From a prod to Russia to a shield for Israel: the evolution of U.S. missile defense policy

Just two years ago, the issue of Bush-era plans to base 10 ballistic missile interceptors in Poland and a radar station in Czech Republic nearly restarted the Cold War.

In reaction to the plan, Russia suspended its participation in a Cold War deescalation treaty (which it rightly claimed the U.S. had already violated), began plans to redeploy ICBM’s to Eastern Europe and upped the rhetoric towards NATO on all fronts.

The plan to place a permanent defense that would ostensibly protect Europe from the threat of ballistic missiles from Iran and North Korea — curiously located on the border with Russia — seemed to have the potential to reignite an escalation of forces between the East and West for the first time since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The rift only deepened after the Russia’s 2008 war with Georgia, after which NATO and Russia ceased all dialogue with one another, and the missile shield agreement with Poland was beefed up to include an increase of conventional NATO forces on the Polish-Russian border.

Although the Bush administration never admitted the system had anything to do with eliminating Russia’s strategic deterrence, even 2008 Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain put on his website that the the missile shield was designed to “hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China.” Russia was not impressed.

But that all changed with the Obama administration.

Last September the White House announced it was scrapping the Bush era plan primarily for technological reasons saying his new plan to work with already developed interceptors on naval vessels in the Black and Mediterranean Seas “will provide stronger, smarter and swifter defenses of American forces and America’s allies.” But in reality, the new strategy, as outlined in a speech given last week in Tel Aviv, Israel, is totally different in technology, location and purpose.

U.S. State Department official Frank A. Rose who gave the speech said “we also seek to cooperate with Russia. As Secretary Clinton said in January, the United States and Russia face similar threats from the proliferation of ballistic missiles, and so the United States would welcome the opportunity to cooperate with Russia on missile defense.”

Technically, the new strategy diversifies missile defense into multiple regions each with a distinct approach. In practice, it eliminates any substantial development of static missile defense in Europe and East Asia, while retooling the entire approach to the Middle East into anti-missile-and-rocket blanket for Israel.

Under the new strategy, the U.S. envisions guarding Israel against not only Iran, but also Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah as well, and will utilize a variety of different missile programs including one (very Israeli-sounding) system called “David’s Sling” which will be used to strike down short and medium range missiles– presumably from Gaza and Southern Lebannon.

This is quite a change from supposedly defending Europe from a hypothetical attack from Iran. Now the United States is taking on the personal security of Israel from both state actors and insurgents in territories it either occupies or considers itself in a constant state of war with.