The Heritage Foundation - Leadership for America

Only the New York Times op-ed page could offer two ridiculous and obviously contradictory statements in two succeeding sentences and believe it was making sense.

In “Defensible Missile Defense,” Professor Ted Postol declares that US missile defense “performance is unproven, it requires unending additional resources and it faces problems that cannot be solved with existing science. Russia, for its part, has long perceived missile defense as a threat to its security — a concern the administration chose to ignore, worsening tensions with Moscow.”

If missile defenses are scientifically impossible how could Russia possibly believe they are “a threat to its security.”

The fact is both Postol’s statements are factually wrong. Witness the testimony of Dr. Charles E. McQueary Director, Operational Test and Evaluation, the man responsible for testing the system.

Likewise, the Russians know well that the missile defenses that the US plans to deploy in Western Europe cannot in any way threaten the security of Russia. The radar which will be placed in the Czech Republic could not detect a launch of Russian ICBMs before the missiles were well on their way to their targets and the interceptors (to be base in Poland) could never catch them.

Indeed, putting these bases in Poland and Czech Republic could actually help defend Russia. The United States could share launch data of any missile fired toward Russian territory—and with Russian permission—in some cases the interceptors in Poland might be able to take the threats out before they reach Russian soil.

There is every reason for the US and Russia to cooperate on missile defense—but not to stop the deployments in Europe.

Indeed, deploying defenses in Europe is the positive (and safe) way to diminish the value of an Iranian