NEW MOVEMENT IN "NEW EUROPE"
A number of Eastern European states are gearing up for missile defense cooperation with the United States. A spokesman for the Czech Foreign Ministry has confirmed to the Prague Post (April 5) that, after two years of quiet talks with Washington, negotiations with the U.S. "are proceeding on the subject of the possibility of an American anti-missile base in the Czech Republic." Prague, however, is not the only European partner under consideration. A top Polish defense official has disclosed that consultations between Warsaw and Washington on a potential role for Poland in U.S. missile defense talks could begin as early as this summer. "A few days ago the Americans once more raised the issue of including Poland in the [American] missile defense system," the PAP news agency (April 11) reports Deputy Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski as telling a recent session of the country's parliament, the Sejm. "Detailed talks on this could start in July."
Meanwhile, Romania is sending out signals that it too could consider a role in the Bush administration's emerging global missile shield. Romania's Defense Minister, Teodor Atanasu, has told the Bucharest Daily News (April 11) that his government is not ruling out the possibility of serving as a basing location for American interceptors. "We are one of the NATO's border countries and we will be one of EU's borders as well starting with January 2007. It is of great importance to have all the surveillance elements that could assure the Euro-Atlantic and the European protection, so such projects must be taken into account," Atanasu has explained.
THE KREMLIN'S STRATEGIC CALCULUS
Russia must more than triple its annual production of the "Topol" intercontinental ballistic missile in order to preserve strategy parity with the United States, a leading Russian defense analyst has estimated. According to Alexei Arbatov, the director of Moscow's famous Institute of World Economic and International Relations (IMEMO), Russia must dramatically ramp up production of the advanced ICBM from the current rate of 6-8 a year to between 20 and 30 annually. The reason appears to have everything to do with Moscow's need for an antidote to the emerging American missile defense system; "No country in the world has Topol-M's counterparts capable of penetrating anti-ballistic missile defenses, or will have them for at least twenty years to come," Arbatov told participants at a recent roundtable on U.S.-Russian strategic stability in comments carried by Itar-TASS on April 11th.
THE SPACE IMPERATIVE
Growing reliance on space as a medium for commerce and technology necessitates that America establish and maintain battlefield dominance there, a top military commander has told lawmakers. "Our dependence on space capabilities, coupled with recent significant advances in space operations demonstrated by others, establishes a true imperative to protect our space assets and our freedom of action in space," Lieutenant-General Kevin Chilton, the Space and Global Strike Commander for U.S. Strategic Command, told a Senate subcommittee on April 6th. "We must improve space situational awareness and protection, and ensure unfettered, reliable, and secure access to space." According to Chilton, among the priorities currently being focused on by the U.S. military are developing "responsive space access," preserving existing space surveillance capabilities, and providing soldiers with greater access to the "full spectrum" of American military space assets.
ASIA'S CHANGING MISSILE FOCUS
While North Korea and China continue to pose the principal missile threats to Asian nations, countries in the region may soon need to contend with other variables, says a new report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "All nations studied see BMD as an acceptable way to deal with regional missile threats, and are pursuing relevant policies (although politics constrain deployment in South Korea)," notes the March 2006 study, entitled "The Paths Ahead: Missile Defense in Asia." "However, as the possibility of a long-range Middle Eastern threat expands and missile technology proliferates, Asian nations will have to consider meeting extra-regional threats, which may drive much more expenditure on more sophisticated systems. It may also drive changes in policy toward nations basing defensive assets in space."
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