Polish government approves missile deal

[951-Riverside]

Source: The Associated Press

Poland's government gave formal approval to a missile defense deal with the U.S. on Tuesday before a visit by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the deputy prime minister said.

Grzegorz Schetyna said Prime Minister Donald Tusk's Cabinet signed off on the deal for Poland to host 10 missile interceptors at its regular weekly meeting.

It was the first of several steps required after negotiators last week reached an agreement following about 1 1/2 years of talks. The deal still needs parliamentary and presidential approval.

Those are expected to be formalities because both Tusk's Civic Platform party and the main opposition Law and Justice, linked to President Lech Kaczynski, support the deal.

Rice was due in Warsaw late Tuesday, and was to sign the deal alongside Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski and in the presence of Polish leaders on Wednesday morning.

The negotiators reached agreement in Warsaw during Russia's military offensive in the former Soviet republic of Georgia last week.

Russia also threatened that Poland — a former Soviet satellite — risked attack after agreeing to allow the U.S. missile defense facility on its soil.

Read more: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/08/19/europe/EU-Poland-US-Missile-Defense.php

[Andy Canuck]

1. Russia stated they will attack Poland "100%"

if they get a NATO missile shield. Why would anyone think they won't? Is NATO/US intentionally provoking war?

[Mudoria]

2. Since when do you think Russia has the right

to tell Poland what it can or can't do in it's own foreign policy? The Poles have had enough experience with the Russians to know what to expect from them.

[wuushew]

3. Missile Defense is idiotic

The article is not free but I strongly recommend a 2004 article in Scientific American titled "Holes in the Missile Shield".

This situation is NOT improving the security of Poland. Along with the ABM treaty expect to see the conventional forces in Europe treaty scrapped and maybe a return to intermediate range missiles in Europe. How does anyone benefit from more tension in Eastern Europe? We supposedly worked hard to defuse those hairtriggers.


Also since the direction vector of the Czech radar sites combined with interceptor sites on Polish Baltic seem to point towards Russia and not Iran I would argue that your Prezteldent is again lying to you.

[izquierdista]

4. Good neighbors

Don't point weapons at each other. There comes a time when you have to try to bury all the past history and look forward to living peaceably with your neighbors. The fact that the US is out dangling all sorts of incentives to countries who will allow the US to base their weapons there and ratchet up the tensions is proof that the US is the greatest danger to world peace today.

America's place in the community of nations is like the crazy old gun collector who sits on his porch cleaning his guns and ranting about everyone else in the neighborhood. People and countries learn to stay out of sight, out of the line of fire, for fear that the old coot will lose it and finally start shooting. The best policy is not to accept any gifts from the loon, a loaded gun on which he removed the safety so it would be "ready without having to fumble around". If McCain wins, the analogy will be complete as the fool yells "hey you, get off my lawn!" to anyone within earshot.

Small nations like Georgia and the Czech Republic can't maintain their independence by threat of force. They need to appeal to the best qualities of their neighbors, reminding them of humanity and tolerance and equality. When force ends up confronting other force, only death and destruction result and everyone loses. Rationality need to be used to dial back all use of force, reminding people on both sides that progress only occurs when everyone pushes in the same direction.

The Poles should know this better than any group out there. Poland is a horribly indefensible land, with no natural barriers to armies sweeping in from the east or west. Their best days were when they allied with neighboring people (the Lithuanians) and allowed minorities (Jews) to flourish in their midst. They should not antagonize the Russians, simply to curry favor with the world's biggest debtor and arms merchant.

[14thColony]

6. You pretend Russia and Poland are equals

Maybe the day will come when all nations truly are equal, but that's not reality at the dawn of the 21st century. Russia is a Great Power that has been provoked into an aggressive posture by the actions of an opposing Great Power. This dance goes back millenia, whether Romans and Parthians, Athenians and Spartans, or Germans and French. In this situation the closer you are to one, the less likely you are to get help from the other. Poland is in NATO, which gives it powerful psychological protection, but it's still a minor power in Russia's traditional sphere of influence. Kinda like the tidal zone between two large planets. And this makes Poland vulnerable. For one thing, Poland depends on Russia for energy. Poland can do as it wishes with its foreign policy you say? Absolutely it can. And Russia can do as it wishes with its oil and gas exports to Poland. Say, right around December for instance.

Whether it's right or wrong, whether Great Powers are ultimately good or bad, all that is irrelevant. It is what it is. Maybe once we evolve another million years we'll get beyond this, but for now this is where we are.

Russia has had to sit quiet and suck it up for the last 16 years as the opposing Great Power encircled them, as they see it tightening a noose around their necks. Now they have the economic and military means to put a stop to it, and that's exactly what they're doing. Russia is looking out for Russia's national interests first and foremost; what else would you have them do? No country is so altruistic as to leave their neck in a noose.

As I said in a different post, the US policy since 1992 assumes that Russia would stay knocked out flat on the mat. In fact our policy is predicated on it. Now Russia's not only getting up, they're getting up with a double-barreled shotgun and an anger management issue.

Monopolarism is over. We're back to the era of Great Power confrontation.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

10. Because it would be insane. n/t

[cliss]

5. If I were Polish right now,

I'd be sweating HARD. Russia has promised 100% to retaliate if Poland goes through with this. They used the word 'nuclear'.

