Document Type

Article

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Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Publication Details

Clonan, T., 2008: US Missile Shield Plan Heightens European Insecurities, Dublin: The Irish Times.

Abstract

European Missile Shield The US Missile Defence Agency (MDA) – without recourse to NATO – is engaged in bilateral negotiations with Poland and the Czech Republic to site missile-shield silos and X-Band radar facilities in central Europe. The US intends to site 10 long-range interceptor missiles at one weapon silo - approximately the size of a football pitch - in Poland by 2011. They also intend to forward-deploy an X-Band radar station from the Marshall Islands in the Pacific to the Czech Republic in the same time period. The Russians have reacted angrily to this development with Russian Defence Minister Anatoly Serdyukov stating in advance of NATO’s Barcelona summit that ‘the deployment of the missile defence system in Eastern Europe will create conditions for higher tensions, violate strategic balance in the world and pose a threat to our national security’. The United States, by virtue of its exclusive bilateral negotiations with the Polish and Czech governments on this issue has also generated considerable unease among its NATO partners.

DOI

10.21427/D73V14

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