US, Poland strike deal for anti-missile bases

[pkpatriotic]

US, Poland strike deal for anti-missile bases | csmonitor.com
By Arthur Bright
from the August 16, 2008 edition
Washington will augment Poland's defenses with Patriot missiles in exchange for placing 10 missile defense interceptors in the Eastern European country. Russia opposes the move.

The United States and Poland have announced an agreement to put US anti-missile interceptors in Poland to defend the US and Europe from "rogue" missile attacks. But Russia, having recently invaded Georgia, sees itself as the agreement's target.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the deal, reached Thursday, would allow the US to place 10 anti-missile interceptors in Poland, in exchange for upgrading Polish military defenses with a battery of Patriot missiles.

Washington says the planned system, which is not yet operational, is needed to protect the U.S. and Europe from possible attacks by missile-armed "rogue states," such as Iran. The Kremlin, however, believes it is aimed at Russia's missile force and warns that it will worsen tensions....

In recent days, Polish leaders have said the fighting in the Caucasus justified Poland's demands it get additional security guarantees from the U.S. in exchange for allowing the antimissile base on its soil. But after the deal was announced, American and Polish officials sought to play down any connection to the current conflict.

"This is not linked to the situation in Georgia," the chief U.S. negotiator, John Rood, said after the pact was signed.

But in announcing the deal, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk noted that it included a "mutual commitment" between the US and Poland, which, the Times adds, appears "to be a reference to Russia, which has threatened to aim its nuclear-armed missiles at Poland – a former Soviet satellite – if it allows the U.S. site on its soil."

Russian officials were quick to express their displeasure with the missile deal. Russia's envoy to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Dmitry Rogozin, told Reuters that the timing of the agreement proves that Russia is its intended target.

"The fact that this was signed in a period of very difficult crisis in the relations between Russia and the United States over the situation in Georgia shows that, of course, the missile defense system will be deployed not against Iran but against the strategic potential of Russia," Dmitry Rogozin said in a telephone interview....

"I consider that the United States is not acting in a cautious manner in this situation," Rogozin said when asked about U.S.-Russian relations and the situation in Georgia.

"Instead of getting full moral and political support in the struggle against real aggression and ethnic cleansing, we have heard a mass of unpleasant words and threats. That will of course not strengthen our relations."

Mr. Rogozin was not the only Russian voice to criticize the deal. The Associated Press writes that Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the Russian general staff, warned that the deal "cannot go unpunished."

A Polskie Radio website, The News, reports that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov cancelled a trip to Warsaw meant to improve Polish-Russian relations while a Russian parliamentary official warned that Russia may now aim its rockets at Poland.

The BBC reports that US President George Bush was "very pleased" with the deal, but notes that a White House spokesperson denied that the agreement had anything to do with Russia. Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski made similar comments to the BBC.

"We agreed this negotiating phase a week ago, which was ... before the events in Georgia, and because of the US calendar there was some urgency," [Sikorski] said.

"But, what is crucial, and what decided the success of the talks over the last couple of days, was that the US offered us new proposals."

The Times of London suggests that the "new proposals" that cinched the deal were the US's agreement to deploy Patriot missiles, which will bolster Polish air defenses and "are supposed to reassure Poland in case the Russians start rattling their sabres."

At least one Russian official has said that the agreement's practical military impact is minor, however. RIA Novosti reports that Andrei Klimov, deputy head of the State Duma's international affairs committee, downplayed the strategic importance of the missile base as well as the timing of the agreement. "There might be a psychological element in it, but talks with Poland had been dragging on long enough beforehand," he said.

The agreement saw criticism not only in Russia, but in the West as well. The Huffington Post blogger Joe Cirincione wrote that the missile deal brings no security gains and is instead driven by proponents of an unproven technology.

The proposed deployment of missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic and the Russian-Georgia conflict are two separate issues. This is not about defending the democracy in Georgia; this is about ideologues trying to save a weapons system they have supported despite mounting evidence of its irrelevance to the threats America faces....

With the exception of those who have been drinking the missile defense Kool-aid, experts agree that long-range missile interception does not work. That is why Congress wisely ordered that no funds be spent on these European bases until after realistic tests can show the weapons can work and the Czech and the Polish parliaments approve any deal. Neither is likely before 2010.

Meanwhile, F. William Engdahl of the Center for Research on Globalisation, a Montreal-based think tank, argues that the US-Poland deal is "the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis."

Far from a defensive move to protect European NATO states from a Russian nuclear attack, as military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet.

 

[Cheetah786]

so in case of a war between Americans and Russians guess which state will be nuked first can some one here take a guess.

