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Antimissile Plan by U.S. Strains Ties With Russia
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If the United States goes ahead with its plans, Russian officials have threatened to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which eliminated shorter-range missiles. As precedent, Russian officials cite the Bush administration's withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
"It is possible for a party to abandon the treaty if it provides convincing evidence that it is necessary to do so," Gen. Yury Baluyevsky said this month. "We have such evidence at present."
Irina Kobrinskaya, an analyst at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, said the Russian military might have grudgingly accepted the system if it were deployed on NATO's southern rim in Turkey, Romania or Bulgaria. But its placement to the north -- in the Czech Republic and Poland, which shares a land border with the Russian region of Kaliningrad -- has raised deep suspicion here.
"Elements of this new system can present a threat to Russia and that's the logic of the military," Kobrinskaya said in an interview.
For Russians, the system is part of a deeper pattern of what they see as U.S. encirclement, particularly through the continuing expansion of NATO. From its first expansion into the former Soviet bloc in 1998, when Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined, NATO now includes the three Baltic states, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria. The former Soviet republic of Georgia also wishes to join. Some politicians in Ukraine, including President Viktor Yushchenko, have advocated membership.
Some Russian analysts contend that part of the rhetoric is driven by domestic political concerns and efforts to build a nationalist consensus before parliamentary and presidential elections.
"I think the whole episode is being used by the Russian government to substantiate its critical approach to what the U.S. is doing internationally," said Viktor Kremenyuk, of Institute of the United States and Canada in Moscow, in an interview.
U.S. officials have said they accept that Russia could easily overwhelm the antimissile system -- further proof, they say, that it is not directed against Russia.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, head of the Missile Defense Agency, told reporters last month that the interceptors "are directed toward rogue nations' capabilities, not an obviously sophisticated ballistic missile fleet such as the Russians have."
