Seeing Russia making a lot of noises in the international arena in a bid to gain military supremacy over its competitors, it appears that the United States has once again started working on research and development of offensive and defensive military technology by initiating a project that aims to help it develop a global missile defense system.
This was revealed by Russian NATO envoy Alexander Grushko, who says that the West had a great chance to do that a few years ago but that the chance went by, largely due to the fact that NATO refused to pursue this particular technology on ideological grounds.
“Unfortunately, the chance to create a truly global missile defense system was wasted. This system would not have been based on a specific alliance, but would instead efficiently protect against real missile threats, not imaginary ones. NATO refused to pursue this mostly on ideological grounds,” he told Rossiya-24 TV.
The Russian envoy to NATO also reported on a recent missile defense exercise in Europe in which participants were tasked with intercepting a ballistic missile and several cruise missiles.
The global missile defense system has quite a unique architecture and includes a European component with bases located in Poland and Romania, which Russia believes exposes the system’s true purpose, considering NATO’s recent military buildup and the Pentagon’s decision to place military hardware in the vicinity of Russian borders.
While speaking with RIA Novosti, the Director of the Department of Non-Proliferation and Arms Control at the Russian Foreign Ministry, Mikhail Ulyanov, said that the Iranian missile program holds no threat to peace in Europe, before adding that anything said otherwise is just a smokescreen to conduct a project aimed at disrupting or even unhinging Russia’s nuclear deterrence capabilities. He also stated that such initiatives are designed solely to bring European allies into a long-term confrontation with Russia, which would not be a desirable scenario for either side.
Global missile defense system a cloak?
“We noticed that the recent drills of the USA and its partners were conducted to simulate attacks not only with the use of one ballistic missile, but also a massive use of cruise missiles. All this clearly indicates that this system is not being created against the so-called ‘Iranian nuclear threat,'” Grushko said.
“Evidently, these developments are in the interests of the United States,” Ulyanov observed.
The collective missile defense system is both seaborne and land-based and is currently under development to counter the apparent missile threat from Iran even though Tehran has stated that its warheads pose no threat to Europe.
According to reports, four U.S. warships and forces from eight other countries took part in the first missile defense exercise in Europe and successfully tested their abilities to tackle impending airstrikes. The participating troops were from Canada, Germany, France, Italy, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands and the U.K. and were tasked with intercepting unarmed ballistic missiles and anti-ship projectiles fired simultaneously from multiple locations.
Russia set to give a swift response
Meanwhile, Russia is ready to respond to these maneuvers and set to work on a perfect response measure that has resulted from what the Kremlin perceives as an excessive U.S. doctrine of a prompt global strike. Former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev says that Russia is ready to take the necessary actions for the development and implementation of high performance defense tools.
However, U.S. officials have time and time again stated that the European missile defense system has nothing to do with Russia but at the same time have chosen not to give much thought over Moscow’s request of signing a legally binding document on the issue, which is why Russia is not willing to believe in anything coming out of Washington regarding the missile defense system.
[Source]
