Joe Biden Visits Poland on Missile Defense Withdrawal

Obama said that the decision to scrap Bush's planned missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was made in the interests of U.S. security. Iran is developing short range missiles, not long range. The missile defense system was intended to block long range missiles.
But the decision to put in a new missile system, which could be in place by 2015, appears to have been widely interpreted as a means of appeasing Russia (republicans certainly promoted that argument), to amend those relations. The White House has said that's been a byproduct but it wasn't the reason for scrapping missile defense.

How the visit is playing in Poland:

Today, US Vice President Joe Biden arrives in Poland to reiterate America’s commitment to Eastern Europe’s peace and security. Critics have called the trip more of a public diplomacy tour to amend relations “reset” by last month’s missile-defense withdrawal. Meanwhile politicians in Poland continue to point fingers to determine who – if anybody – dropped the ball. As the political blame game bounces between Warsaw and Washington, Poland should instead take the Vice President’s visit as an opportunity to highlight its own laudable contributions to global security as key members of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).

To date Poland has deployed 2,000 troops to Afghanistan, with most stationed in the increasingly hostile eastern Ghazni province. Out of the 42 nations contributing military personnel, Poland has the sixth largest contingent – the highest for any non-G8 country. It even has more troops on the ground than Australia or the Netherlands. Warsaw Business Journal

Someone else's feelings were hurt:

After a number of American decisions interpreted as slaps in Poland’s face, the U.S. now sends its Vice-President Joe Biden to the biggest Central European country for a series of conciliatory smiles, handshakes and back patting. Of course, Polish politicians smile back, but the reality is Poland no longer has that warm feeling in its heart when it thinks “America.”

Not a long time ago the Biden visit would be a big deal here – for decades, Poles were passionately, madly in love with the United States. America was the preferred country to immigrate to, the Promised Land with everything the best and the biggest, an idealized paradise.

Of course, Poland would like to be loved back, but despite its claim to being a power with a strong regional influence, it actually knows quite well that Central Europe and its individual countries are not important to the U.S. now that they’re stable and in NATO and the European Union. Still, the country sent a number of signals that some cordiality from the U.S. would be welcome after Poland committed its troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, and agreed to host the U.S. missile shield knowing that Russia would be furious.

If the Obama administration wanted to mend fences with Russia, it could have considered sending a senior official to Poland first to make sure winning new friends would not come at the expense of older ties. WSJ

Some of what Obama told Bob Schieffer on the scrapping of the missile defense system:

Schieffer: You announced yesterday a major change in American strategic strategy when you said that we would not go forward with the missile defense system that would be there on the border of Russia. The Russians saw that as a poke in the eye from the very beginning. But even people who agree that that missile system is out of place are asking questions. Shouldn't you have tried to get something from the Russians in exchange for doing that?

Obama: Well keep in mind that when George Bush announced his strategy for putting missile defense in place, in the Czech Republic and in Poland, I said at the time I think we need missile defense but I want to make sure it works, that it's cost effective, that the technologies are operable, that it's our best possible strategy. And that hadn't been shown. So when I came in I asked the same people who had signed on first one - Bob Gates, my Secretary of Defense, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff - tell me given the intelligence you have now and the technology we possess and what we know about the Iranian threat, which always been our main concern, not Russia, tell me if the system that we've designed is the best possible system. And they came back to me and said, you know what, given what we know now we actually think that this is a better way of doing it. So we're not eliminating missile defense - in fact what we're doing is putting a system in that's more timely, more cost effective, and that meets the actual threats that we perceive coming from Iran.

Russia had always been paranoid about this, but George Bush was right, this wasn't a threat to them. And this program will not be a threat to them. So my task here was not to negotiate with the Russians. The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is. We have made a decision about what will be best to protect the American people as well as our troops in Europe and our allies. If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid and are now willing to work more effectively with us to deal with threats like ballistic missiles from Iran or nuclear development in Iiran, you know, then that's a bonus.

Hillary Clinton Says Russia Recognizes Iranian Threat

The U.S. is now in sync with the rest of the world on diplomacy and frankly, that's a relief. Sometimes I get to thinking what John McCain, with Sarah Palin at his side, might be doing about Iran. I don't think McCain has the modern mind to tackle such issues. Palin just doesn't have the mind for such things as foreign policy. I'm sure many people don't appreciate just how delicate the task is to build international consensus on Iran.

