Casting Doubt on European Missile D

The Washington Post picked up on an interesting new report from the EastWest Institute.  The report is a Joint Threat Assessment, a promising setup for future US-Russian collaboration, about the status of the Iranian ballistic missile program and the ability of missile defenses deployed in Europe to stop it.  The conclusion succinctly reaches some strong recommendations, particularly for a US/Russian consensus document:

This report has concluded that there is at present no IRBM/ICBM threat from Iran and that such a threat, even if it were to emerge, is not imminent. Moreover, if such a threat were forthcoming, the proposed European missile defenses would not provide a dependable defense against it. It does not make sense, therefore, to proceed with deployment of the European missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic. [emphasis added]

These findings will not help jumpstart the Obama administration’s lack of enthusiasm for missile defense plans in Europe thus far.  The litany of reasons cited in the article why the missile defense system in Europe may have difficulty both detecting and hitting an Iranian ballistic missile cast a large shadow of doubt that will be tough to square with Obama’s campaign pledge the he “supports deploying a missile defense system when the technology is proven workable”

It is interesting to note, however, the degree of enthusiasm the report placed in “Investigating seriously the possibility of cooperation in missile defense.”  This is clearly an area that could use more in-depth analysis.  Kissinger and other prominent experts have supported the idea as strategic win-win that can help reduce the political firestorm behind missile defense in Europe while providing an effective defense against threats like Iran.  That said, creating a joint missile defense system will be fraught with political and technical difficulties in creating both acceptable and workable systems. Cooperation may help foster innovative solutions (while also probably creating additional difficulties) but many of the basic problems that plague the current European plan still remain if you move them to Azerbaijan.