Missile Defense in Europe

Assistant Secretary Fried: A couple of points, general context setting, and then the role of defenses for Europe.

Point number one: whatever our views as individuals and strategic thinkers or working institutes were about Cold War deterrence, about the world of defenses, about the Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1980s, those times are gone.

The strategic context today is radically different. We do not face the Cold War strategic balance. We face in the early 21^st Century the possibility, even likelihood, that smaller, dangerous states with small lethal nuclear arsenals will emerge as a major security threat for the transatlantic community.

In that context, missile defenses can be a stabilizing factor. If you wonder about scenarios, picture to yourselves Ahmadi-Nejad with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, capabilities of which [inaudible] development, on television, announcing this new capability and announcing that Europe is now vulnerable and had better not support Israel any more. This is a scenario which has not occurred, but everyone sitting in this room I believe can imagine what that speech would sound like.

So the question for us and for Europe is do we want to remain absolutely vulnerable to that sort of a scenario?

For Europe, the rather modest defense proposal the Americans have made with the Poles and the Czechs would essentially avoid strategic decoupling of Europe and the United States.

The United States can defend its own national territory without the deployment of these 10 interceptors in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic. We can do it without it. However, it does us no good to be secure, or it does us little good to be secure if our chief partner in the world -- Europe -- is insecure.

We learned through 50 years, after 1945, that ultimately security for the transatlantic community must be indivisible. To put it in Polish terms since I was in Warsaw discussing this with my Polish friends, we cannot have two levels of security or two levels of NATO alliance members.

So it's the contention of the U.S. that the modest U.S. proposal of 10 unarmed missiles and a radar facility is prudent. It is a limited system. It is not the system of the Strategic Defense Initiative. And yet it would be a stabilizing instrument against potential threats arising from the Middle East.

Now there are various false arguments being raised that 10 unarmed missiles in Poland would spark an arms race; that it is really directed against Russia; that it is infeasible; that is feasible but the protection is insufficiently broad; that the United States has not consulted. And all of these arguments have been made and are being made colored with what I call the false politics of nostalgia for the early 1980s and the debate about the Pershing missiles. All of these arguments are utterly and demonstrably false. There is not an arms race between the United States and Russia. We are reducing the number of arms. The systems are not capable of affecting Russia's strategic nuclear arsenal and the Russians know this very well. Ten unarmed missiles do not constitute a threat to Russia.

The system is far more feasible technically than was the Strategic Defense Initiative of using technology of 25 years ago, and the United States has consulted with NATO, with Russia, including yesterday in Moscow; and today at NATO and the NATO-Russia Council; and next week at the Oslo Ministerial. We have consulted bilaterally with the Russians. We have consulted with the Poles, the Czechs, we have consulted multilaterally in NATO and the NATO-Russia Council and done so repeatedly.

The way ahead ought to combine efforts through NATO, both conceptually but also through theater missile defense systems complementary with whatever we're putting together with the Poles and Czechs. With Russia through the NATO-Russia Council or bilaterally or both. Obviously bilaterally with the Poles and Czechs. And I have no doubt that those governments will negotiate seriously and ask us hard questions and I welcome that discussion.

And all of these efforts ought to be integrated because the problem is not to be found through the politics of nostalgia or the peace movement of the 1980s or the politics of scare tactics or wedge driving. The problem is the regimes that could develop nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to put them on and the solution should be directed at that problem and not at others.

Hopefully that meets the test you set out for me, and I welcome the remarks of my old friend Adrezej Karkoszka.