SURREAL. This is a very odd debate that we're witnessing between Condi Rice and Vladimir Putin. Condi is correct to say that the ABM sites pose no meaningful threat to the Russian strategic nuclear force. She doesn't mention that the interceptors pose no meaningful threat to anyone else's strategic nuclear force, either, or that they lack a plausible strategic rationale even in the unlikely event that they'll function properly. For his part, Putin has repeatedly declared that Russian missiles are immune to interception by any missile defense system, which would seem to rather obviate the need to care about U.S. missile defense deployments. His threat to abandon the Conventional Forces Treaty is undermined just a bit by the fact that the current Russian Army would have to deeply strain itself in order to break any of the limitations imposed by that Treaty. So what's really going on? The Russians probably don't actually believe that the Topol-M is immune to interception, and they may be somewhat concerned that the deployment of a very small system in a former Warsaw Pact country provides precedent for the deployment of a larger system somewhere more vital. The deployment of these systems, incidentally, carries a significant footprint, and means that the U.S. is committed (even more directly than before) to the military defense of countries near Russia. While Russia has no plans to invade Poland, it is deeply fond of bullying and intimidating its close neighbors, and anything that would limit such intimidation would be contrary to Russian security interests. I suspect that Putin is signaling to Russia's neighbors that they shouldn't expect any change in Russia's general foreign policy orientation just because U.S. deployments are expanding.
--Robert Farley
