Moving Forward: Scrapping the Euro Shield

So far, Obama's critics have been criticizing him for talking massive amounts of change during the election and failing to follow through on his key word. Until today, Obama hadn't changed much in the field of foreign policy or diplomacy aside from his world tour to reassure world leaders that he had in fact won the election. Today, however, Obama made his first significant change in diplomacy and foreign policy by scrapping the Euro missile defense shield, a major point of friction between the US and Russia toward the end of the Bush administration.

The Euro missile defense shield was a plan developed under the second Bush administration that included radar and missile interceptor stations in Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia didn't receive this plan very well for a couple of reasons. First, the Bush administration made it extremely arbitrary. They sent then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Russia on a couple of diplomatic visits to essentially inform Russia that the shield was going up rather than to consult with Russia. Second, the reasons that the Bush administration was giving for why the missile shield was needed were seen by the Russians to be invalid and even phony.

Russia didn't respond well to this "inform rather than engage" diplomacy. Russia perceives Eastern Europe to be within its sphere of influence and this missile shield to be a violation of the unwritten balance of power, essentially a form of encroachment by the West. They issued grievances to that end which were ignored. The Bush administration was holding fast to the argument that the missile shield was needed to shoot down any missiles that could be launched by terrorists even though no terrorist group to date had the capability of launching an ICBM. Russia perceived this argument as a smokescreen to the West's true goal of encroaching on Russia's sphere of influence. Putin even went so far as to call it the start of a new Cold War and threaten military action.

But, in his first major break from the Bush administration's style of diplomacy and foreign policy, Obama decided to scrap the Euro missile shield in the hopes that the beginning of a new Cold War would be averted. The gut check here is hopeful and optimistic. Since Obama is actually starting to engage the Russians in diplomacy and showing them that we're willing to make significant changes, he will more than likely succeed in resetting relations between the two countries and increase our soft power with Russia. There are those that already criticize this move by saying that scrapping the Euro shield will embolden Russia, and they're not necessarily wrong. However, Russia is already a resurgent power in the grand scheme of things, and we need to salvage relations between our two countries if we're going to be able to work with them on curbing the Iranian and recently announced Venezuelan nuclear programs. After all, we can't have Russia going around dispensing nuclear technology to countries we think might be trying to make a bomb.