployment of missiles in Kaliningrad in response to the US plans. That would place them literally on the doorstep of Poland (and Lithuania, another NATO ally).

However, on 13 November, Medvedev told the French paper Le Figaro that he would re-consider that move if the new president ditched his predecessor’s pet project.

"But we are ready to abandon this decision to deploy the missiles in Kaliningrad if the new American administration, after analyzing the real usefulness of a system to respond to 'rogue states,' decides to abandon its anti-missile system," Medvedev said, as reported by Reuters.

With the mood on Capital Hill souring by the day on the missile plans - and the financial crisis showing no signs of ending - Obama might very well be tempted to shelf the project, saving some money and, at the same time, starting off Russian relations with a clean slate. The leaderships of the Polish and Czech governments will then only be left wondering why they listened to Bush and rushed to make a deal before his departure from office.