Republicans in Congress, led by their presidential candidate John McCain, are attempting to show the world that they are capable of reacting swiftly to Russian saber-rattling. Unfortunately, they are once again doing so in a manner that reflects their complete misunderstanding of the threats the United States and our allies face.
Today in Warsaw, Secretary Rice signed an agreement to expedite the construction of ten long range missile interceptors in Poland. These same Republicans have mistakenly conflated this pact with Russian provocation in Georgia and misrepresented this missile defense system as a protection against further Russian aggression.
The problem is, this system would be virtually useless to prevent any Russian attack considering the interceptors would be easily outnumbered by the Russian missile arsenal. Belligerent Russian rhetoric in response to this pact should be treated as unfortunate hyperventilation, but should not be given serious credence. What this Republican conflation does is tell the world that it is enough to seem like you are protecting your allies, whether or not you are doing anything to address the real threats they face.
The U.S. and Russia have serious issues that need to be discussed, such as full Russian redeployment from Georgian territory, negotiating a follow-on treaty to START, and reining in Iran's nuclear program. Equally belligerent rhetoric by McCain and his neocon acolytes does nothing to protect us, and just adds fuel to the fire.
Right now, addressing existing short and medium range missile threats needs to be the focus of the United States and our NATO allies. I take our commitment to NATO's Article Five very seriously, and it is in this vein that we should be delivering Poland the systems they need to protect against very real short range missile threats.
Although today's pact seems to incorporate some of these defenses, the main outcome is that the Bush Administration will move aggressively to dig holes in Eastern Europe to build an ideologically-based system that is untested and certainly not ready, against a threat that has not yet emerged. We need a system that works today, against the threats of today. Congress holds the purse strings, and we will continue to insist that that we have both independent analysis of missile defense options and that the Secretary of Defense certifies the system actually works.
Of course John McCain, who hopes to soon begin George Bush's third term, has relished the opportunity to rehash Reagan-era Star Wars rhetoric about Imperial Russia. In today's asymmetric War on Terror, he seems about as current as Dr. Strangelove.
Democrats are committed to addressing real threats in real time with the right systems, not just by playing lip service and feeding into a rhetorical frenzy that can produce policies that are misguided, and rushed.