Is the US missile shield aimed at Moscow?

Has Poland's president confirmed what Moscow has long suspected? That the US missile shield in Eastern Europe is not directed at rogue states like Iran, but at Russia?


Yesterday this blog mentioned the inevitable comparisons that are being drawn between Kosovo and South Ossetia. Today, as Poland leads a Eastern European delegation to Georgia, the war there is focusing attention on that other sore point between Russia and the West.


Poland and the Czech Republic are due to host the shield. Prague has already signed a deal on its half of the project - the radar station - and paid for it, with Russian oil supplies instantly cut by half.


But Poland is still dithering, trying to extract the largest concessions from Washington possible in exchange for housing a silo of interceptor missiles on its soil.


In fact Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has just fired the head of the Polish-US negotiating team, accusing him of being too soft in the talks.


The negotiations are so sensitive because Poland feels it is putting its neck on the line by hosting the silo, which Russia has promised to target.


The shield is ostensibly directed against Iran, to prevent it lobbing a lone WMD at Europe or the US from a long way off. But Russia feels it is the real target.


No one has ever been able to explain to me quite how a silo of 10 interceptor missiles changes the balance of power so significantly, in the greater nuclear scheme of things.


But those concerned have on more than one occasion asked us to imagine how America would feel if Russia was building a missile interceptor base in Cuba.


The point remains however, that the US is adamant that Russia is not the real strategic target of the shield. But did Poland's president Lech Kaczynski, who is leading the delegation of Ukrainian and Baltic leaders to Georgia today, let slip the mask last weekend?


Then, according to DPA, he declared that the war in the Caucasus was a "very strong argument" for Poland to make a missile defence deal with the US.

How South Ossetia has anything to do with Iran, or North Korea, or rogue states remains unclear. Instead it seems pretty clear that Kaczynski views the missile shield as Moscow does: a new Western military asset to deploy against the Russian bear.

And Kaczynski, formerly of the Solidarity movement that saw Poland emerge from Soviet domination, can hardly be blamed for wanting any new such asset.

As Russian tanks roll in to Georgia, Poland's president empathises.

He is even going as far as to host Georgian press statements on his presidential website, as Georgia's own internet servers were brought down by Russian cyber attack.

Kaczynski's solidarity with Georgia is shared across central and eastern Europe, once dominated by Moscow.

That's why Donald Tusk says he wants to wring out the best deal from missile shield negotiations for the US to upgrade Poland's defences (including permanently stationed patriot missile batteries).

"The example of Georgia shows strongly how important the security of Poland and the whole region is today," he said.

It is easy from London or Paris to think that the Cold War could never be repeated, that Russia could never again extend its sphere of influence to the River Oder.

But though Gucci and Louis Vuitton shops now adorn Prague's Old Town Square, or Warsaw is flush with cash rich Poles returning from work in the UK, Iron Curtain memories remain vivid in the Czech Republic and Poland.

As Tusk said yesterday, in central Europe "realistic guarantees of security and territorial integrity are even more important today" than ever.

Harry de Quetteville in Berlin
Telegraph Blog

Russia Repeats Right To Nuke Bush's EU Missiles
.