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Just a thought -

Submitted by Simon on Thu, 06/07/2007 - 6:17am

President Bush will talk to President Putin today about his remarks earlier in the week threatening to test the theory that supply creates demand by targeting Europe with Russian nuclear weapons if America creates a missile defense grid for Europe. "The White House has insisted the shield is planned to block any future Iranian nuclear missiles, not Russian ones." If the shield's supposed to stop missiles from rogue states, why not attempt defuse the situation by offering to extend the shield not just over Europe, but over Russia? Why not offer to bring them in as a full partner if we don't regard the Russians as being part of what the shield's supposed to defend against, and why wouldn't they agree if they have no hostile intentions?

Added: apparently we've already offered and they've already said no, but their reasoning seems pretty thin. So now their motivation really starts to look somewhat suspect.

It's not in their interests

It's simply not in their interests to do so. They're not terribly worried that Iran will lob a nuke into their backyard. Iran knows that the odds of Russia retaliating to a major terrorist MWD strike with a nuke is FAR higher than the odds of us doing so. A missile shield doesn't buy them much new protection at all.

They also know that from the standpoint of an all-out nuclear exchange, we'd probably benefit more from a missile shield than they would because we can afford to build more nukes than they can. Putin cannot afford to engage in an arms build-up like the one which ultimately helped crush the Soviet economy in the late 1980s. With current technology, a missile shield will have a decent chance at stopping one or two rogue missiles, but will not be able to stop dozens coming through at once. Thus if, God forbid, there were ever a mass exchange of nukes, more of ours would be more likely to make it through their shield, simply because we'd have more. Not to mention that the shield itself will probably be very pricey, and they may not be able to afford to take part in it.

Beyond that, Russia has no interest in partnering with America against any other part of the world. From their point of view, such partnerships come with way too many strings attached, and anyway they are tired of not being seen (and feared) as a superpower any more. They'll oppose us on some thing just for the sake of opposing us.

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