Russia Threatens Pre-emptive, Destructive Force On US Missile Defense 675
suraj.sun sends this quote from an article at the BBC:
"Russia says it is prepared to use 'destructive force pre-emptively' if the U.S. goes ahead with controversial plans for a missile defense system based in Central Europe. The warning came after the Russian defense minister said talks on missile defense were nearing a dead end. Moscow fears that missile interceptors would be a threat to Russia's security. But the U.S. and NATO say they are intended to protect against attacks from Iran or North Korea. 'A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,' chief of the Russian defense staff Gen Nikolai Makarov said. President Barack Obama ... scrapped plans for a network of bases spread across Poland and the Czech Republic with the capacity to intercept long-range missiles. But in 2010, the U.S. signed an agreement with Poland to use an old airstrip at Redzikowo, near the Baltic coast, as a missile defense base."
Worried the U.S. is about to stumble into WWIII (Score:2, Insightful)
Between all the arrogant saber-rattling over Iran, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia, and China, you would think the U.S. not only thinks it can go it alone on everything, but may just stumble like a blind fool right into a world war.
Re:Pot, kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
Signed,
An American
It's about time a major power steps up. It had to take Russia to do it. Shame on your Europe.
Re:Completely unnecessary (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is it just me... (Score:2, Insightful)
... or is Putin getting crazier as he gets older? Is he heading down the mad old dictator route of many past soviet general secretaries?
Perhaps the west should carry out a pre-emptive strike on all those russian arms shipments to various unpleasent regimes around the planet (yes I know the west is hardly squeeky clean in that regard too but the russians well sell to pretty much anyone with a big enough wallet).
Yeah, it is just you.
If you think what US is doing is ok, then noone can help you.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
Theory goes that, in the presence of multiple nuclear powers with overwhelming destructive capability, only the ability to launch a second-strike of sufficient magnitude to dissuade anybody from launching a first-strike against you is a viable defense.
If one party obtains an actually functional anti-missile system, they neutralize everybody else's second-strike capacity, and thus enjoy the ability to launch first-strikes at their pleasure.
Unfortunately, most of this stuff was hammered out under the cold war logic of an environment with ~2 main actors, both presumed to be rationally self-interested, with easy attribution of nuclear strikes, and other favorable conditions. It doesn't work nearly as nicely if you go to N actors, introduce actors who are either irrational or interested in various apocalypses, or dream up delivery mechanisms that make attribution hard...
(The cynics might also argue that both the US and Russia aren't entirely uninterested in playing at cold war, since they both have decades of experience with it, a glut of high-level policy types who were trained under the assumption that that would be their job, and both have discovered that 'dialog with North Korea' and 'Fundamentalist Sandbox Meatgrinder' are lousy games. Plus, the cold war was probably the historical high water mark for buying awesome toys from defense contractors without actually having to learn their weaknesses the hard way all that often...)
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
First, since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s, isn't the cold war over. Why is Russia still rattling sabres?
For various reasons that can be and have been debated at length, Russia really feels threatened by the West and doesn't like NATO accepting new members in its former buffer zone of Warsaw Pact countries and Soviet Republics.
As far as I can tell, they no longer have the ambition of conquering Europe.
Tank rush to the English Channel? Not so much, no. But whether or not they want to establish/maintain hegemony over Eastern Europe is another matter.
Second, even back in cold-war days, the objections to missile defense were bizarre. MAD was exactly that: "mad". Governments agreeing to *not* defend their respective citizens: truly mad.
A perfect defense means you have no reason not to launch an offense. A first strike becomes all reward with no risk.
The policy is nothing if not rational.
Finally, what the devil is the US doing, putting defenses into Europe? If missile defenses are necessary, Europe is perfectly capable of putting them in all by itself
I as an American agree wholeheartedly, but Europe has a longstanding postwar habit of not spending more than €0.17 on defense and relying on the US to cover the rest (witness the Yugoslav Wars).
In any event, it's technically "NATO" we're talking about here. The balance of influence and responsibility within NATO can be treated as a separate matter.
