The Cold War is Back---and Maybe Scarier Than Ever

From  The New York Times  

WASHINGTON — The United States and Poland reached a long-stalled deal on Thursday to place an American missile defense base on Polish territory, in the strongest reaction so far to Russia’s military operation in Georgia.

Russia reacted angrily, saying that the move would worsen relations with the United States that have already been strained severely in the week since Russian troops entered separatist enclaves in Georgia, a close American ally. At a news conference on Friday, a senior Russian defense official, Col. Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, suggested that Poland was making itself a target by agreeing to host the anti-missile system. Such an action “cannot go unpunished,” he said.

The deal reflected growing alarm in a range of countries that had been part of the Soviet sphere about a newly rich and powerful Russia’s intentionsin its former cold war sphere of power. In fact, negotiations dragged on for 18 months — but were completed only as old memories and new fears surfaced in recent days.

Those fears were codified to some degree in what Polish and American officials characterized as unusual aspects of the final deal: that at least temporarily American soldiers would staff air defense sites in Poland oriented toward Russia, and that the United States would be obliged to defend Poland in case of an attack with greater speed than required under NATO, of which Poland is a member.

Polish officials said the agreement would strengthen the mutual commitment of the United States to defend Poland, and vice versa. “Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later — it is no good when assistance comes to dead people,” the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, said on Polish television. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of — knock on wood — any possible conflict.”

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Like some Disneyland attraction being revamped to pack more thrills into the crowds it will attract, the Bush Administration  has finally got Cold War II up and running at max speed by getting Poland to agree to let our government place ballistic missiles in a former Warsaw-Pact nation on Russia's western border.  This "defense sheild" idea, some kind of warmed-over Reagan Era "Star Wars" plan, seemed a bad idea in its inception and, now, coming on the heels of the fighting between Russia and Georgia, it seems extra-reckless.

Bush seems to want the scowling Vlad Putin and his puppets in the Kremlin to buy into the notion that putting ballistic missiles in Eastern Europe poses no threat to Russia. They are really aimed at stopping "rogue states" like Iran.  Has anybody noticed Poland is nowhere near Iran?    If such missiles are what it takes to keep the military-industrial powers happy, why do they have to invite less real security for Americans?  Isn't it scary enough that a border dispute between Poland and Russia could break out, as it has in the Black Sea republic of Georgia, over some "breakaway region" and that NATO is obliged to fight as if an attack on a border town or a Polish city like Lublin is an attack on London or Chicago?  With allies like Poland, a battleground for European Wars since Napoleon was in short pants, who needs enemies?  Aren't our forces already bogged down in two wars?  In what dimension of understanding does this make sense?

It doesn't mater what Washington's Neo Cons think; what matters is that the Moscow doesn't want these missiles near its border anymore than President Kennedy's Washington  and most of the Western Hemisphere wanted nuclear missiles in Cuba in 1962.  And how does provoking a mature nuclear power help prevent the emergence of a new one in Iran?   This could undo all that the collapse of state Communism achieved in the 1990's and, literally, undo it in a nasty radiated flash.