Europe’s Shelved Missile Defense: Realpolitik, Hedging, Wisdom, or Bad Call?

What is the fundamental importance of a missile defense system? It keeps the fight “over there.” That is, a viable missile defense system keeps an adversary’s missiles from killing its intended victims.

As missiles have proliferated, missile defense has become more important, especially when a rogue (nation or otherwise) has or is going to get nuclear weapons. As such, motherly analogies from the domestic front come to mind: “A stitch in time saves nine,” or even “Kids, if you’re going to fight, do it outside.”

If you agree with that intro, see if you can follow along with the thinking and chronology associated with the Wall Street Journal’s report U.S. To Shelve Nuclear-Missile Shield.

Realpolitik: Iran’s long-range missile program is said to be making less progress than previously envisioned. This assessment allows the administration to back out of the planned European missile defense system, pleasing the Russians.  Czech Republic and the Poles, meet the bus. Back in the states, the desire to mash the reset button and execute a nuclear arms control agreement rules the day.

Hedging: the assessment still recognizes Iran still has a dangerous shorter and intermediate range missile capability. As such, the Defense Department announces its intent to allow Turkey to buy 72 anti-missile capable Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3s at a cost of $7.8 billion. Outgoing PACOM commander Admiral Tim Keating says missile defense works and that we need it.

Wisdom: the European missile defense system is considered early-to-need as Iran is thought to not have a viable long-range missile system for three or four years, and that timeframe is thought to entail additional Iranian diligence and effort on their long-range missile program. Anti-missile defense groups first said the whole idea won’t work anyway; now they say even if it does, it wouldn’t do any good. Starting around 2015, if funded, land-based SM-3s become part of the solution and by 2018, all is well.

Bad Call: the decision to shelf European missile defense is predicated on the lack of perceived progress with Iran’s long-range missile program. This assessment is made even as conventional wisdom holds the IC does not have a good record at this sort of prognostication.

Next, is a European missile defense system early-to-need if it takes three or four years to build (or even more)? General Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says he’s 90 percent confident in the next two to four years our missile defense systems will be effective against countries with North Korea and Iran-like missile systems. But what will European nations who might have been amicable to hosting the “new” missile defense systems remember regarding the Czech Republic and Poland in 2009?

While Russia says it won’t sell “offensive weapons” to Iran, the Russian current and fifth-generation anti-air systems are of such a concern to Israel that it requires Prime Minister Netanyahu to make a clandestine visit to address the issue with Russian leadership.

The realpolitik, hedging, and wisdom approaches are all powerful, but they are based on assumptions about Iran that may or may not prove to be true. One thing is certain--reality will unfold in dynamic and unexpected ways over the next 10 years, a period of time where we should consider looking to futurists like the Tofflers rather than the intelligence community. Because if the Chinese and North Koreans are providing “ubiquitous” help to Iran (with a bit of Russian support thrown in here and there as well), the long-range missile recipe is capable of changing rapidly.