Federico Bordonaro

Analisi per ISN-Security Watch con intervista a Samuel R. Schubert. Intanto, Vladimir Putin in occasione del suo incontro con il premier portoghese José Socrates afferma che il sistema anti-missilistico USA impiantato in Europa porterebbe a una “pericolosa corsa al riarmo” nel Vecchio continente.

Although the Kremlin has repeatedly expressed its doubts about whether the BMD plan is actually aimed at countering Iran, as well as its fears that the installations could serve to aggressively check Russia’s security space and possibly even provide offensive ballistic capabilities, US officials have firmly replied that the system would be nonsensical were it conceived as an anti-Russian tool. Moreover, Washington has tried unsuccessfully to engage Russia in jointly developing the project.

In an interview with ISN Security Watch this week, Samuel R Schubert, a US scholar with Vienna’s National Defense Academy, said that “At a technical level, US interests to place additional forward radar facilities in the Caucasus are based on a simple technical calculation.”

“The earlier the BMD radar network detects a launch, the more time the system has to calculate trajectory, increasing the likelihood of a successful interception,” Schubert said. “Moreover, the Caucasus [region is] significantly closer, in fact close enough to Iran, to technically justify installation of additional forward radar facilities.”

Political-strategic calculations in Moscow, EU capitals and Washington, however, make Georgia’s bid for hosting parts of the system “politically premature,” Schubert said. In spite of Obering’s speech last March, Schubert believes that debate about Georgia’s possible role as a BMD radar host stems “rather from speculation put forward by Leonid Ivashov, the deputy head of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems, a Russian think-tank.

“Still, Georgian as well as Ukrainian interests in joining the trans-Atlantic security network make both possible clients for any future discussions on the theme”