O’Hanlon: Missile shield needed, but now’s not the time
At a NATO summit in the Netherlands Thursday, Russia rejected a new U.S. proposal that would allow a Russian presence at a planned missile defense site in the Czech Republic. This follows a week in which U.S. missile defense policy became increasingly unclear. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday the United States could delay deployment ...
At a NATO summit in the Netherlands Thursday, Russia rejected a new U.S. proposal that would allow a Russian presence at a planned missile defense site in the Czech Republic. This follows a week in which U.S. missile defense policy became increasingly unclear. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday the United States could delay deployment of the system until there is proof of a missile threat from Iran. Then, later that day, President Bush said a missile shield was urgently needed, a seeming contradiction the administration has yet to clarify. I asked Michael O'Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution, for his take:
At a NATO summit in the Netherlands Thursday, Russia rejected a new U.S. proposal that would allow a Russian presence at a planned missile defense site in the Czech Republic. This follows a week in which U.S. missile defense policy became increasingly unclear. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Tuesday the United States could delay deployment of the system until there is proof of a missile threat from Iran. Then, later that day, President Bush said a missile shield was urgently needed, a seeming contradiction the administration has yet to clarify. I asked Michael O'Hanlon, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution, for his take:
For those who pooh-pooh Iran's bluster, it is important to remember that its weaponry has on average killed one to two Americans a day in Iraq over the last couple years. It has not favored a particular group out of ideology; it has even given weaponry to al Qaeda, in order to maximize its leverage with all parties.
Giving in to Russian bullying would not be wise. Russia is hyping the capabilities of a small proposed U.S. system. Changing our policy in response would be to reward Moscow for playing a game of divide and conquer within NATO.
But there are reasons not to hurry—and not to have decisions made when George Bush and Vladimir Putin run their respective governments. The defensive technology is not ready. Iran's offensive capabilities do not yet exist; nor do its nuclear weapons that would presumably someday be placed atop the missiles. Right now, pushing ahead with the deployment would reinforce the image of American unilateralism, stoke bad relations between the West and Russia, and deny NATO a proper role in the process.
The next U.S. president should make it clear that a European missile defense site will be an American priority, assuming NATO agrees and assents. But he or she should work with Russia on where to put defensive capabilities and when to deploy them, and more generally try to make this a cooperative venture.
The bottom line is that George Bush is not the right person to commit to deploy this system. But his successor should.
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