NATO’s top general for transformation said yesterday he is optimistic the alliance and Russia will forge common ground to work together on missile defense following Moscow’s participation in a joint exercise earlier this year.
French General Stephane Abrial told a group of reporters that even though Russia only reluctantly agreed to participate in the March exercise in Germany, he sees it as progress toward defusing the tension between NATO and the Kremlin over plans to develop missile defenses on the continent.
“This is why my optimism is not too exaggerated,” he said at a Defense Writers Group gathering ahead of NATO’s May 20-21 NATO summit in Chicago.
The United States and its NATO allies have had a longstanding policy of trying to include Russia in the missile defense plan for Europe, but Moscow has repeatedly lashed out against it, saying a missile defense system is a threat to its strategic deterrent and has on occasion vowed to retaliate.
Abrial conceded that negotiations with the Kremlin through the NATO-Russia Council have been slow to bridge the gaps between the two sides.
“Negotiations have not been running as fast and as positively as we expected,” Abrial said. “There is a fundamental disagreement on the possible impact of missile defense in the various formats.”
The United States and NATO have rejected Russia’s claims that missile defense in Europe would undermine Russian national security, saying the system would be geared to fend off threats from “rogue” nations like Iran.
The Obama administration in 2009 abandoned plans by the Bush White House to field a long-range ballistic missile defense system in the Czech Republic and Poland in favor of deploying one to counter intermediate and short-range threats.
Known as the European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA) and adopted by NATO, the plans calls for gradually building up defenses over time, starting with a sea-based version and U.S. destroyers equipped with the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense system. The plan is then to expand it to a land-based system called Aegis Ashore in Romania in 2015 and later in Poland.
The Bush administration’s objective was a source of tension between Washington and Moscow that helped bring relations between the two countries to their lowest point since the end of the Cold War. President Barack Obama’s position has done little to quell Russian opposition to missile defense in Europe.