POLAND’S BIDDING war with the United States over the placing of a US missile shield on its territory has reached a new stage with prime minister Donald Tusk’s rejection of Washington’s latest proposals yesterday. However, he remains open to further talks and is well aware of the political timing pressures on the Bush administration, which badly wants to see the system in place before leaving office next year. US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice is due in Prague next week to agree on an ancillary radar tracking station in the Czech Republic.
Mr Tusk insists he must protect Poland’s national security from consequential new threats if the system is put in place – a coded reference to Russia’s readiness to aim missiles at Poland if this happens. He has demanded that the US install a Patriot ground-to-air missile system in Poland to counter such a threat, and yesterday said it would need to be permanent to be credible. The US has offered to put this system in place for one year. Mr Tusk has previously demanded a huge upgrade of Poland’s defence forces in return for accepting the system.
He is in a difficult position politically in dealing with this issue. Most Polish people oppose the plan and his Civic Platform party criticised it during last autumn’s election campaign. His foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, has said it is “an American not a Polish project” and that there is no threat to Poland from Iran – the precise strategic grounds on which the US justifies the system. Mr Tusk must balance these elements against Poland’s need to retain its alliance with the US, uncertainty about whether the next administration there will be equally enthusiastic about missile defence and the fact that this decision makes his existing fraught relationship with Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski even more troublesome. Washington’s recent feelers to Lithuania as an alternative site add to these uncertainties.
Mr Tusk’s decision is courageous and deserves support, so far as it goes. The strategic assumptions on which this missile defence scheme is based are fundamentally flawed. Such systems are technically unproven, highly expensive and implausibly assume Iran has ambitions to attack European or American targets. The plan has been pursued with partisan zeal by the Bush administration in Poland and the Czech Republic, which endangers its long-term acceptability in both states. The Russians are right to say it upsets the strategic balance in Europe. If that is so an escalation of tension seems unavoidable. It is to be hoped Mr Tusk sticks to his position and is not pressurised into changing his mind.