There had also been technological advances in airborne, space-based, and ground-based sensors that considerably outperformed the fixed-site radar originally intended for the Czech Republic. These new sensors not only would allow our system to be integrated with partner countries’ warning systems, but also could make better use of radars already operating across the globe, including updated Cold War–era installations. Cartwright, former commander of Strategic Command, was a strong and early advocate for a new approach, which was affirmed by the early findings of the Pentagon-led Ballistic Missile Defense Review, begun in March 2009.
Based on all available information, the U.S. national security leadership, military and civilian, concluded that our priorities should be to work with allies and partners to strengthen regional deterrence architectures; to pursue a “phased adaptive,” or evolutionary, approach to missile defense within each region, tailored to the threats and circumstances unique to that region; and because global demand for missile defense assets over the following decade might exceed supply, to make them mobile so they could be shifted from region to region as circumstances required.
Independent of these findings and assessments, in preparing the fiscal year 2010 budget, I decided to cancel several huge, expensive, and failing missile defense programs, such as the airborne laser and the kinetic energy interceptor, as described earlier. At the same time, I decided to keep the number of silo-based GBIs in Alaska and California at thirty rather than expanding the deployment to forty-four, and I authorized continued research, development, and testing of our defenses against the long-range-missile threat from Iranian and North Korean missiles. (I also canceled completion of a second field of silos for the GBIs at Fort Greely, but after visiting there a few months later and seeing how close they were to completion, I reversed myself and approved finishing the second field. I was no expert but was always willing to listen to those who were.) Meanwhile, reflecting the new emphasis on regional missile defense, I allocated a great deal of money in the budget to accelerate building the inventory of SM-3 missile interceptors, as well as other regional missile defense systems. I also agreed to fund improved missile defense capability on six more destroyers.
I was determined to increase our capability as quickly as possible to protect our deployed forces and our allies. We briefed Congress on these changes on several occasions between May and July, and the response was generally favorable. The only opposition was focused on my cancellation of several of the big—and failing—development programs.
Those who would later charge that Obama walked away from the third site in Europe to please the Russians seemed oblivious to growing Polish and Czech opposition to the site and, more important, to the reality that the Defense Department was already reordering its missile defense priorities to focus on the immediate short- to medium-range-missile threat. While there certainly were some in the State Department and the White House who believed the third site in Europe was incompatible with the Russian “reset,” we in Defense did not. Making the Russians happy wasn’t exactly on my to-do list.
In August, the NSS asked the Defense Department to prepare a paper on what had changed to warrant a new direction for missile defense in Europe, and we laid it all out. The principals met on September 1, 2009, and agreed to recommend that the president approve the phased adaptive approach to missile defense in Europe, while agreeing to my proposal to guard against the longer-term threat by keeping open the option for eventually deploying European-based radar and GBIs. The continued investment in GBIs was opposed by some Obama appointees at the State Department and the NSS. We agreed to continue to seek opportunities for cooperation with Russia, including the possible integration of one of their radars that could provide useful tracking data. I formally proposed the Phased-Adaptive Approach in a memorandum to the president on September 11, nearly three years after proposing the third site to President Bush. Times, technology, and threats change. We had to change with them.
Then, as so often happened, a leak made us look like a bunch of bumbling fools, oblivious to the sensitivities of our allies. To date, there had been none of the obligatory consultations with Congress or our allies about what would be the first major reversal of a Bush national security policy and a major shift in the U.S. missile defense strategy in Europe. When we learned on September 16 that the details of the new missile defense approach were in the hands of the press, we had to act quickly to correct that. That evening Hillary dispatched a team of officials from both State and Defense to brief European governments and NATO. The president called the prime ministers of both Poland and the Czech Republic to inform them of his decision and to promise that he was dispatching administration officials immediately to Warsaw and Prague to brief them.
The morning of the seventeenth, the president publicly announced the new approach. In one of those unanticipated and unfortunate coincidences, that month was the seventieth anniversary of the Nazi invasion of Poland. Some news stories asserted that Poland had again been “betrayed,” and most suggested that our timing had added insult to injury with the Poles. The president and his domestic advisers clearly wanted me out front to defend this new strategy; I had recommended the earlier approach to Bush and had the credibility to justify a different approach under Obama. It was neither the first nor last time under Obama that I was used to provide political cover, but it was okay in this instance since I sincerely believed the new program was better—more in accord with the political realities in Europe and more effective against the emerging Iranian threat. And I had been successful in preserving the GBI alternative, at least for the time being.
By the time General Cartwright and I sallied forth to the press room to talk about the new program, Republicans in Congress and former Bush officials were all over the airwaves harshly criticizing this “betrayal” of our allies in order to curry favor with the Russians. Senator McCain called the move “seriously misguided.” I told the press what had prompted the reassessment and explained the details of the planned system. In response to a question, I said the Russians had to accept that there was going to be a missile defense system in Europe. We hoped they’d join it, but we were going to proceed regardless.
The damage from the leak was manageable in Europe. I thought the Polish and Czech governments were probably relieved that they could avoid a showdown with their parliaments; the plan would have lost for sure in Prague and probably in Warsaw. In my calls with both defense ministers on the eighteenth, I said we still wanted them to be involved with missile defense in Europe.
Under both the Bush and Obama missile defense plans, I thought our goals and those of the Polish and Czech leaders were completely different, although no one ever had the audacity to say so publicly or even privately. Their goals were political, having nothing to do with Iran and everything to do with Russia: the U.S. deployments on their soil would be a concrete manifestation of U.S. security guarantees against Russia beyond our commitments under the NATO treaty. Our goals under both plans were primarily military: to deal with a rapidly evolving Iranian missile threat, as we repeatedly made clear to them and to the Russians. Indeed, Rice and I had told Putin that if the Iranian missile program went away, so would the need for U.S. missile defenses in Europe. That’s why I had offered to Putin in 2008 to delay making the sites operational until the Iranians flight-tested a missile that could reach Europe. Obama would catch hell for saying nearly the same thing to Russian president Medvedev.
The New York Times bottom-lined all this with the headline “Obama Reshapes a Missile Shield to Blunt Tehran,” and The Washington Post subheadline was “New Plan Designed to Confront Iran’s Capabilities More Directly.” I never understood the fury of the U.S. critics. The new plan would get defenses operational in Europe and for our 80,000 troops there years earlier than the Bush approach, while still going forward with development of the ground-based interceptors for homeland defense. Obama would still be taking heat for “canceling” missile defense in Europe during the 2012 election.