ET TU, BRUTE?
By Tom Balmforth

Russia Profile
id=International&articleid=a1265739323
Feb 9 2010

America’s Plans to Install Interceptor Missiles in Romania and on
the Black Sea, an Area of Historic Importance to Russia, Unnerve Moscow

As the United States unveiled plans to install missile interceptors
in Romania to shield Europe from an alleged Iranian missile threat,
Moscow’s suspicions became palpable. A little more than a fortnight
ago Washington agreed to deploy Patriot missiles in Poland, only 100
kilometers from Russia’s border at Kaliningrad. The new installation in
Romania will bring the United States into the strategically important
Black Sea region. Missile deployment is a long-time explosive issue
for U.S.-Russian relations, but this time Russia won’t be the only
one raising an eyebrow.

On Friday, ahead of the Munich Security Conference, Romanian
President Traiain Basescu announced that Romania will host
U.S. Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) tactical interceptors, which should
become operational by 2015. American officials added that SM-3s would
also be stationed on Aegis-equipped ships in the Black Sea. Russia’s
reaction was typical. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov immediately
demanded "clarification," and the Russian Ambassador to NATO Dmitry
Rogozin accused Washington of failing to come through on its promise
to keep Moscow informed about missile defense in Europe. So is this
project really out of the blue?

U.S. President Barack Obama’s decision in June of last year to
shelve plans for ground missile interceptor systems in Poland and
Czech Republic – an anathema to the Kremlin – created a foundation
on which the "reset" relations could be established. However, Obama
never entirely abandoned plans for deploying missile systems in
Eastern Europe – he merely revised them. And Romania was mentioned
in that breath. To that extent, the current plans to install SM-3
interceptors in Romania come as no surprise, especially given the
increasing congressional pressure that Obama is facing for having
"conceded to Russia" on the Poland and Czech Republic missile defense
system, without much progress to show for it on Iran.

But still, the timing is not ideal.

U.S. and Russian negotiators are yet to sign off on an elusive
replacement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), which
expired on December 5. Moscow has delighted in blaming the United
States for the delay. Toward the end of last year, Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin said that it was Washington that was delaying the
process by persisting with its missile plans in Eastern Europe. Deputy
Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov hauled out the very same argument last
Saturday in response to the Romania plans: "It is impossible to talk
seriously about the reduction of nuclear capabilities when a nuclear
power is working to deploy protective systems against vehicles to
deliver nuclear warheads possessed by other countries."

But Alexander Rahr, the program director for Russia and Eurasia at the
German Council on Foreign Relations, dismissed the hypothesis. "These
are very small range weapons. Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles
(ICBM) cannot be threatened by these smaller rockets at all. They are
not strategic in nature, so I don’t think they should jeopardize a new
START," said Rahr. Viktor Yesin, a retired Russian colonel general,
told the Nezavisimaya Gazeta news daily that the SM-3 missiles
only have a combat range of 300 kilometers, but that they could be
potentially upgraded to a range of between 500 and 1,000 kilometers.

But Rahr said the real negative impact from these SM-3s was that
their deployment would foster an atmosphere of "mistrust." And Fyodor
Lukyanov, the editor in chief of Russia in Global Affairs, agreed:
"re-injecting this issue into discussion when these important talks
are going on can make them more difficult than before." The various
ongoing attempts to rekindle relations between Russia and NATO after
a fall-out over the Russia-Georgia conflict could well also suffer
as a result, said Lukyanov.

But it is mainly the strategic positioning of the missiles in the
Black Sea that will elicit objection, he said. When Warsaw on January
20 announced that Poland would still host U.S. Patriot missiles and
this time only 100 kilometers from Kaliningrad, Russia responded with
a surprisingly muted reaction. But the planned deployment of SM-3s on
the Black Sea will be a different story. "Any activities in and near
the Black Sea make Russia very nervous – this is a region which is
very sensitive for Russian security and has been for many centuries,"
said Lukyanov.

Ever since Peter the Great made establishing Russia as a naval power
a key tenet of his rule, securing Russian access to a warm water
port has remained a goal. "The Black Sea used to be the direction
of Russian expansion a couple of centuries ago – Russian expansion
southward, especially to former Byzantium, was an ideological pillar
of Russian foreign policy in the 19th century – that was the dream:
to control the straights," said Lukyanov.

So, symbolically, the Black Sea is key to Russia’s view of itself
as a global naval power, and U.S. missiles in its vicinity will be
unnerving for Moscow, especially considering the question mark over
the status of its Black Sea Fleet stationed in the Ukrainian Crimea,
where the lease is due to expire in 2017.

At the Munich Conference, Ivanov made his objections perfectly
clear when he referred to the Montreux Treaty signed in 1936, which
supposedly limits the presence of outside powers in the Black Sea. But
Russia is not the only country likely to possibly challenge the U.S.

presence. "I think we can expect a huge diplomatic game around this
idea of the Black Sea – and the participants in the game will not
be just the United States and Russia and Ukraine, but also Turkey,
for instance," said Lukyanov.

Turkey is showing much more confidence on the international stage than
ten years ago, said Lukyanov. Moreover, Russian-Turkish relations
have looked to be strengthening recently, as the prime ministers
of the two countries signed in a host of cooperative measures in
the energy sphere on January 13, which included Turkey giving its
preliminary go-ahead for construction of the Turkish leg of Russia’s
South Stream pipeline. What is more, Turkey is "extremely concerned"
by plans touted by the U.S. Senate to recognize the "Armenian genocide"
in 1915 in the near future – "maybe this will happen this year, maybe
not – but it is on the agenda," said Lukyanov. "If the United States
does go ahead with this, then its relationship with Turkey will be
disturbed profoundly…All of this creates an interesting knot of
contradictions," he added.

However, what will anger Moscow most is that it was not previously
consulted about Washington’s plans in Romania and the Black Sea.

Russia argues that "unilaterally" installing missile defense systems
in Europe is a threat to regional stability and, to that end, Russia
champions jointly-built "multilateral" missile systems.

Despite the reset, this clearly remains wishful thinking. "To create
a multilateral system in such a delicate, sensitive area as strategic
national security, the parties need to have a high degree of mutual
confidence, which is not case with the United States and Russia at
the moment," concluded Lukyanov.