The rise and fall of the Third Site of Ballistic Missile Defense

Abstract

The present article examines the tumultuous development in the issue of the Third Site (also known as the Third Pillar) of the US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) that was planned to be hosted by the Czech Republic and Poland. The article analyzes the entire ‘life cycle’ of the project, from its formal proposal in 2007 by the former U.S. President George W. Bush to its cancellation in 2009 by the current U.S. President Barak Obama. Without any doubts, the Third Site of BMD put Poland and the Czech Republic at the centre of international security politics and as such allows one to see how the two post-communist countries acted and reacted to related international positions, expectations and challenges. A detailed analysis of this issue, nevertheless, does not exhaust aims of this article. Whether brief or detailed, any look at the coverage of the issue reveals that the Czech Republic and Poland have invariably been lumped together through the construction of the imagery of the New Europe as a homogeneous political bloc. It will be argued that such a view is flawed and needs refinement. In order to back the claim, the issue of the Third Site is put into a historical context, revealing that the differences between the Czech and Polish international-security preferences and expectations after the end of the Cold War have been quite stable – including the most recent development after the project has been shelved by the United States, and can thus be conceived of in dialectical terms.

Re-development of a former military training area—The case of Brdy told from a local actors’ perspective

“…The concept of military geographies (e.g. Woodward, 2004;Pearson et al, 2010;Coates et al, 2011;Dudley, 2013;Seidl, Chromý and Habartová, 2010;Hercik et al, 2014) points to the uniqueness of military land development as "white" areas on planned and regulated land development.…”

Construction of Сategories ‘Strength’ and ‘Weakness’ in Russian and Polish Foreign Policy Discourse

“…Poland's membership in the EU and NATO did not end its apprehensive attitude towards Russia, and in 2008 an agreement was reached between Poland and the U.S. about hosting U.S. anti-ballistic missile (ABM) systems on the territory of Poland (Hynek and Stritecky 2010). The Polish government legitimised the need for the ABM system through promotion of the alleged Russian threat to Poland.…”

Regional and International Relations of Central Europe

“…The Czech political representatives reacted to the US request during the Iraqi crisis with hesitation. Most symbolically, the Czech representation was unwilling to clearly express whether or not the country was part of the Coalition of the Willing (Hynek and Střítecký 2010a). This Czech 'fence-sitting stance' was designed by the ruling centre-left coalition led by the Social Democratic Party.…”

“…Similarly, the Afghan issue became heavily politicized and the discomfort of the Czech Left even led to the unprecedented rejection of the foreign mission plan in the House of Commons in 2008 (Střítecký 2010). The gap in the security policy's positions was also heavily widened by the Social Democratic opposition to the plan for the third pillar of the US missile defence (in contrast with the usual Polish consensus on such issues) (Střítecký and Hynek 2010a). …”

“…The officials never reacted to the omnipotent critical reflection of the development in Afghanistan and very sensitively twisted the oppositional appeals to state that they allegedly targeted the Czech NATO membership (Hynek and Eichler 2011: 230-8). In that sense this approach resembles the Czech attitude towards the third pillar of US missile defence, where the Czech representatives mechanistically transferred US discourse to the Czech situation, as opposed to Poland, which developed a strong national legitimization for the project (Hynek and Střítecký 2010a). Hence the Czech Atlanticism shows strong signs of followership combined with the phenomenon of post-decisional politics, in which it is assumed that the accepted external decision should not be discussed internally (Hynek and Eichler 2011: 238;Střítecký and Eichler 2012).…”