Russia threatened to retaliate by military means after a deal with the Czech Republic brought the US missile defence system in Europe a step closer.
The threat followed quickly on from the announcement that Condoleezza Rice signed a formal agreement with the Czech Republic to host the radar for the controversial project.
Moscow argues that the missile shield would severely undermine the balance of European security and regards the proposed missile shield based in two former Communist countries as a hostile move.
“We will be forced to react not with diplomatic, but with military-technical methods,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Russia has little to fear from the Western or the Eastern European nations that would manifest itself as a credible military threat. The Europeans are about as much a threat to Russia as the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec are to the United States.
However, there is no sign that the Russians have given up their sense of being an imperial power having the ‘right’ to dominate their neighbors.
The Russian ‘to do’ about the missile shield seems to be more a flexing of Russia’s historically imperial muscles than anything else.
The real question regarding the missile shield is its long-term strategic ‘pay-off’ for the USA. Ther missile shield is going to cause problems with Russia. How does this serve our long-term strategic interests?
The problem is that the Russians have historically trusted no one, since their territory has been a battleground for millenia; invaders from Asia, and most recently, from Germany. They are determined to never let that happen again, but how do we convince them that we in the West have no intention of attacking them? If I were them, I’d be a lot more concerned about the People’s Republic of China……and they’ve got their OWN problems!
Indeed, why would anyone want to destroy Russia from without when they are doing such a bang-up job from within?