National Security Adviser Z. Bzrezinski famously called the $150 billion boondoggle defense system "a scheme that doesn't work against a threat that doesn't exist."
Iran was never a threat to Poland or Czech Republic. The planned missile defense system was an extremely expensive -- and dishonest -- way to demonstrate America's commitment to these countries' security against evil, neo-imperialist Russia. At least, that's the "experts'" revised version of history. But why then did we expand NATO membership to Czech Republic and Poland in 1999? A Russian attack against them would precipitate an automatic counter-attack by NATO, according to Article 5 of the NATO treaty. So what good is NATO, where is NATO's credibility, if it still takes expensive U.S. missile defense programs to guarantee NATO's security commitments?
No, missile defense in E. Europe was a neocon ploy to either (1) anatognize Russia and possibly extract concessions, and/or (2) the neocons really believed that they could perfect this hopeless system and neutralize or reduce Russia's nuclear first-strike capability, thereby unbalancing the scales of MAD, thereby making the world a much more unpredictable, dangerous place. I'm open to other possibilities, but the "official" version of Dubya was an obvious lie, and the revised "new official" version still makes no strategic sense.
Anyway, kudos to President Obama for backing away from this crazy plan.
