US missile shield will not be missed

       The decision announced by the White House on Thursday to scrap controversial components of a missile defence shield for Europe is long overdue and marks a victory for rationality in the global political scene.Some have characterised US President Barack Obama's move as appeasement toward the Russians, but in reality Mr Obama took advantage of an opportunity to give a little and gain a lot.
       The Russians had made it very clear that they regarded the deployment of missile defence facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic as an act of aggression and also claimed it altered the balance of nuclear power between the US and Russia. While it is hard to see how the planned anti-missile radar facility in the Czech Republic and a few interceptor missiles in Poland ever constituted a genuine threat to Russia's security, the issue of the balance of nuclear power is not to be taken lightly. The threat of assured mutual destruction, as scary as that may be, probably went a long way toward discouraging any direct confrontation between the two nuclear superpowers during the Cold War. Any change in the balance of power, which logically includes missile defence systems, will provoke an opposite reaction. For example, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's threat last November to put missiles in Kaliningrad on the border of the European Union, in a speech given the same day that Mr Obama won the US presidential election.
       A few months later Mr Medvedev announced a "large-scale" rearmament and renewal of Russia's nuclear arsenal, as well as the development of a wide range of new weapons systems.
       With Mr Obama's announcement that the missile defence components the Russians object to so strenuously in the Czech Republic and Poland have been taken off the table, already on Friday Russia reciprocated with an announcement that the plan to position missiles in Kaliningrad had been shelved.
       A Russian military source said:"Undoubtedly, Washington's cancellation of its missile defence facilities will not remain unnoticed.
       "The array of measures which were planned in response to the deployment of the missile defence sites in Europe will be frozen, and will possibly be completely cancelled."
       It also bodes well for a replacement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start), which has been successful in significantly reducing the nuclear stockpiles of the two countries and which will expire in December.
       This is good news for the entire world, and again, the US really had nothing to lose in dropping the facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic.
       Even some of the US' staunchest North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) allies have been harshly critical of the shield in the past.
       "Deployment of a missile defence system would bring nothing to security,it would complicate things, and would make them move backward," said French President Nicolas Sarkozy at a news conference last November in which Mr Medvedev was present.
       Around the same time, the British parliament's Foreign Affairs Committee also voiced doubts about the missile defence plan, saying in a report that because of opposition from Russia it could be "highly detrimental to Nato's overall security interests".
       The committee recommended that if a ballistic missile defence system in Europe were to be developed at all, it should be as a joint system between the US, Nato and Russia.
       This is apparently what is now being proposed by the Obama administration.Arguably, the best option might be to scrap the plans for a missile defence shield altogether and use the money for something more useful. There remain serious questions about the technological feasibility of such a shield,partly because some defence systems analysts have suggested that it could be neutralised, or tricked, rather easily.
       In any case, Mr Obama's decision has already had some effect in lowering tensions which have been building for some time between the US and Russia. The chief cause of these tensions has not gone away, however - the tug of war between Russia and the West over the Caucasus. This may well be a greater threat to world peace than the Iranian nuclear programme,which is the major justification for the missile shield.
       The decision bodes well for a replacement to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start),which has been successful in significantly reducing the nuclear stockpiles of the two countries and which will expire in December