CHANGING COURSE IN CANADA
Just three months after taking office, new Canadian premier Stephen Harper has already begun reorienting his country’s foreign policy direction – and could be bringing it closer to collaboration with Washington on the issue of missile defense. United Press International (May 3) reports that Harper has made a strategic decision to strengthen Canada’s NORAD defense ties with the United States in what many political opponents see as a prelude to a deepening of missile defense ties between Washington and Ottawa. A parliamentary debate on the expanded NORAD agreement is still pending, but some Canadian politicians already have blasted the proposed deal as representing a “rather dramatic extension of military integration with the United States.”
Harper’s ideas, however, appear to be gaining purchase. The May 1st edition of the Globe & Mail reports that Bill Graham, the powerful leader of Canada’s opposition Liberal Party and a former defense minister, has endorsed Harper’s plans for an expansion of NORAD cooperation. Graham reportedly has said that his party would “certainly support” an expansion of formal U.S.-Canadian defense ties to include coastal defense and maritime surveillance, and has raised the possibility of an endorsement of revived missile defense collaboration as well.
A HELPING HAND FROM PYONGYANG
In the midst of its nuclear stand-off with the United Nations, Iran has undergone a major expansion of its missile reach, courtesy of North Korea. In its April 27th edition, Ha’aretz reports that Israel's military intelligence has assessed that Iran recently received a shipment of new, extended range ballistic missiles from the regime of Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang. According to Major-General Amos Yadlin, head of the intelligence branch of the Israel Defense Forces, the single-stage liquid-fuel missiles, known as BM-25s, are nuclear-capable and possess a range of 2,500 kilometers – giving Iran the ability to strike targets throughout Europe.
EUROPEAN BASING FACES THE CONGRESSIONAL AXE
Congress may have just killed the Pentagon’s plans for a third interceptor site in Europe. United Press International (April 26) reports that the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces has nixed funding for a prospective European interceptor basing location for the U.S. Ground-based Midcourse Defense system. The House decision – which could still be reversed at the full Committee level, or in the Senate – comes amid growing movement in Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania toward greater missile defense cooperation with the United States.
IN ISRAEL, A CHANGING MISSILE DEFENSE FOCUS
For years, Israel has concentrated on building defenses against the threat of missile attack from hostile regional neighbors. But now, faced with a growing short-range missile threat from the Palestinian Territories, policymakers in Jerusalem appear to be shifting gears, United Press International (April 21) reports. Accelerating Israeli plans for a short-range ballistic missile defense system has already prompted two major American defense firms – Boeing and Alliant Techsystems (ATK) – to forge a commercial partnership in their bid for the $50-100 million project. The new project reflects Israeli efforts to patch what so far has been a crucial area of weakness: protection of critical infrastructure from short-range missiles and artillery rockets. The project appears to have been given new urgency by the unexpected January electoral victory of the radical Hamas movement in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, which analysts expect will expand the missile threat to Israel from the Palestinian Authority.
MORE MISSILE MOVES FROM MOSCOW
Russia’s military has successfully tested another component of its effort to defeat American missile defenses, MosNews (April 24) reports. The April 22nd launch of a 1970s-vintage K65M-R missile, which was carried out in the southern Astrakhan region, successfully field-tested “a uniform warhead for land- and sea-based ballistic missiles” such as the “Bulava,” a military spokesman has said. The reason the new technology is necessary? “The planned scale of the United States’ deployment of a ... missile defense system is so considerable that the fear that it could have a negative effect on the parameters of Russia’s nuclear deterrence potential is quite justified,” says Strategic Rocket Forces commander Nikolai Solovtsov.
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