Wrapping up a European tour in Moscow, Mrs Clinton said Russian leaders had in private said they were ready to act if Tehran did not meet its obligations.
But Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, on a visit to China, said it was too early to talk about sanctions on Iran.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Tuesday that threats of sanctions were counter-productive.
Iran denies allegations by the US, EU and Israel that it is trying to build the bomb under cover of a civilian nuclear energy programme.
Mrs Clinton told the BBC on Wednesday that Russia in the past six months had "moved tremendously" to acknowledge the threat of Iran's programme. BBC

Watch the video here.
Hillary also spoke to university students, and it's evident that Obama and the state department are on the same page:

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton on Wednesday challenged Russians to open up their political system and embrace diversity and dissent, saying that Cold War-era thinking would limit their prosperity in the 21st century.

Clinton spoke to university students in Moscow and also in Kazan, the capital of Russia's religiously and ethnically diverse republic of Tatarstan. These informal meetings, which wrapped up a five-day tour of Europe, were aimed at helping redefine U.S.-Russia relations.

Clinton appeared taken with oil-rich Tatarstan, where a mosque and church stand side by side inside the Kazan Kremlin. She talked with students about how their republic, with a moderate Muslim majority, could be a model for promoting religious tolerance.

"The level of religious tolerance and interfaith connection, the economic progress, the stability, is very impressive, but it also speaks to how we transfer these lessons," she said. NPR

Hillary on Russian radio:

Reporting from Moscow University:

No new sanctions on Iran for now. The color analysis is.... interesting:

Obama on Face the Nation Sept. 20

Schieffer: No tax increase on people who made under 250,000 dollars.

Obama: Right.

Schieffer: No payroll tax, no capital gains …

Obama: Right.

Schieffer: … no tax of any kind on Americans. Can you still make that promise to people today?

Obama: I can still keep that promise because, as I've said, about two-thirds of what we've proposed would be from money that's already in the health care system but just being spent badly. And as I said before, this is not me making wild assertions.

You know, you always hear about waste and abuse in Washington and usually it doesn't mean much because nobody ever finds where that waste and abuse is. This is money that has been directly identified that the Congressional Budget Office, that Republican and Democratic experts agree is there, that is not improving the quality of our health. So the lion's share of money to pay for this will come from money that's already in system.

Now, we are going to have to find some additional sources of revenue for the other third or so of the health care plan. And I've provided a long list of approaches that would not have an impact on middle class Americans. They're not going to be forced to pay for this. Insurance companies, drug companies are gonna have to be ponying up, partly because right now they're receiving huge subsidies from folks.

Schieffer: But aren't they going to then pass it on to consumers? I mean that's what you know the Chamber of Commerce is saying. They're starting a big ad campaign right -

Obama: Right.

Schieffer: - now, they're saying you're gonna put these taxes on these insurance companies on people that make things like X-rays and lab tests and all of that and they're just going to turn right around and pass it right on to the consumer.

Obama: Here's the problem, they're passing on those costs to the consumer anyway. The only difference is …

Schieffer: But this would be more

Obama: No, the difference is that they're making huge profits on it, Bob. I mean, let's take the Medicare HMO programs that are being run by insurance companies. It's estimated by everybody that they're overcharging by about 14 percent. This amounts to about $177 billion over 10 years. About $17 billion a year, $18 billion a year. That's just going to pad their profits, hasn't been shown to make Medicare recipients any healthier. And in fact because those huge subsidies are going to insurance companies, Medicare recipients are not getting a good deal. Now if we are enforcing what should be the rules around Medicare and making sure the people are getting a bang for the buck, it's not going to be possible for insurance companies to simply pass on those costs to Medicare recipients because ultimately it's Uncle Sam that's paying for those services anyway.

Look, bringing about change in this town is always hard. When you've got special interests that are making billions of dollars, absolutely they're gonna want to keep as much of that, the profits that they're making, as possible. And by the way, those insurance companies even during these down years have been making terrific profits. We don't mind them making profits, we just want them to be accountable to their customers.

