Final Word from Friday, December 28, 2007
Honesty is the best policy not only because it is, but also because the truth is easier to keep straight than a jumble of lies. It seems that Czech politicians can't remember some of the fibs they were telling about the U.S. radar. Now that they've started to acknowledge that the missile shield might in fact be aimed against Russia, they'll have to explain how it can be useful in defending against Russia if, as they were claiming, the installations are too close to Russia to be effective, aren't within the correct trajectory and have too few interceptors to stand a chance against Russia's thousands of warheads. What's developing is a picture of a "defense" shield that is actually offensive in the sense that it could supplement a U.S. first-strike capability against Russia and/or China. Czechs might even support this more than the original version of a dubious threat from Iran and other rogue states, but only if politicians come clean and admit what the radar is truly all about.[Czech Republic nuclear primacy Foreign Affairs United States missile-defense]