RIA Novosti
September 21, 2007
Russia loses Gabala opening
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Goncharov) - There is a chance of joint American-Russian use of the Gabala radar, Jonathan Henick, public relations officer at the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan, told Interfax. He said Washington was currently analyzing information about the radar.
Russian, U.S. and Azerbaijani experts visited the Gabala radar on September 19 in response to a proposal from Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, to drop U.S. plans for new missile-defense construction in Central Europe, and to use instead the Russian radar against a possible Iranian threat.
However, it appears that Washington is considering the issue from an angle entirely unsuitable to Russia. The visit to Gabala provided the United States with arguments allowing it to question the possible use of the radar as an alternative to the planned U.S. anti-ballistic missile (ABM) facility in the Czech Republic.
The same argument will be most likely used with regard to the cutting-edge radar being built in Armavir in southern Russia.
Russian radars are not designed to fulfill the tasks set to the missile-tracking radar which is to be deployed in the Czech Republic.
The best solution in this situation would be to link the Russian radar system in Azerbaijan into the proposed U.S. one in Central Europe, running them in tandem, Lieutenant General Henry Obering, director of the Missile Defense Agency, said in a speech Tuesday at the European Institute, a public-policy organization focused on trans-Atlantic affairs.
"I believe we are going to reach agreement with Poland and the Czech Republic," he said, pressing on the Kremlin's sore spot.
"We have seen a dramatic increase in interest in missile defense around the globe," driven by the development of increasingly longer-range missiles by North Korea and Iran, he told an audience of European attaches.
This does not suit Moscow at all. The Gabala radar cannot be "a supplement" to the U.S. ballistic defense system in Europe, said Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak.
Chief of Staff Yury Baluyevsky, who had initially proposed using the Gabala radar jointly with the United States, said he had expected this reaction from Washington.
He is right, again. Obering has not said anything new, and his idea of using the radar as part of the American system in Europe was to be expected.
Washington had warned that the Gabala radar (as well as the Armavir facility offered for joint use later) is an early warning system, and not the X-band radar used to guide the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) missiles, which the United States plans to deploy in the Czech Republic.
In other words, Washington has decided to reduce the issue to technical aspects, claiming that the Gabala radar, although a very good one, cannot be used to target American anti-missiles at Iranian ballistic missiles.
Moscow has run out of arguments in favor of Gabala. The U.S. is not convinced by the claim that the Gabala radar can be used to create a "new-generation [ABM] system in Russia."
Likewise, the Kremlin can no longer say that Washington's acceptance or rejection of the Russian offer will show if the United States really needs the European ABM to protect itself from Iranian missiles, or to look deep into Russian territory.
If Washington refuses to deploy its X-band radar in the Czech Republic and instead agrees to use the Gabala radar, which is not designed to fight Iranian missiles, its ABM system in Europe would be seen as targeted exclusively against Russia.
Worse still, Moscow and Baku have tried to convince Tehran that the use of the Gabala radar by the United States would not harm Iran. If this is so, then why should Washington agree to incorporate the Gabala radar in its anti-Iranian ABM system in Europe?
In short, Russia has lost the opening in the ABM chess game. The Gabala trick has not succeeded, and Washington has quickly moved to the middlegame, when players need to assess their positions, formulate plans, and at the same time consider tactical possibilities. Meanwhile, it continues to harp on the need to continue consultations and ABM cooperation with Russia.
This will be a long middlegame. At the earliest, the United States could place interceptors in Poland and the radar in the Czech Republic in 2011 or 2012, Obering said, adding: "So there's a sense of urgency to get on with this." However, congressional restrictions may delay the start of work on the missile-defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic for six months.
It appears that Washington has firm plans regarding the European ABM, and it is unlikely to abandon them only because the Russian General Staff claims that they are "unpromising, to say the least." In fact, this is exactly what Baluyevsky has said.