After US President Barack Obama abandoned a European defense missile shield that the Czech Republic had agreed to be part of – over angry protests from its own citizens – US Vice President Joe Biden came to Prague to mend ties and urged them take part in a new NATO-wide missile defense system. “The prime minister and I talked about NATO’s commitment to produce a new strategic concept which will adapt our alliance to the threats of the 21st Century,” Biden said after meeting Czech Prime Minister Jan Fischer. “I urged the prime minister to make sure that the final product has a distinctly Czech accent,” he added.
Obama decided to replace a planned missile shield championed by his predecessor, George W Bush, which involved building bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, with a mobile system. Biden said that he received assurances that the Czech Republic was ready to play a role in the new project. But the vagueness of his words also appeared to signal that he was not in Prague to make a specific offer and to leave the initiative up to the Czechs.
“The Czech Republic stepped up and did their part in the previous missile defense plan,” he said in reference to the ditched Bush-era project, which counted on a radar station in the Czech Republic and a silo with 10 interceptor missiles in Poland. “Today we discussed the potential the Czech Republic could play in a new architecture, a better architecture, an architecture that actually has a capacity to protect Europe,” he said. A high-level defense team was planned to travel for talks in Prague in early November, Biden said.
While Fischer said that Obama’s decision to give up US bases in Eastern Europe left his caretaker government stoic, the move has sparked anxiety across the region and disappointed Atlanticist Czech politicians who, into a great extent, bet their political careers on supporting the US facility. Some of them expressed concern that Obama was skipping the region in an effort to improve ties with an increasingly assertive Russia, which strongly opposed the abandoned missile shield project as a security threat. During his three-day Eastern Europe tour, which also took him to Warsaw and Bucharest, Biden sought to heal strained relations. In Prague, he praised Czechs for deploying troops to military missions abroad, such as in Afghanistan, and for their performance in NATO, which they joined 10 years ago.
In a recent letter, prominent Eastern Europeans urged Obama not to sacrifice their region in a bid to improve relations with an increasingly assertive Russia, which fiercely opposed the Bush-era missile shield plan. One of the signatories, former Czech president Vaclav Havel, told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty ahead of Biden’s Prague visit that he expects him to “articulate, in a new way, America’s interest in this region.”
In Europe, the US vice president met with leaders in Warsaw and Bucharest. He assured Poles that the US was committed to providing security to their country and would not bypass Warsaw when making deals with Moscow. In Romania, he backed Moldova, a former Soviet republic, in moving closer to democracy and the European Union and thanked Bucharest for supporting new missile shield plans.
Poland is ready to participate in the Obama administration’s plan for a U.S. SM-3 missile interception system in Europe, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said after meeting Joe Biden. “Poland finds the new anti-missile project very interesting and important and, in the appropriate scale, we are ready to participate,” Tusk said. The Obama administration had proposed a reconfigured system that envisioned the deployment first of sea-based interceptors and then of land-based systems. Under this arrangement, Poland could host SM-3 interceptors targeting short and medium-range missiles.
The new anti-missile defense system would strengthen Europe’s and NATO’s defense, Biden said at a press briefing with Tusk. The US appreciated that Poland made a new step and approved plans to deploy elements of a defense plan, he stressed. “Our anti-missile defense system ensures security in the face of a growing threat to Europe, including Poland. The US will be able now to do it more effectively than it could be done by the previous system,” Biden added. He emphasized US friendship with Poland and its obligation under Article 5 of the NATO treaty to come to Poland’s defense if it were ever attacked. “Make no mistake, our commitment to Poland is unwavering,” he said.
 Tusk “highly appreciated” Biden’s declaration that Poland was “necessary in the global plan not only as a country needing help. We have become a partner from whom the U.S. expects activity and co- responsibility,” he added.
The new system, which replaces a recently scrapped Bush-era plan that would have based planned facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic, is better constructed to protect both Romania and the United States, Biden told Romanian President Traian Basescu. The new system, details of which are few according to some experts, would use short and medium-range systems to counter potential threats from Iran. The previous system, which relied on long-range systems, had been viewed as a potential threat by Russia. Biden also stressed that the missile defense system is not targeted at Russia.