Back To The Cold War
Poland and the Czech Republic appear ready to approve the siting of American anti-missile defenses in their countries. Russia responds with threats to target those facilities. The old Cold War bluff and bluster appear to be back.
Russia threatened to train its missiles on Poland and the Czech Republic yesterday after the two countries signaled they would host a controversial US missile defence shield despite vehement objections from the Kremlin.
The warning came hours after Czech prime minister Mirek Topolanek and his Polish counterpart Jaroslaw Kaczynski told a press conference in Warsaw that their response to the US proposal, made last month, would "most likely be positive."
The Pentagon has asked to deploy 10 interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic — two former Warsaw Pact countries that are now EU and Nato members — as part of the first global integrated missile defence shield in Europe.
Yesterday Gen Nikolai Solovtsov, commander of Russia's Strategic Missile Forces, warned that the proposed locations of the defensive shield would be targeted if Poland and the Czech Republic accepted the proposal.
The US is not placing the missiles - which are defensive - to threaten Russia but to defend against the next generation of Iranian missiles. But they naked power plays by Putin and his mafia don government may start making things more closely resemble 1968 than they already do.
World news | Gaius Tuesday, 20 February , 2007
By Blackhawk, Tuesday, 20 February , 2007 @ 9:15 pm
Unless we extend our nuclear umbrella to cover them. I think the NATO treaty includes this, but I could be wrong. Methinks the rooskiis are barking, but they won’t bite. Prolly just posturing, either because they have their own system they want to deploy (unlikely) or they want the US to include them as well (possible).
Or too much vodka.