Re:Let me get this straight (Score:5, Insightful)
They call it a threat because it neutralizes the "Mutually Assured Destruction" balance that has thus far prevented thermonuclear war from being a viable option. If they can't shoot missiles at us, but we can shoot missiles at them, then there's nothing preventing us from just nuking them out of existence next time we have a disagreement.
The cold war is still pretty fresh in some people's minds...
See, that's the problem. Russian missiles are set to travel over the North Pole, not over Europe. This system would only defend against missiles targeting Europe, and even then its debatable. Of course, let's not even start on submarine and mobile launchers.
This system is no threat to Russia or MAD.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you think the USA would do if Russia began installing a "Missile Defense System" in Cuba and Venezuela?
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
Where did this come from, Russia is prepared to actually start world war 3 over a missile defence system? I thought the cold war was over? Its a bit more serious than sabre rattling!
Rather, US is prepared to actually start world war 3 over a missile defence system.
See what I did there?
Re:Pot, kettle (Score:4, Insightful)
A "pre-emptive strike" against a defensive system is not justified. The Russians should also consider that any "pre-emtpive strike" will result in retaliation and weigh that before deciding. If the Russians are willing to go to war against the US over and defensive installation that we have offered them unfettered access to, then they really just want war anyway.
Signed,
An American Soldier
I can't wait for you to explain me what exactly were strikes against Iraq and Afghanistan about.
Also, would you consider a missile launch silo as an offensive or defensive system?
How can you be stupid is beyond me.
Re:Weird (Score:5, Insightful)
Ego. That's what's going on here. And the powers that be in Russia are willing to risk a complete throwback to the cold war era.
I'm not convinced it is necessarily Russia's fault. Every American president since the wall came down (Bush the Elder, Clinton, Bush the Lesser, Obama) has at best ignored Russia and at worse treated them as children to be chided or acted as if the cold war was on going.
None of the presidents have acted like anything changed since the wall came down; none of them have treated them as equal partners on the world stage; none of them have acted like they are potential friends; none have given them have given any respect -- and by "respect" I mean the common decency of acknowledging that they have a right to an opinion. Hell, that they might be useful allies. The Russian experience and insight with Islamic countries could have proved useful over the last 10 years.
Treat anyone as poorly as we've treated Russia and eventually they'll get belligerent as well.
Is it too late to change the relationship? Who knows. Lost opportunities are always easier to spot than emerging ones.
Re:Frak (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. Because of MAD, missle "defense" is actually an offensive strategy. Effective missile defense makes a first strike possible, where mutually assured destruction does not.
If you don't intend to commit the first strike, there's no reason to build missile defenses. No one is going to attack us, because we can destroy them easily if they did. The only possible application of missile defense is to enable us to make the first strike, and defend against retaliation.
Re:So the Russians think this thing actually works (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's what they know: The US (specifically, that well-known liberal peacenik Richard Nixon) signed a treaty in 1972 specifically saying that nobody was allowed to do anti-ballistic missile defense, specifically so that there would always be a MAD scenario if somebody decided to strike. Then George W Bush basically told the Russians to go to hell and that the US was ignoring the treaty. Then they spent a lot of time and money trying to improve their anti-ballistic missile defense. Now Barack Obama is deploying anti-ballistic missile defense right near Russia's border.
Another way of thinking about it: Would you be fine with $EVIL_EMPIRE deploying missile defense in Cuba, Mexico, and Canada?
I get the joke, but the fact that the US is deploying it suggests that they think they have something useful.
Re:l2history (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a repost of the beginnings of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Just with Poland and the Czech Republic instead of Turkey.
I think I'd be OK if Russia put a defensive missile installation in Cuba. The key word here is DEFENSIVE.
All well and good but I don't even trust my country's government to be truthful so if another country's goverment uses the word DEFENSIVE I'm not going to believe it for a nanosecond.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding is that Russia could trivially overwhelm anything but a completely sky-saturating missile defence, which one defence base isn't. So why the hysterics from the Russians, this isn't useful against anything but rogue states. I'd be more understanding if there were a string of hundreds of them being built.
