Russian Experts Disagree On Missile Defense Guarantees

(Source: RIA Novosti)

Follow-up reports in Moscow in the aftermath of the failed NATO-Russia Council discussions on European missile defense underscored the fact that any idea of a joint system, as opposed to a joint concept, was dead. Aleksei Arbatov, a leading Russian expert on strategic issues and Director of the Center for International Security at IMEMO, repeated President Dmitry Medvedev’s remarks at Deauville, but put them in the context of the dialectical development of ballistic missiles and missile defense systems. This context made “ballistic missile defense as one of the most complex and contradictory problems of contemporary military-strategic, technological and political issues over which experts have argued for decades” (Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, June 17).