AFTER MUCH HAGGLING, Poland has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the United States to develop and deploy elements of a ballistic missile defense system on its territory, for the ostensible purpose of deterring and if necessary defeating an Iranian missile attack against European NATO states. Russia for its part has insisted that any such missile defense system is directed against itself, and therefore inherently destabilizing.
Some have seen Poland’s foot dragging on the MOU as due to a fear of offending Russia, which provides the bulk of Poland’s natural gas supplies and which still poses a military threat. Having recently visited Poland to meet with representatives of the Polish military, the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of State, I do not believe that this was actually the case. Rather, the Poles were driving a hard bargain to ensure a more “equitable” relationship under the MOU, meaning, in practical terms, technology transfer, workshare in the program, and trade concessions with the United States. It is not clear whether Poland got everything that it wanted, but it is clear that the signing of the MOU at this particular time is no accident, but a response to the Russian invasion of Georgia. This is Poland’s way of showing that Russia’s attempt to intimidate its near neighbors is not going to succeed, and specifically, that Poland is not afraid of the Bear. In return, Russia is once again threatening Poland’s natural gas supplies, while Russian generals fulminate and speak of dire military consequences.
But does the proposed system have any real capability against Russian ballistic missiles? The United States, NATO, and Poland have steadfastly insisted no, but a more accurate answer might be, “It depends.”
Whether a missile defense system deployed in Eastern Europe can be used against incoming Russian missiles depends on a number of factors, of which the most important is the siting and orientation of any early warning and surveillance radars. These tend to be large, fixed billboard arrays that cover one particular azimuth. If the array built in Poland is pointed to the southeast (towards Iran), then it will not be properly positioned to detect Russian missiles, most of which would come from the northeast. Of course, once you have emplaced one array, it’s a pretty simple matter to build a second one, which placed at right angles to the first, will provide 180 degree coverage.
The second critical factor is the capabilities of the interceptor missile and its fire control radar. Essentially, the farther the fire control radar can see, the sooner the interceptor can be launched. The faster the interceptor, the farther down range it can intercept the incoming missile. The longer the range of a ballistic missile, the higher its reentry velocity, hence the faster the interceptor needed to shoot it down. The Ground-Launched Midcourse System (GLMS) on which any presumptive European missile defense system would be based is designed to intercept fairly slow and primitive North Korean and Chinese missiles. They would probably do very well against Iranian missiles, which in any case are derived from North Korean models. On the other hand, how well they would do against a modern Russian ICBM like the Topol-M is open to question.
However, most of the missiles Russia would direct against its near-neighbors, such as Poland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Romania, or Georgia, are likely to be short- and medium-range types, because hitting those countries doesn’t require the range of an ICBM. The type of missile defense system being deployed in Eastern Europe is not designed to deal with these so-called “theater” ballistic missiles, although the early warning and surveillance radars would be an essential part of any theater defense architecture by providing early detection that could be used to cue fire control radars.
The United States has developed and is on the verge of deploying the Theater High Altitude Air Defense System (THAADS), a deployable (i.e., truck mounted) system consisting of mobile launchers, tracking and fire control radars, a mobile command center, and a powerful solid-fuel interceptor equipped with a kinetic kill vehicle. This falls in both size and capability somewhere between GLMS and the smaller Patriot PAC-3 missile system.
To provide a robust defense for Eastern Europe against both Russian and Iranian missile threats, NATO would have to deploy both long-range (i.e., strategic) and shorter range (theater) systems in a layered approach (Patriot PAC-3 could also be deployed to provide a “terminal defense layer,” as well as a stand-alone defense against short-range “battlefield” ballistic missiles).
Thus, it is certainly within the realm of possibility for the United States and NATO to develop a missile defense system against a Russian threat, but at this point we are not there. Should we reserve the right to do so? In light of Russian behavior, I believe the answer is yes.
Russia’s military is essentially hollow. Though numerically large, the Russian army is antiquated, clumsy and poorly trained; it lacks adequate reserves of spare parts and munitions to fight a large-scale war. The Russian air force is in worse shape, incapable of keeping a high percentage of its aircraft combat ready, while lacking the logistic support to provide its pilots with adequate flight time (this is reflected in the dismal performance of the Russian air force in Georgia, where it seems congenitally incapable of hitting the targets at which it aims). The Russian navy is a rusting antique with little relevance to the military situation in central and eastern Europe. If Russia did consider a conventional military offensive into Ukraine or Poland, it would quickly be dismantled in the same manner that the United States dismantled the Iraqi army in 1991 and 2003. Even Western European forces are so markedly superior to their Russian counterparts that Russia’s numerical advantage (assuming it could be mustered) would be negated.
What Russia does have going for it is the second largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Granted, large portions of it are obsolescent and in poor repair, but there are significant numbers of modern systems that can be used as a defensive deterrent or as an instrument of intimidation. The latter is what mainly matters to Moscow, as can be seen in the statements of Russian Deputy Chief of Staff General Anatoly Nogovitsyn: “Poland, by deploying [the system] is exposing itself to [nuclear] attack, one hundred percent”.