Re:l2history (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Weird (Score:2, Insightful)
Remember what happened to countries surrounding Russia in the last two decades:
* NATO broke their promise not to expand into Eastern Europe
* the U.S. invaded Afghanistan
* a western-funded revolution installed a U.S.-friendly ruler in Georgia who attacked the Russian part of Ossetia
* other "color revolutions" were attempted in countries south of Russia
* Iraq was invaded
* Iran is being threatened
If I were Russia, I'd be worried, too.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
This is BS of the first order simply because of the number of interceptors that we're talking about. The US can shoot down maybe 90% of incoming warheads on a good day - note INCOMING - not out-going, i.e. launched from near-by neighbor Moscow. Further - there are a limited number of interceptors - where the Russians have hundreds of warhead - we'll likely have less than a couple dozen interceptors at any of these sites. The ability to overwhelm such a system is obvious. The Russians have more than enough throw weight to do so - such a system is really ONLY a deterrent to states that have a hand-full of missiles, i.e. North Korea and Iran.
The only way this is really a threat to Russia is if they are a paper tiger in the nuclear ball club.
Re:Pot, kettle (Score:5, Insightful)
.. defensive installation that we have offered them unfettered access to ..
Signed, An American Soldier
You are only presenting selected parts of the picture there, Soldier:
a) A missile array is a missile array: with todays modular technologies "defensive" can become "area denial" or "offensive" in a matter of minutes; if you are saying otherwise (i.e. that the array "poses no threat") bear in mind that you are not trying to convince the evening news audience, but experienced war generals that command the world's largest arsenal;
b) how about the Russians offering you "unfettered access" to a similar system in Cuba, established there to protect their interests (perhaps Russian businesses in the US) from potential radical central and south american rogue elements;
c) I am no pronounced military strategist, but opening many fronts (as the US is doing in the present era) comes with benefits as well as costs: there is NO WAY today's superpowers can tackle conflicts like the ones the US is maintaining, and at the SAME time take on skirmishes with another superpower: the Russians are well aware of this, and they know that they absolutely can vaporize the array and get away with it- and they are letting you know that they will do it. Remember that China is also a superpower, and good luck getting them on the table and heaving them your way while engaged in tens of other conflicts, especially in a decade or so when their orbital, ICBM, naval and electronic warfare capabilities will be much more enhanced in comparison with the present day.
d) as a soldier, I am sure you know that the one who strikes first, strikes many times and keeps on striking, get's to win. This array is just too close, its implementation is seen as an act of aggression, and you and I or anybody else might claim otherwise but that is of no consequence: the truth is that the Russians see it as a threat, and they are issuing a warning that if built, they are going to blow it into pieces. Not you, not your cities, not your country: only a base such as this one.
Bottomline, you can't have the cake and eat it. So go on, be my guest, spend billions of dollars and thousands of manhours to see it all vaporized in a jiffy, ignite global tensions, destroy families and sacrifise young soldier's lives (I don't expect the array to be unmanned when it gets hit) to back up a bunch of retarded arguments.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
My understanding is that Russia could trivially overwhelm anything but a completely sky-saturating missile defence.
That would be *before* we surprise them with a first strike.
After a first strike, maybe not. That's their concern.
The United States wouldn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Frak (Score:4, Insightful)
It's much easier to shoot down an outgoing missiles before they accelerate to full speed.
Re:The United States wouldn't care (Score:5, Insightful)
This. Russia and its antecedents have spent the better part of six hundred years trying to control Poland and her neighbours. Did anyone really think that the collapse of the Soviet Empire would change that?
Re:Worried the U.S. is about to stumble into WWIII (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, because Russia is clearly exactly the same as Germany in 1941. In fact, every country in the world that doesn't complete prostrate themselves before the U.S. Empire is Germany in 1941.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
I would like to introduce you to my little friends the Delta 3 and Delta 4 ballistic missile submarines. Each one has 16 SLBMs. Your first strike would never get all of those, and they would launch much closer to the USA than any missile defense system we currently have in use.
Re:Frak (Score:4, Insightful)
This IS a threat to Russia, but a geopolitical one, not a military one. US BMD sites bring along about a battalion of US Amry troops stationed with it to defend it. Therefore by putting a BMD site in Poland, we will be stationing troops in Poland. By stationing troops in Poland, we are unofficially implying to Poland that we are giving them defense guarantees against aggressors.
Russia is in a resurgance period; they have expanded their sphere of influence to dominate almost the entire old Soviet Union. If the US places BMD sites in places like Poland or the Czech Republic, then those countries will think they can act counter to Russian interests, limiting Russia's sphere of influence. The war in 2008 in Georgia is a good example of this; Georgia was a NATO ally, and yet the US did nothing to support them when invaded by the Russians (due to our Middle East wars), not only did that show Georgia who was the biggest kid on the block, it showed every other country in the Caucasus who was too.
Re:The United States wouldn't care (Score:2, Insightful)
Yep, this is precisely about USSR nostalgia.
It's exactly the same as has happened with Georgia and the Ukraine - when Georgia wanted to move towards the Western ideology, Russia invaded them during the 2008 Beijing games. When the Ukraine had it's Orange revolution and voted out the Russian puppet they then used subterfuge and electoral fiddling to push her democratically elected replacement out next election such that she's currently rotting in jail for politically motivated charges. Even during her leadership Russia was regularly cutting off fuel to the Ukraine claiming non-payment etc. punishing the country and her for daring to step outside their sphere of influence. Estonia has also suffered for daring to step away from Russian influence with a number of cyber attacks etc.
We must make a stand now, this is a return to the cold war - Russia is pushing it's influence West, starting with Georgia, Estonia, now the Ukraine, and now they want to remove Western protection from Poland so they can also try and subvert this country too.
This has nothing to do with trying to remove missile defence as you say, it is entirely about removing Western protection from ex-USSR states so that the USSR can manipulate them back into their influence by assassinating people, planting spies, fiddling elections, crippling critical infrastructure like fuel supplies, threatening with military strikes etc.
The best thing the West could've done is stood by Georgia and sent military forces to stand off against the Russians there and nip their expansionist goals in the bud, but we were too politically correct about it and now they're once again creeping further and further West.
Re:Frak (Score:3, Insightful)
":I guess you assume that Americans are salvage barbarians since it would take one to even contemplate a first strike that would take out all of Russian missiles, bombers and submarines,"
we are a warmongering country. WE have been at war more than They have. Hell we go to war at the drop of a hat. Why not assume that our past will predict our future.
Re:Frak (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly - that's why there have never been any suicide bombers, and why no one has ever shot at armed police or troops.
People desperate to take or keep power sometimes do desperate things.
Those two statements are unrelated. 'People desperate to take or keep power' don't blow themselves up or shoot at police. Nor do they launch suicidal first strikes... unless you can give examples that show otherwise.
Desperate, powerless and misguided people do those things.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
Uh, no.
This is a chess game played by people with huge egos. The US missile defense system is employed to keep the economy chugging along. We have sufficient firepower to destroy the planet into a wasteland that would last, for practical purposes, forever.
What you're seeing is fear. Big testosterone-driven egos. Drama from political drama queens whose military economies are fed by conflict between smaller countries.
Missile defense is an oxymoron. We have only a few experimental weapons that are designed to stop ICBMs and multiple warhead devices with unbelievably large price tags. Why? Only a fool would press the big red button. This is about brinksmanship, a boys game. There will be no onslaught from Russia. Yet much smaller allies don't believe that. They're been propagandized from birth about the evils and historical warrior nature of their natural enemies, the guys next door, the apostates, or the heretics-once-our-friends.
Re:Frak (Score:2, Insightful)
Nah. Forget about the seven trillion dollars spent on oil wars. All that NATO dough? Spare change. B52s in the air? Cheap.
Yeah, Patriots. Against ICBMs? No, never tested. Those were ugly SCUDs on a good day. Did they work? Sometimes. They're good for lightweight stuff. Multiple warhead ICBMs spread their destruction. Ya know, that Patriot battery that lines the coast of the US ought to do a lot of good. It takes hours to deploy a Patriot battery when the logistics are good, and you knew something in advance.
There's this really long northern border. You think the Canadians have deployed Patriot or SM3s up north? Sure.
The US Navy's Railgun has problems of its own. Take six subs, three off each coast, and kiss it goodbye. This is all for show, and to burn money so as to keep the defense contractors moving, paying their legislative tolls, and making money in important congressional districts. This is not about reality. This is about perceived propagandized threats. I think they've sucked you in, too.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a bit surprised that Russia did this after Obama indicated he would have more manuevering room to negotiate on it after the election. This puts pressure on him in a way that's not likely to lead to him backing down since he's in a campaign. Maybe they see him as vulnerable in some way.
Probably because Obama might not be getting re-elected, and he's much more likely to fold to their demands right now than a Republican president a year down the road.
Re:Frak (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. Because of MAD, missle "defense" is actually an offensive strategy. Effective missile defense makes a first strike possible, where mutually assured destruction does not.
If you don't intend to commit the first strike, there's no reason to build missile defenses. No one is going to attack us, because we can destroy them easily if they did. The only possible application of missile defense is to enable us to make the first strike, and defend against retaliation.
Why is this marked Insightful, let alone +5? The system being built is absolutely incapable of any credible defense against a Russian attack. There is a very very far cry from a system able to (probably) shoot down a handful of relatively crude missiles (of the type Iran/NK would likely be able to produce on their own in the short to midterm) and the top of the line Russian missiles, never mind the sheer volume of them. Additionally, this system would do exactly nothing against a strike against North America.
The way Russia is freaking out publicly you'd think the system was capable of 100% full interception of any Russian launch anywhere in the world. Even if this system were capable of fully neutralizing their land based assets that says nothing for their non-trivial sea launched weapons.
In short, based on the information available I can't see how this system presents a credible threat to them nor how it could reasonably be used to allow a first strike. That doesn't even address the question of why the hell NATO would want to do a first strike against Russia in the first place.
None of what I said should be taken to mean I think building this system is a good use of resources. If Iran or NK (or whoever) is going to be able to have the ability to launch such an attack I imagine they would have it far sooner than the 8 years it is going to take to build this silly thing.
Open letter to psychotic US politicians. (Score:5, Insightful)
For almost 50 years we lived under threat of instant vaporization. Both NATO and Soviets assumed that opponent army reinforcements will be stopped at Vistula line by tactical nuclear strike. Revealed war plans assumed that two million Poles will die in such strike and most parts of central Poland will become useless, radioactive wasteland for a number of years. Here in Poland we were trained how to survive nearby nuclear strike on a regular basis.
Things changed in 1990, when Cold War was finally over. Everyone became a friend. Some we liked some more [Americans] than others [Russians] for obvious reasons but it didn't really matter much.
Now, after 20 years of relative safety some psychotic US leader came here and started messing around with their 'anti-missile' shit. Arms race is back. Let assume that they'll install a system that will intercept 50% of russian missiles. Rational response I would expect from Russian is to have, say, twice as many nuclear tipped missiles they have now. I know this, Russians know this. Psychotic US politicians know this as well. So we have to live once again under threat of (instant) vaporization just because some dysfunctional psychopaths who happen to have too much power in their hands decided to pursue their geopolitical games. Having seen how these games have played out in, say, Middle East I'm really scared. Various "developments" since 2001 made me confident that United States will spark 3-rd world war sooner or later. I was hoping that in all the mess between US, Russia, China and Middle East - Poland will become a kind of place everyone forgot about, so we'll be relatively safe. Now I'm losing that hope - some whilte collar fucks along with our local puppet government placed us back into spotlight.
My message to US politicians and millitary: get the fuck out of here NOW. Take your anti-ballistic toys with you and shove them deep into your ass. You killed millions of people in the Middle East, destroyed so many countries. We don't want you to pursue the same psychotic games in Poland.
Regards,
Citizen od Poland.