That's why Russian troops and tanks are still cruising around Georgia. Russia wants to show east bloc countries they are not safe with U.S. "assurances".

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

11. Yeah and North Korea is part of the Axis of Evil.

Let me know when the paratroopers land there. Bluster is bluster.

[Doctor Cynic]

7. They will buy 10000 sceptic tanks to invade Russia next.

[jasonberlin]

8. A couple things

Russia said Poland would expose itself 100% to Moscow's nuclear arsenal. They didn't say they would 100% attack Poland - that's much different. Although the threat IS totally scary, like they mean it to be.

About Russia being in a noose and having to do something about it - the "noose" is democracy, right? It seems to me they didn't have to perceive it as a noose - they could've pursued their path to democracy and even thrived a lot more than they will now, through business and cultural detente with the West. It's Putin who has eliminated democracy and set Russia back fifty years. And it's also Bush's fault of course for leaving us so drawn out militarily that Russia has a free hand to do what it likes.

But yeah, as far as Poland - cozying up to Russia is a horrible option too. They're a totalitarian nation, and with the invasion of Georgia they just got a lot scarier.

Remember not too long ago, Russian agents tried to poison Yuschenko, president of the Ukraine? They're not on the side of democracy.

[14thColony]

9. A couple more things

The noose is not democracy. The noose (as they percieve it) is NATO advancing membership not only into the old Warsaw Pact, but also into countries that were once part of the USSR. The noose is US/NATO military bases in Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and other parts of formerly Soviet Central Asia. Now US in-person military support for Georgia, anti-ballistic missile sites in Poland and Czech Republic, Ukraine making noises about joining NATO, etc. Russia has a cultural paranoia about being surrounded, what with having been invaded by Mongolia, Britain, France (twice), Germany (at least twice), the United States, and Japan, among others (not to mention Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Finland in WWII). Kinda makes you paranoid after a while.

Walk a mile in their shoes: it's 2008 in a world where in 1992 the US collapsed as a major world power. We've been economically and politically in the shitter since. In the meantime the USSR, pleased as punch at being 'the last superpower,' has marginalized us in every forum they can, while signing most of western Europe up as Warsaw Pact members. Now they've pressured Mexico and Iceland to allow ABM radars and missile sites so they can "protect their European allies from North Korean ICBMs." Nevermind that NK doesn't have any ICBMs and the anti-missile system seems to point at the US and not at North Korea. Last year they signed a bilateral defense pact with Canada, and the Canadian Air Force is flying Su-27 fighters along the US border, and training on their brand-new T-90 tanks with Soviet advisors. Might make you a little paranoid that they don't have our best interests at heart, huh?

When Great Powers are defeated, humiliated, and then placed in a position they perceive as threatening, democracy often gives over to an authoritarian/nationalist form of government. Predictable as clockwork. The Weimar Republic to the Third Reich, the Duma Government to the Soviet Socialist Republic, and now the nasecent post-1992 Russian form of democracy to the new-for-the-21st-century-authoritarian model. Plenty of other examples. Consider these 'crisis/national unity governments' - and more common in places with little history of democracy. We could have/should have predicted this. It's sophmore political science.

"Remember not too long ago, Russian agents tried to poison Yuschenko, president of the Ukraine? They're not on the side of democracy."

Your view of what constitutes democracy seems a little scewed. Nobody says democracies are by nature good and always do good things. Iran, by Middle Eastern standards, is a model democracy, but look what they do. Israel invades other countries and carries out assassinations as a matter of course. We certainly do so and have long done in Central and South America as well as the Middle East (Iran got the Shah because we got rid of an elected government we didn't like). Pakistan is about to have a presidential election, but developed an illegal bomb and support the Taliban. Russians are sick of democracy, as were their grandfathers in 1917 and the Germans by 1932. All they see is chaos, cleptocracy, and a lack of all that they once had. In the case now, as in the cases in the past, is it so surprising that democracy is replaced by authoritarianism?

[maddezmom]

12. Rice Signs Missile Deal With Poland

By NICHOLAS KULISH and TOM RACHMAN
Published: August 20, 2008
WARSAW — Despite fierce opposition from Moscow, the United States and Poland signed a long-stalled agreement Wednesday to place an American missile defense base on Polish territory.

The Kremlin has leveled sustained criticism against the American plan, characterizing it as a hostile act near the Russian border. But American officials insist that the system will defend against threats from countries like Iran and would not target Russia.

“Missile defense, of course, is aimed at no one,” said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice who signed the agreement in Warsaw with her Polish counterpart, Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski. “It is in our defense that we do this.”


more;
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/21/world/europe/21missile.html?ref=europe

[moondust]

13. "Missile defense, of course, is aimed at no one."

Of course you MIGHT be telling the truth this time, Condi, but can you guarantee that will be the case 8 months from now or 5 years from now? Of course you can't. Can those "defensive" missiles be easily converted to "offensive" missiles under the cover of darkness? Condi?

It was Reagan who pushed the idea of "Trust But Verify" but apparently that only applies to the USA. :eyes:

[oasis]

14. Bush and Condi are deliberately trying to piss Russia off to benefit McCain.

:grr: