Marcelo Rech

The United States gave beginning to the deployment of systems of missile defense in Europe, with the dislocation of the cruiser Monterey to the Mediterranean Sea.

The actions of Washington D.C. still don´t constitute a threat to the Russian strategic intimidation forces deployed in the center of the country.

The Aegis system, as well as other antimissile systems similar to the U.S. Patriot and the SM-3, which the Pentagon will deploy successively in Bulgaria, Romania and Poland, are projected to intercept missiles of short and medium range, and Russia has none like them.

With the development of these systems that must be concluded around 2020, especially the SM-3, military specialists affirm that the United States can acquire capacity to knock down strategic missiles, constituting a serious challenge for Moscow.

In the Summit of Lisbon, in Portugal, the countries of the NATO, including the United States, agreed with Russia to establish together an European ABM or TMD (of Theater Missile Defense) system.

On this subject, three consultations were maintained between the leaders of the North Atlantic Alliance and the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation.

A common platform may be ready up to middle of the year.

Sending the cruiser Monterey to the Mediterranean Sea has led Russian military specialists to doubt seriously of an agreement on the joint missile defense.

Some say that it is impossible, for several reasons. Let’s analyze the most relevant ones.

First, between the contracting parts, there are contradictions in the evaluation of the missile threats in the European continent.

Moscow considers Iranian threat of missile “highly relative”, but in Brussels and Washington this threat is called ‘principal‘.

On the contrary, even insignificant.

Teheran, according to the Russian Armed Forces, has no missile able to reach European capitals. And it won´t have any for the next 15 or 20 years.

Second, it will be very difficult to the sides to agree on the principles and structure of a European missile defense.

Russia insists that a system of missile defense must be developed in a sector base. President Dmitry Medvedev spoke on that in Lisbon.

In other words, the NATO is building its own system in the borders of Europe, principally in the South flank, from where the general danger of missile comes allegedly, as well as Russia in the borders of its territory.

Areas of the responsibility will be overlapping somewhere, but there is nothing wrong in that. Each part will be responsible for its own security zone and at the same time it will have to inform to the partner about what is happening in its air space.

The Secretary-general of the NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, in a recent meeting with Russian journalists in Brussels, said: "the Alliance is responsible for the security of the territories of the member-states of the NATO and for the security of their populations. We have no intention of transferring the responsibility to anybody else. We must make Russia understand: this system isn´t directed against it. Therefore, we invite Russia to cooperate”.

On the other side, it suits to question: against whom will this system of missile defense be directed?

Russia already had experience of creating a TMD system together with the NATO in the beginning of this century, and even carried out several commands and joint team exercises for its establishment.

But the NATO created this system as part of the strategic missile defense of the United States, which tried to deploy it in Poland and in the Czech Republic, straightly pointing it against the Russian strategic dissuasion forces.

It is believed that the new version of the European defense of missile suggested by president Barack Obama and the Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is the same version adopted by George Bush, but in another technical base.

The European Missile Defense will be allegedly built in four phases. The first three really don´t threat Russia.

But the fourth phase, which involves the improvement of the system of missile SM 3 Block C, will be supposedly able to intercept strategic missiles deployed in the European part of Russia.

According to Dmitry Medvedev, “if Russia doesn´t find a place appropriated for itself in this system, then, around the twentieth year, we may reach a situation where a relevant missile defense in ´umbrella´ will be considered as a factor that destabilizes the nuclear balance, what reduces the capacities of Russia”.

For Russia, before June the country will know if the partners have the good will to create a smart missile defense.

A smart missile defense system is the one that doesn´t give rise to new threats, but identifies correctly the already existent ones.

The problem is that the warning of Moscow doesn´t seem to have been heard by Washington and by Brussels, for now.

Marcelo Rech is a journalist, editor of the InfoRel and Specialist in Strategies & Policies of Defense and Terrorism & Counter-Insurgency. E-mail: inforel@inforel.org