On missile defense (Obama also talked about Afghanistan):

Schieffer: You announced yesterday a major change in American strategic strategy when you said that we would not go forward with the missile defense system that would be there on the border of Russia. The Russians saw that as a poke in the eye from the very beginning. But even people who agree that that missile system is out of place are asking questions. Shouldn't you have tried to get something from the Russians in exchange for doing that?

Obama: Well keep in mind that when George Bush announced his strategy for putting missile defense in place, in the Czech Republic and in Poland, I said at the time I think we need missile defense but I want to make sure it works, that it's cost effective, that the technologies are operable, that it's our best possible strategy. And that hadn't been shown. So when I came in I asked the same people who had signed on first one - Bob Gates, my Secretary of Defense, as well as the Joint Chiefs of Staff - tell me given the intelligence you have now and the technology we possess and what we know about the Iranian threat, which always been our main concern, not Russia, tell me if the system that we've designed is the best possible system. And they came back to me and said, you know what, given what we know now we actually think that this is a better way of doing it. So we're not eliminating missile defense - in fact what we're doing is putting a system in that's more timely, more cost effective, and that meets the actual threats that we perceive coming from Iran.

Russia had always been paranoid about this, but George Bush was right, this wasn't a threat to them. And this program will not be a threat to them. So my task here was not to negotiate with the Russians. The Russians don't make determinations about what our defense posture is. We have made a decision about what will be best to protect the American people as well as our troops in Europe and our allies. If the by-product of it is that the Russians feel a little less paranoid and are now willing to work more effectively with us to deal with threats like ballistic missiles from Iran or nuclear development in Iiran, you know, then that's a bonus.

Read the entire transcript

Gates Speaks on New Intelligence that Shifted Missile Defense Strategy

Read about the new strategy here.

Obama Scraps Missile Defense in Eastern Europe for New Strategy

Since Iran is building short-range missiles instead of long-range missiles, Obama has scrapped the long-range missile defense system. Because it's a shift from the Bush era, a lot of rightwing critics will probably take to the TVs and the Internets to tell us we're all going to die.
Jake Tapper asked Robert Gibbs, answering press questions this morning, why John McCain didn't know about the new strategy. Tapper asks about whether there has been enough debate on this decision. CBS' Chip Reid follows on. So expect to hear it played that way in the news today. Gibbs was disturbed that media reports this morning suggested that Obama had scrapped missile defense altogether.
Here's an update: McCain says new strategy is wrong. Toby Gati, an expert in U.S.- Russia relations, said under Bush, we just did the opposite of what Russia wanted. But under Obama, we're actually thinking of our national security interests first and if that aligns with Russia, so be it.

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President Obama has decided to abandon plans for a long-range missile defense system based in Poland and the Czech Republic that had been embraced by the administration of former president George W. Bush, possibly shifting to a shorter-range, sea-based system, officials said Thursday.

The White House announced that Obama would make a statement on missile defense at 10:15 a.m., just before a news conference at the Pentagon. Officials said Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, would detail what they called a "major" change in U.S. plans for missile defense.

"We will announce that we are making a major adjustment to our European missile defense system that is designed to protect our forces and our friends in Europe from the growing Iranian short- and medium-range missile threat," said Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon press secretary.

The Bush-era plan to place interceptor missiles in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic had been cheered by the governments of the two Eastern Europe countries but had deeply angered Russian leaders. Arms-control analysts had speculated in recent weeks that Obama might consider a sea-launched or other missile defense system that wasn't based permanently in Eastern Europe to counter the potential Iranian threat.

A decision to scrap the missile shield would represent a major break from Obama's predecessor. It was expected to raise the ire of some Republicans in Congress who have been strong defenders of the system as a way to counter a potential Iranian nuclear attack.

However, the decision would likely be hailed in Moscow as a major breakthrough in helping to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations, which had chilled under Bush. The Russians had viewed the prospect of a missile shield system on their western border as an affront. Relocating it could remove a major impediment from U.S.-Russian efforts to find a replacement for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, which expires in early December. WaPo

Mitt Romney and others had criticized Obama for his stance on missile defense during the 2008 campaign. Obama said he didn't want to weaponize space and he wanted a system that would work. Watch that here.

North Korea May Launch Another Missile

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Navy following North Korea ship: