Can't Blame a Putin for Trying

The recent Bush-Putin summit in Kennebunkport was interesting to me. The clear purpose of it was for Vladimir to try to utilize his relatively friendly relationship with Dubya to try and save us all from more Bushite stupidity. Unfortunately, he didn't seem to succeed, though perhaps Congress can still step in.

The subject is the latest brainwave from career-challenged Pentagon strategists: why not use our missile defense "capability" in the continuing demarche with Iran over their nuclear program? They seem to have convinced our allies in Northeastern Europe (read: Poland) that it would be a real good idea to put some of our latest high-tech military boondoggle in their country to protect the European Union from Iranian nuclear missile attack.

No doubt the Poles decided it would help protect them from Russian missiles, then let the Russians know that's what they thought. The Russian military folks didn't know how to counter such an illusory but complex threat to their security, so they sent Vlad to try to dissuade our 3-D President, even offering a gambit: instead of Poland, why not put the missile defense where the Russians have a radar in Azerbaijan? We'll share.

Dumb Duck Dubya knew enough, at least, not to get in the chess game with Putin, though why anyone might need this non-functional apparatus is unclear to me. I'd rate the odds that Iran will have nukes capable of being loaded on ballistic missiles within 10 years at 10-1. Similar odds that Iran would choose to launch them toward their friends in Western Europe (to the extent they have any friends--at least that's one region that will deal with them)--those odds basically about equal to the chances they would hit Western Europe if they fired the missiles in a random direction, intermediate-range (vs. about 75% they'd try to hit Tel Aviv). Also, same odds that the missile defense would actually work. Put those independent probabilities together, and we're talking about a 1-in-1000 chance the missile defense system would actually do some good sometime, if indeed the Iranians chose to attack.

I don't doubt the sincerity that the Pentagon missile defense guys have; they would really like to do something useful, and this was the best they could come up with, short of changing jobs. For the senior brass, this is probably a useful gambit, coming up with something besides sanctions that they can throw at Iran. As for the Iranians, I'm sure they will have trouble suppressing their laughter when they discuss the military threat this initiative would create. Finally, I looked into Putin's eyes as he arrived in Maine; he was really only trying to save us the embarrassment continuing this charade would eventually create.