Dienstbier: US unlikely to build radar base in Czech Republic
Two weeks into the new Obama administration some have expressed doubts over the future of US missile defence in central Europe. Last year the Czech Republic signed two treaties with the US on the stationing of a radar base on Czech soil – part of a broader defence shield – but on Sunday the head of the Czech foreign affairs committee, Jiří Dienstbier, expressed doubts it would ever be built. In his view, the US currently has other priorities, and he told Czech TV, the only way the radar would ever be deployed in the Czech Republic would be with NATO and Russian involvement. Earlier Jan Velinger spoke to Jiří Dienstbier on the phone from Kladno. He asked him to explain the apparent shift by US and why he thinks the radar in the Czech Republic is unlikely.
Are there any conditions under which the system could go forward – say under NATO, or together with Russia?
“Well, the basic problem is that we have to debate in Europe and the US as well as other players on the world scene what are the current global dangers and how we can challenge them. If we find agreement between all these players that an anti-missile system is needed, than we can discuss it. But - in my view –this was just a Bush programme which they then tried to implant in NATO and Europe - the so-called New Europe, as coined by Donald Rumsfeld. But now no one wants it anymore.”
You say that no one wants it, but it seems to me, that the Czech and Polish governments want it more than the US – something that was suggested by Zbigniew Brezinski - the former national advisor to Jimmy Carter – on Sunday,
“Zbigniew Brezinski is absolutely right. Current Czech representatives as well as their Polish counterparts invested too much political capital to convince their populations that the system was needed. But even now they haven’t succeeded: in the Czech Republic almost 70 percent are against. But it is now difficult for the government to step away from the project.”
