http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2012/06/30/romania-u-s-escalates-missile-brinkmanship-against-russia/
Stop NATO
June 30, 2012
Romania: U.S. Escalates Missile Brinkmanship Against Russia
Rick Rozoff
On June 29 U.S. European Command announced the signing of new accords
with the government of Romania for the stationing of American
interceptor missiles in the country, a senior Russian diplomat stated
that further talks with the U.S. on cuts in conventional and nuclear
arms will not occur until Washington changes its stance on the U.S.-NATO
missile shield project in Europe, and a top Russian official pledged to
develop the means of circumventing the interceptor system on earth and
in space.
At a joint committee meeting in the Bucharest, Major General Mark
Schissler, Director of Plans and Policy at Headquarters U.S. European
Command, and the Romanian Defense Ministry's State Secretary for Defense
Policy and Planning Sebastian Hulaban signed two implementing
arrangements and three amendments to existing implementing arrangements
related to the construction and operation of an American interceptor
missile facility at a former air base in Deveselu. The new implementing
arrangements pertain to the use of land surrounding the base and the use
of air space over it for Phase II of the European Phased Adaptive
Approach, the first phase of which was announced to be operational at
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization summit in Chicago in May.
Also present for the signing were Rear Admiral Randall Hendrickson,
Deputy Director of the Missile Defense Agency, and Brigadier General
Thomas Sharpy, Director of Plans, Programs and Analyses for U.S. Air
Forces in Europe.
The new codicils follow the Ballistic Missile Defense Agreement between
the two nations which was signed in September of last year and entered
into force in December. That pact in turn succeeded Romania's
announcement in February 2010 that it would host U.S. missiles as part
of the Barack Obama administration'
s Phased Adaptive Approach
system to deploy scores of interceptors on land and sea in Eastern
Europe from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea along Russia's western
flank.
Construction on the Romanian site will begin next year and in 2014 24
Standard Missile-3 interceptors will be deployed to the country, to be
followed by as many, of a more advanced model, in Poland three years
later.
Earlier in June U.S. representatives participated in an industry day in
Romania, announcing that ground would be broken for the missile facility
within months and dangling the prospect of contracts before local
businesses, although Missile Defense Agency facilities require an
American prime contractor for the military components.
The American representatives said they expected two contracts to be
approved, one for developing the facilities of the Missile Defense
Agency and one for the U.S. Navy component that is included in the
Deveselu site. The involvement of the Navy, which will gain an access
control center and facilities for 250 personnel, could indicate that the
U.S. and NATO will not limit themselves to the placing of land-based
Standard Missile-3s but may add the deployment of the sea-based version
on American guided missile cruisers and destroyers in the Black Sea.
Commenting on the above, the press officer at the American embassy in
Romania, Kenneth Wetzel, said, “This project reaffirms Romania’s
commitments to NATO and reflects the very strong relations between our
two countries.”
The missile shield facility will initially be a bilateral U.S.-Romanian
undertaking until it is transferred to NATO control. Bogdan Aurescu of
the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed that Romanian
companies have gained considerable experience in NATO and
NATO-interoperable projects since joining the U.S.-led military bloc in
2004 that permits the country to be the first to host longer-range,
higher-velocity interceptors in Europe. (Two years ago the Pentagon
moved a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 battery and approximately 100
military personnel to Poland.)
The 2011 agreement on basing U.S. interceptor missiles in Romania begins with these words:
"Having in mind the United States–Romanian Strategic Partnership and the
further development thereof, and recognizing that a very important
pillar of the United States–Romanian relationship is the solidarity
embodied in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the United States
and Romania recognize the importance of enhancing their individual and
collective national security by working within the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.
..
"Reaffirming their strong will to work together towards contributing to,
in accordance with the principle of the indivisibility of the security
of NATO and with the principle of NATO solidarity, the NATO missile
defense capability, as a key mission of the Alliance, with the aim of
providing full coverage and protection for all NATO European
populations, territory and forces, as well as to shaping NATO's central
role in missile defense in Europe..."
In 2005, the year after Romania joined NATO, the U.S. signed a
comprehensive defense cooperation agreement with the country that
provided the Pentagon its first military bases in a former Warsaw Pact
country, including the Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base which had been used
for the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and subsequent to that has been
employed for the wars in that nation, Afghanistan and Libya.
On June 18 the above-cited Romanian official Aurescu met with Poland's
presidential adviser on security matters Stanislaw Koziej to share
Romania's experience in regard to hosting American Standard Missile-3
interceptors. The U.S. will deploy the new Standard Missile-3 Block 1B,
to go into production this fall, to Romania in 2015 and the more
advanced Block 11A to Poland in 2018.
The missile system will be controlled by NATO from the U.S. air base in
Ramstein, Germany and connected with the Army Navy/Transportable Radar
Surveillance X-band missile radar put into operation in Turkey in
January, which an Obama administration official last autumn described as
"probably the biggest strategic decision between the United States and
Turkey in the past 15 or 20 years.”
On June 29 Grigory Berdennikov, the Russian envoy to the International
Atomic Energy Agency, stated that Russia will not continue talks with
the U.S. on conventional and nuclear arms reductions until, as cited by
Russian Information Agency Novosti, "Washington changes its stance on
the global deployment of U.S. missile defenses."
The news agency quoted Berdennikov as warning:
"[H]ow are we supposed to move forward if the United States refuses to curb its missile defenses?
“We are certainly hoping that they will change their stance on missile
defense, because at this point there is no progress (in missile defense
talks) whatsoever. We cannot do anything else while there is no clarity
on missile defense issues.”
On the same day Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin told a Russian
radio station that Russia will develop a response to the U.S.-NATO
missile interception system that will allow for it being confronted and
overcome. He said, "Our task is to create a real guarantee of security
for the Russian Federation by arming Russian forces with equipment
capable of countering any attempts to offset the strategic balance."
According to a Xinhua News Agency account of his statement, Russia will
"create defensive systems capable of intercepting incoming missiles or
upgrade its own first-strike nuclear forces so as to overcome any
anti-missile umbrella."
Rogozin added: "We, of course, will create a system of overcoming and
suppressing any anti-missile defense. If somebody thinks it is possible
to surround us with an anti-missile fence, we will break down
everything, the entire wall, if someone would attempt to isolate us or
make us kneel down."
In anticipating the next step in U.S. and NATO missile interception
plans - the inevitable expansion into space - the Russian official said
that his nation will also "give an adequate response" to the threat of
military attacks from that domain.
He explained Russia's concerns regarding the militarization of space:
"Obviously, long-term space stations will be created not only for
civilian but, perhaps, for military purposes. Today it is impossible to
draw the line between civilian and military space (programs)."
The deployment of interceptor missiles in Romania and Poland will mark
the beginning and not the end of U.S. and NATO plans for an
international - and beyond, to space - missile system for potential
first-strike use against Russia and other nations, a system that can
prove the greatest threat to humanity since the end of the Cold War.
