Nice to see I have Gary Kasparov in on my side - by which I mean when the Times reported Obama's secret letter to Medvedev concerning dropping missile defense in Poland in exchange for Russia's support contra Iran I heard from no one suggesting what a bunch of hooey it was - certainly no one from the left, god forbid, but also not from the right either that I recall. My problem was there seemed to be no consideration given at all to distinct possibility that Putin's intentions in opposing MD were political and not military at all - he couldn't be seen being walked over by the Americans and also, no doubt thinking down the line, possibly viz Iran, it'd be nice if he could be seen getting America to back down through some sham of 'trade offs' - or possibly even better get asscess to the technology. Kasparov writes op-ed in WSJ today basically agreeing with me that calulations all political - although Kaspy's contention Putin needs to drive up price of oil therefore in his interests to keep Persia and the Yanks at odds - which I agree with too - but for a chess master I think he's missed some moves.
I also made the point, which no one else seemed interested in making, of why would Putin surrender his Iran wild card to thwart a technology that Obama has made clear he himself doesn't support? Would be kinda stupid, no? I mean, he might consider it to get access to the technology if he thought, unlike Obama, it viable - but other than that? The more I look at it the offer made by Obama makes no sense - well, unless of course they have reason to believe Medvedev is his own man - then possibly - but where is there any proof of that?
Is it possible they thought, what the hell, run it by them and see what happens? But it would be stupid to put missile defense on the table - not if they've already decided to unwind the program. I would vehemently disagree if that's what they intend - for reasons similar to my defense of the F-22 - but also because deterrence cannot be relied on in a world where the technology is available to anyone determined enough to get it - the genie's out of the bottle - and since it would be utterly naive to believe nuclear weapons can ever be done away with the only solution left is to develop a workable countermeasure. Whether missile defense as it stands now is the answer, I dunno - but certainly it's something along those lines.