Russia’s aim is obviously to “decouple” Poland, Ukraine, and other Eastern European states from Western Europe by threatening them with economic ruin on the one hand, and physical destruction on the other. The Soviet Union tried a similar gambit in the 1980s, when it deployed SS-22 intermediate range missiles to Poland and East Germany, from which they could place all the capitals of Europe at risk. The intent was to decouple the United States from NATO: because the USSR could strike, e.g., London from Warsaw, but the United States could only retaliate by launching weapons from the continental United States, thereby escalating and putting the entire United States at risk of Soviet nuclear attack. President Reagan wisely responded by deploying Pershing II ballistic missiles and Tomahawk ground launched cruise missiles to Britain and Germany as a U.S. intermediate nuclear force, thereby restoring deterrent symmetry. Of course, the Soviets squealed like stuck pigs, and, pulling out all the stops, mobilized millions of European sympathizers and “useful idiots” to protest U.S. warmongering. But in the end, the Soviets blinked first, and we were able to negotiate the INF Treaty, the first nuclear arms control agreement that not only did not increase the number of deployed warheads, but eliminated an entire class of weapons.
The United States needs to pursue a similar approach today by adopting a posture of “extended deterrence”, making it clear that the United States will not accept attacks on or intimidation of allied states. On the political-diplomatic front, expedited membership in NATO for both Georgia and Ukraine would be an unmistakable sign that deterrence extends right to the borders of Russia. I suspect that Russia’a actions in Georgia will also prompt Finland to request NATO membership in the near future. And, based on conversations with Swedish government representatives, there is a very high probability that if Finland were to request membership, Sweden would rapidly follow suit. In the end, Russia’s actions may well backfire, leaving it more encircled and isolated than before. In which case, Russia is likely to resort increasingly to strong arm tactics to reassert its influence. To prevent this, extended deterrence will have to have both a military and a non-military dimension.
On the military side, and in contrast to the 1980s, extended deterrence can and must have both an offensive (retaliatory) and defensive element, and must extend beyond conventional and nuclear forces to cover a range of asymmetrical threats, including terrorism, insurgency, and economic warfare. But today, deterrence means more than an effective nuclear retaliatory capacity (which we might call “offensive deterrence”). There is also “defensive deterrence”, which aims to make it prohibitively difficult for the enemy to achieve his objectives. In this case, an anti-missile umbrella over Eastern Europe would be an integral part of such extended “defensive deterrence,” as would a robust civil defense system. Of course, Russia still possesses enough nuclear weapons to swamp the proposed missile defense system (so from an objective standpoint, Russia really has nothing to fear), but subjectively the system represents a U.S. and NATO commitment to the security of Eastern Europe. That in turn makes it more difficult for Russia to bully countries like Poland, Ukraine and Georgia, which in turn encourages them to stand up to their aggressive neighbor. From the Russian perspective, it makes it more difficult to bluff–they would have to make a real and visible demonstration of their resolve to use nuclear weapons, and that in turn would cause the whole world to line up against them. Because nuclear weapons are mainly psychological in practice, it’s the psychology of deterrence that matters.
To deal with asymmetric military threats such as insurgency, terrorism and various forms of proxy war, NATO and the United States need to develop their own effective low intensity warfare doctrine and capabilities, and then provide adequate military assistance to transfer this capability to its Eastern European friends. Part of the problem in Georgia today results from the inability of the Georgian military to cope with the separatist insurgencies. Georgian forces serving in Iraq were undoubtedly learning fast, but there simply were not enough of them, and not enough time, to effect a serious change in the situation at home. We must ensure that this cannot happen again, either in Georgia or elsewhere. Given our successes in Iraq and Afghanistan, the success of future Russian-supported insurgencies would not be assured.
Russia probably knows this, which is why it puts less emphasis these days on military power and more on economic power, mainly embodied in its control of substantial oil and gas reserves. Extended deterrence therefore has to include energy security, which for Eastern Europe means funding and completing new oil and gas pipelines that connect Europe to suppliers other than Russia, while bypassing Russian territory. Helping countries like Georgia, Poland and Ukraine develop alternatives to oil and natural gas would also enhance extended deterrence. Finally, and in light of Russia’s extensive record of government sponsored (or at least tolerated) hacking and cyber warfare, we have to help the countries of Eastern Europe secure their information infrastructures so that their financial, telecommunications and other information technology systems cannot be disrupted (or threatened with disruption) by Russia.
All of these actions combined may suffice to contain Russia and curb its capacity for adventurism along its borders, while inside Russia, demography and economic imbalances will eventually combine to reduce Russia to just one more medium-sized continental power among many in Eurasia. Until that time, though, we must be wary.
Stuart Koehl writes frequently for THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online.
