Jeffrey Goldberg and Marty Peretz are both angry with the administration that cancelling missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic didn't win Russian support for greater pressure on Iran.

Why would it? We said missile defense wouldn't work, the technology wasn't there, the plan was a boondogle. We were pretty public about these comments. Why did we think they wouldn't be heard in Moscow? (Psst ... the new administration doesn't want to spend money on a system they don't think works). So why should any rational actor say, You stopped work on something you said wouldn't work, now we are supposed to give you something substantial in return? A working, deployed system is another thing--but that's not what we had in place. And no one should be surprised at the reaction.

Posted by Nikolas Gvosdev at 10/15/2009 01:24:20 PM |