The Federation of American Scientists has just issued a report, Upsetting the Reset: The Technical Basic of Russian Concern over NATO Missile Defense, by the FAS scientific consultant Yousaf Butt and MIT’s Theodore Postol.
To judge from the FAS summary, the report is actually not very technical and largely states the obvious: The Obama Administration’s modified plan, the Phased Adaptive Approach of PAA, “will provide little, if any, protection” to Europeans (or anybody else). And, though “midcourse missile defense would not alter the fundamental deterrence equation with respect to Iran or Russia,” it’s to be expected that it nonetheless will arouse Russian suspicions and disrupt relations.
As things stand, the United States and Turkey have just signed an agreement to put a PAA radar in Turkey. Previously Romania and Poland agreed to have missile defense batteries stationed on their soil.
If the Iranian missile threat is virtually non-existent and the PAA system of little or no value, why is it being deployed? Presumably to protect the administration against charges it is soft on missile defenses or not hard-line enough on Iran. If in fact it costs a few tens of billions of dollars to protect the government’s political flanks, so be it.
My only real complaint with the FAS report is the headline, “Upsetting the Reset.” The beauty of the “reset” slogan was and is that it can mean anything to anybody. It can mean trying to improve relations between the United States and Russia on a broad front. But it can just as well mean not peering into Vladimir Putin’s eyes and pretending he has a soul. And it’s not just a matter of the U.S. attitude. As old Russia hand Strobe Talbott commented in an NPR interview, the Russians also have some resetting to do.
