Many view the Obama's cancellation of the missile defense shield in the Czech Republic and in Poland with a sense of relief. The Russians have been huffing and puffing and making all sorts of threats to take countermeasures. So in his abrupt reversal Obama is certainly going please a lot of people,especially those with jelly knees. Unfortunately he has given a great many leaders in Eastern Europe another sense of deja vous. Once gain the great powers have made decisions about Poland without her consent despite solemn promises made in the past. The USA the country that much of the world depends on for their own security has cut and run - again.Poland has been around this block before having been carved up among the Prussians, Russians, Germans and the Austrians on many occasions going back to 1772. Barely a week before the start of WWII the Nazis and the Soviets inked the infamous Ribbentrop-Molotov nonaggression pact. Under its secret protocols Poland would be crushed yet again. After WWII Poland was rendered a Russian vassal state.
The significance of the missile defense shield was insignificant compared to it's symbolic importance. Russian nuclear forces would overwhelm this puny defense system rendering it tactically useless. It did however represent the US commitment to Poland and to Eastern Europe in general. With the Russian bear again acting it's own brutal self interest in its recent attack on the Republic of Georgia and other actions around the periphery of former vassal states, the Poles are right to be worried.
What Russia seeks in fighting against the missile shield is to scale back the presence of the United States in the countries around their periphery, countries they deem to be in their strategic sphere of interest, and by right in their sphere of domination. It does not matter what anyone living in those countries has to say about it. Free from American meddling the Russians can freely use intimidation and blackmail to get their way just like they could in the past. Freezing natural gas supplies is new tool Putin has used against the Ukrainians, but I suppose that is better than the tanks used against Georgia.
This abrupt U-turn is another sign of the declining power of the United States. The United States is ever more dependent on other powers for just about everything, including the basic funding of its day to day operations. The American juggernaut is too expensive to maintain and hence we must seek accommodation wherever possible. As American power continues to wane, other countries can be expected to fill the breech. Russia is only too happy to be one of them, even if its economy is a kleptocratic oligarchy funded and made powerful with its oil wealth.
As Lech Walesa said:"American has always cared only about its own interests, and those of others only serve the US. Now we have another example of this, he said. I can see what kind of policy the Obama administration is pursuing towards this part of Europe. We should reconsider our approach to the United States".
With time as American power continues to evaporate we may find the allies discarded along the way were something we should have held on to instead of giving them up.
