Global Research, March 2, 2010
Last month news reports confirmed that the United States is to station interceptor missiles in Bulgaria and Romania as an extension of the Pentagon’s European (and international) missile shield project. Details are still forthcoming, but what is all but certain is that the missiles are to be land-based versions of the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System with Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) medium-range anti-ballistic missiles, though there is already speculation that even more advanced deployments are planned.
Until last month discussions of U.S. missile shield plans to replace the earlier one of basing ground-based midcourse missiles in Poland and an accompanying X-band missile radar facility in the Czech Republic centered on the Baltic and Eastern Mediterranean Seas and on Israel and the Persian Gulf, with Turkey and the South Caucasus (Georgia and Azerbaijan) expected to be the next links.
Now it is evident that the main focus of U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization interceptor missile deployments will be in the Black Sea region. The announcement that Romania will host American missiles was made on February 4; the news that Bulgaria would follow suit was disclosed on February 12.
The Pentagon has acquired the use of seven military bases in Bulgaria and Romania since 2005 (though it used air bases in both nations for the 2003 war against Iraq and for the ongoing war in Afghanistan), immediately after both countries were formally inducted into NATO the year before.
Washington has also transformed Georgia on the eastern shore of the Black Sea into a military outpost on Russia’s southern border and has similar designs on Ukraine.
In the words of a Moldovan political analyst, “the United States is turning the Black Sea into an American lake.” [1]
In recent days the Romanian press has shed more light on the details of planned U.S. interceptor missile deployments. Preliminary discussions “have suggested the implementation of around 20 interceptors in an ‘appropriate’ location in Romania.”
In addition, “Negotiations between Romania and the United States on the ballistic missile defence [were] on the agenda of the talks the [Romanian] foreign minister had with his Bulgarian counterpart” on February 26. [2]
That is, the United States presented its demands to both countries almost simultaneously. The initiative began when U.S. Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs Ellen Tauscher recruited Romania for inclusion in Washington’s missile shield system in early February and the Romanian Supreme Defense Council “approved the proposal of hosting SM-3 land-based interceptors as part of the Barack Obama Administration’s plans for ‘a gradual-adaptive approach to the ballistic missile defence in Europe.’” [3]
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