We've always been told that this system wasn't aimed at Russia, but it's worth noting that the latter was the first country to announce its satisfaction over the reports about the plan being dropped. Moscow has also announced that in exchange, it has renounced deploying supplementary missiles in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave surrounded by European Union territory. This is enough indication to show that this project had little to do with Afghanistan or Iran and was mainly about Russia.The overhaul of this costly project allows the two countries to develop their cooperation in several areas, such as energy, international security and the global financial crisis. Besides, if these two countries start adopting similar positions about global and regional issues, they will definitely have a more coercive power over some other countries. In other words, it would be easier to find solutions to civil wars, conflicts and state-building issues.
Nevertheless, this is also the beginning of a difficult period for those who had hoped that the Russian-American rivalry would keep growing. As an example, in case of rapprochement between NATO and Russia, what will countries that have shaped their policies according to the hypothetical Russia-NATO antagonism do? When this rapprochement is put to the test in tangible subjects, such as North Korea, Iran, Georgia or Ukraine, many countries will oscillate while they try to adapt their foreign policy to this new reality.
Even within Russia and the US, some disapproving voices are getting louder. Especially in the US, several people claim that Barack Obama is about to make a historic mistake, and they question how the US will be able to stop Iran if the latter decides to hit Israel one day. It's not known if Israel and Iran will, in the near future, engage in a bilateral war, but for warmongers, this doesn't really matter. For them, it's enough to have a remote risk of war to get the pretext of deploying missiles in the Middle East or in the Caucasus, to establish defense systems or to implement other military initiatives.
The US and Russia will probably choose to explore their new cooperation in order to respond to the existing global security threats. In this context, some US missiles and some Russian radar systems may be used jointly. We will ignore at this point against whom they can be used, but these two countries should have an idea about it; anyway, they can always use an ambiguous excuse such as “global terrorism.” Maybe both Russia and the US will have to call on a third country for help that can contribute to establishing such a partnership, a country that gets along with both Russia and the US, a country where both countries invest and which both countries need, such as Turkey, for example.
President Obama insists that the missile defense plan was not cancelled but reviewed, that the system will be put in place in a more flexible and more technologically advanced manner. Maybe the new version includes the positioning of Patriot interceptor missiles in Turkey and the use of Russian radar systems. It's understandable from Washington and Moscow's perspective to cooperate in order to destroy missiles that have fallen into the “wrong hands.” What is not easy to understand is why Turkey would embark on such cooperation while it is trying at the same time to pursue a “zero problems with its neighbors” policy based on a peace approach. How can Turkey be helpful to Russia or to the US while putting itself and its energy supply lines under great risk?
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