The US missile defense complex in Poland, also called the European Interceptor Site (EIS) was part of the Ballistic Missile Defense European Capability of the US, to be placed in Redzikowo, Słupsk, Poland, forming a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system in conjunction with a US narrow-beam midcourse tracking and discrimination radar system in the Brdy, Czech Republic. It was to consist of up to 10 silo-based interceptors, a two-stage version of the existing three-stage Ground Based Interceptor (GBI), with Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle (EKV), with a closing speed of about 7 km/s. The plan was cancelled in 2009.
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According to the United States administration, the system was intended to protect against future missiles from Iran, such as the alleged Shahab-6, although in November 2007 the U.S. National Intelligence Estimate reported that Iran's nuclear weapons program had been halted since late 2003.[1] It has also been pointed out that Central Europe is beyond the range of any missile that Iran currently has.[2]
Russia strongly opposed the system. As an alternative, it proposed sharing the Qabala Radar in Azerbaijan, which Russia leases, but at the time this was not seen as an acceptable substitute for the US.[3] One of the major difficulties from the Russian perspective was that the associated radar installation, which was to be based in the Czech Republic, would have been able to collect information about all movements in Russian airspace up to the Urals mountains, which is the whole of European Russia.
The missile shield received opposition from certain groups within Poland and the Czech Republic, including numerous protests[4][5] and a relay hunger strike by two Czech activists which started in May 2008 and lasted 300 days.[6]
On September 17, 2009, it was announced by the Obama administration that plans for the project had been scrapped.[7] The decision was met with mixed reactions in the US, Poland and the Czech Republic, but praised by Russia and Western European leaders.
In October, with a trip by Vice President Joe Biden to Warsaw, a new, smaller interceptor project on roughly the same schedule as the Bush administration plan, was introduced, and welcomed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk.[8]
Since 2002, the US had been in talks with Poland and other European countries over the possibility of setting up a European base to intercept long-range missiles. According to US officials, a site similar to the US base in Alaska would help protect the US and Europe from missiles fired from the Middle East or North Africa. The Ustka-Wicko base of the Polish Army was initially mentioned as a possible site of US missile interceptors. Poland's prime minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz said in November 2005 he wanted to open up the public debate on whether Poland should host such a base.[9]
In February 2007 the US started formal negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic concerning construction of missile shield installations in those countries for a Ground-Based Midcourse Defense System.[10] However in April 2007 the Washington Post reported that 57% of Poles opposed the plan.[11]
Russia threatened to place short-range nuclear missiles on its borders with NATO if the United States refused to abandon its plans to deploy 10 interceptor missiles and a radar in Poland and the Czech Republic.[12][13] In April 2007, then-President Putin warned of a new Cold War if the Americans deployed the shield in Central Europe.[14] Putin also said that Russia was prepared to abandon its obligations under a Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 with the United States.[15]
On July 4, 2008, Poland did not agree on the conditions set forth by the United States regarding the installation of anti-ballistic missiles on its territory.[16]
On July 8, 2008, the Russian Foreign Ministry stated that if the missile defense system was approved, "we will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods."[17]
On August 14, 2008, shortly after the 2008 South Ossetia war, the United States and Poland announced a deal to implement the missile defense system in Polish territory, with a tracking system placed in the Czech Republic. The Russians responded by saying such action "cannot go unpunished."[18] "The fact that this was signed in a period of very difficult crisis in the relations between Russia and the United States over the situation in Georgia shows that, of course, the missile defense system will be deployed not against Iran but against the strategic potential of Russia," Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's NATO envoy, said.[19]
A high-ranking Russian military officer had warned Poland that it was exposing itself to attack by accepting a U.S. missile interceptor base on its soil. The deputy chief of staff of Russia's armed forces Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn has warned Poland that, "by deploying (the system), it is exposing itself to a strike — 100 percent".[20]
On August 20, 2008, the "Agreement Between the Government of the United States of America and the Government of the Republic of Poland Concerning the Deployment of Ground-Based Ballistic Missile Defense Interceptors in the Territory of the Republic of Poland" was signed in Warsaw by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski [21][22]
On November 5, during President Dmitry Medvedev's first state of the nation speech he stated that Russia would deploy short-range Iskander missiles to Russia's western enclave of Kaliningrad, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania "to neutralize, if necessary, a missile defense system." "From what we have seen in recent years — the creation of a missile defense system, the encirclement of Russia with military bases, the relentless expansion of NATO — we have gotten the clear impression that they are testing our strength," he said.[23]
On November 8, an aide to U.S. President-Elect Barack Obama denied a claim made by Polish President Lech Kaczyński's office that a pledge had been made to go ahead with the missile defense system during a phone conversation between the two men. "His [Obama's] position is as it was throughout the campaign, that he supports deploying a missile defence system when the technology is proved to be workable," the aid said, but "no commitment" has been made.[24]
On November 14, French President Nicolas Sarkozy stated that plans for a U.S. missile shield in Central Europe were misguided, and wouldn't make the continent a safer place. "Deployment of a missile defense system would bring nothing to security ... it would complicate things, and would make them move backward," he said at a summit. He also warned Russian President Dmitry Medvedev against upping tensions by deploying missiles in Kaliningrad in response to the U.S. planned missile defense system.[25]
On April 5, 2009, President Obama, during his speech in Prague, declared: "As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven." [26] President Obama continued to expressed conditional support for the program and sought to isolate it from U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control talks.[27]
On September 17, 2009, The White House issued a statement saying that the US "no longer planned to move forward" with the project. According to President Obama, new intelligence had shown Iran was pursuing short-range and medium-range missile development, rather than long-range, necessitating a shift in strategy.[28][29] The outlines of a reformulated, scaled-down project began to emerge in October, 2009 (see below).[8]
The Polish government responded nervously. Some politicians voiced concern that the country would lose its special status in Washington, and that the move by Obama was an appeasement to Moscow. Jaroslaw Gowin, with Poland's governing Civic Platform party, said Obama's decision had been made independently of Polish sensitivities. Former Polish President Lech Wałęsa said he was deeply disappointed by the new US administration's plans. He stated: "The Americans have always only taken care of their own interests and they have used everyone else."[30] According to a September 18, 2009 poll, 56 percent of Poles supported Obama's decision and only 30 percent were against it.[29][31] Leader of main Polish opposition party, Jarosław Kaczyński, claimed that the decision of abandoning the shield was announced on September 17 not by accident [32] (the date is of great symbolic value to Poland, as on September 17, 1939 Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union). Polish newspapers showed mixed responses to the discontinuation, with some seeing it as a positive action,[33] and some saw it with very negative connotations.[33][34]
However Slawomir Nowak, a senior adviser to Polish Prime Minister Tusk, responded positively to the proposed short and medium range missile systems replacement of the long range systems: "If this system becomes reality in the shape Washington is now suggesting, it would actually be better for us than the original missile shield programme," he stated. "We were never really threatened by a long-range missile attack from Iran," he told TVP Info.[35][36]
Reactions in the US to Obama's decision were mixed. Some Republican critics saw this as a move to placate Moscow. Defeated presidential candidate John McCain called the decision "seriously misguided". Conversely, Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the decision was "brilliant" and clearly based on an accurate summary of the current threats. Obama rejected accusations that the decision was an appeasement to Moscow. He stated in an interview: "The Russians don't make determinations about what our defence posture is. If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid... then that's a bonus."[37]
President Medvedev welcomed the news as "positive". "We value the US president’s responsible approach towards implementing our agreements," he stated in an address shown on national television. Prime Minister Putin said it was a "correct and brave" move. The main reason for President Barack Obama's decision was "Russia's uncompromising position on the issue," according to Russian foreign policy expert Mikhail Margelov, chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee Federation Council of Russia.[38]
Leaders in Western Europe reacted positively. German Chancellor Angela Merkel welcomed the move, calling it a "a very hopeful signal" for relations with Russia.[39] French President Nicolas Sarkozy said that this was "an excellent decision from every point of view and I hope that our Russian friends will attach importance to this decision,"[40] while British Prime Minister Gordon Brown gave his fullest backing, stating that he strongly supported the decision taken by Obama.[41]
Czech President Vaclav Klaus said the step by the U.S. government was "no big surprise for anybody who had been following the cues in the past days and months," but that he was "100 percent convinced" that the step was no expression of a cooling in relations between the United States and the Czech Republic. However, Mirek Topolanek, who was prime minister when Prague agreed to co-host the shield, said the US decision to drop the plans "is not good news for the Czech state, for Czech freedom and independence."[42]
The reformulated project announced most prominently by Vice President Biden in October, 2009, would entail smaller, mobile SM-3 interceptors, to be emplaced by 2018. The whole of the Obama plan "envisions stationing existing SM-3 interceptors as part of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense on Aegis-equipped ships in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere by 2011, and on land in Central Europe by 2015. A more advanced system would be deployed by 2018, and another generation, theoretically capable of shooting down intercontinental missiles, by 2020."[8]