Final Word from Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Russians are obsessed with their national interests and have a TV talk show devoted to the issue. Czechs, in contrast, seem to be headed pell-mell toward a major decision to allow the U.S. to build a missile-defense site in the country without holding a proper debate. It took Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to raise the issue of whether the silos could be used for secretly housing offensive weapons. Czech officials have bought the U.S. line that it would be a purely defensive system, but what if the U.S.'s definition of "defensive" is just as flexible as its definition of "torture" in the case of Guantanamo and extraordinary renditions? Czechs could end up in the middle of a nuclear-arms race or, theoretically, a nuclear war. After Boeing's utter failure at Aero Vodochody, Czechs might want to think long and hard before putting their future in the hands of its "defense" shield. [Czech Republic interceptor atomic weapons United States Nato Sergey]