January 9, 2006 :: BBC Worldwide Monitoring :: Analysis
Maria Wagrowska of the Warsaw-based Centre for International Relations and vice-president of the Euroatlantic Association, makes the case for Polish participation in U.S. missile defense. In an article entitled “Missile Shield: Opportunity for Poland to Gain ‘Added Value’ in Security Policy” printed in Rzeczpospolita, she notes that missile defense will be the “most important strategic issue” in the coming decades, as a terrorist attack using WMD carried by a ballistic missile constitutes the “worst imaginable scenario.” Missile defense, she argues, is a response to a “distant and unpredictable threat, not a short-term and well-defined one,” and that decisions made today will have an impact on scenarios that will arise 50 years from now. Wagrowska correctly identifies the long term strategic implications at stake with this issue.
Wagrowska emphasizes that Poland must be able to count on complete U.S. support in the case of future threats to its national security. In the past, the U.S.-Polish security relationship has relied on declarations made during the NATO enlargement period, during which the U.S. was the ultimate guarantor of security for the whole of Central and Eastern Europe. Because times have changed, Wagrowska says, Poland should strive to forge a “strategic agreement going far beyond an ordinary military cooperation agreement or a non-proliferation cooperation agreement.” Such an agreement should take into account financial issues, be concluded for a specified period of time, and include both a renewal clause and a termination clause, she adds.
The U.S. is said to be considering Poland as a location for the third ground-based missile site, similar to existing sites at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. (Article)
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