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Missile agreement with Poland intensifies danger of US-Russian clash

By Patrick Martin

WSWS - 16 August 2008

The agreement between the United States and the right-wing government of Poland to base a US anti-missile system in that country is the first major response of American imperialism to the Russian intervention in Georgia.

The Bush administration has pressed Poland and the Czech Republic to accept US anti-missile systems and radar installations on the pretext that they are being deployed to prevent an attack on Europe by Iran, which possesses neither the required ballistic missile warheads nor nuclear weapons. Despite vehement protests from Moscow, US officials have denied that the anti-missile systems represent a threat to Russia.

However, the circumstances in which the agreement with Poland was signed make clear that it is directed against Moscow. Long stalled by wrangling between Warsaw and Washington over Polish demands for high-tech anti-aircraft systems as the price for basing the missiles, the pact was wrapped up within days of the appearance of Polish President Lech Kaczynski alongside Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili at an anti-Russian rally in Tbilisi.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk declared ominously, “We have crossed the Rubicon,” after representatives of his government signed the accord in Warsaw. It is obvious that his comments were motivated not by fears of a mythical Iranian threat, but by concern over the Russian military, which fought two world wars on Polish soil in the twentieth century.

There are two exceptional features of the accord, added as incentives to Poland. First, the United States will immediately transfer a Patriot anti-missile battery from Germany to Slupsk on the Baltic Sea, about 100 miles from the Polish border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The New York Times noted: “American troops would join the Polish military, at least temporarily, at the front lines—facing east toward Russia.” The 110 American soldiers stationed there will serve as a sort of human tripwire, ensuring that any Polish-Russian conflict quickly involves the United States.

Secondly, the US agreed to an obligation to defend Poland in case of attack with greater speed than required under current procedures of NATO, which Poland joined in March 1999. “Poland and the Poles do not want to be in alliances in which assistance comes at some point later—it is no good when assistance comes to dead people,” Prime Minister Tusk said on Polish television. “Poland wants to be in alliances where assistance comes in the very first hours of—knock on wood—any possible conflict.”

Russian officials responded to the US-Polish agreement with apocalyptic language. General Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, said that Poland was “exposing itself to a strike, 100 percent.” He noted that Russian military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons, not only against any nation that conducts an attack on Russia with nuclear weapons, but “against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them.”

“The USA is busy with its own missile defense system,” he said. “It does not intend to defend Poland at this point. Poland lays itself open to attack by giving the USA permission to deploy the system. The country may become an object of Russia’s reaction. Such targets are destroyed in the first instance.”

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev denounced the agreement at a news conference, where he stood side-by-side with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. “The deployment of new anti-missile forces has as its aim the Russian Federation,” he said. “Therefore, any fairy tales about deterring other states, fairy tales that with the help of this system we will deter some sort of rogue states, no longer work.”

The logic of US policy, as the Polish agreement testifies, leads inexorably in the direction of a military confrontation between the United States and Russia, two massively armed nuclear powers. This raises once again, as in the years preceding 1914 and 1939, the specter of world war, this time with the likely consequence of nuclear annihilation.

It is not simply a matter of gauging the intentions of Bush and Cheney, scheduled to leave office in five months, or of their successor, either Obama or McCain. The events and the decisions of the past week have their own logic. The impending insertion of US military forces into what were once called the “buffer states,” the region separating Russia proper from Central Europe, has immense historical and political significance.

This region was the battleground in two world wars, in which tens of millions died—30 million in the Soviet Union alone as a result of the Nazi invasion through the very territory on which US anti-missile systems will now be deployed. (It is worth pointing out as well, that while the historical and political circumstances are different, Hitler’s geo-strategic aim was the same as Bush’s: to gain control of the oil resources of the Caspian basin.)

There are dozens of potential flashpoints in this vast territory—unresolved border disputes between Russia and many of the successor states of the former USSR, as well as conflicts involving Russian-populated enclaves such as Kaliningrad, next to Poland, and Trans-Dniestria, on the Moldova-Ukraine border, and huge Russian-speaking minorities in the Baltic states and Ukraine. Any one of these could become the spark for a military conflict in which the United States is now a potential combatant.

The Bush administration has maintained, in a series of leaks to the US media, that it sought to restrain Saakashvili from attacking the pro-Russian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and that the Georgian president ignored its advice. This version of events is entirely unbelievable, given the integration of US military advisers into the Georgian military command. But even if true, it would mean that Washington has so little control over events that a reckless nationalistic demagogue can use its backing to trigger a major international crisis. Such political arsonists play a major role in every country in Eastern Europe.

As George Friedman of Stratfor.com, a strategic analysis web site, detailed in an article published August 13: “It is inconceivable that the Americans were unaware of Georgia’s mobilization and intentions. It is also inconceivable that the Americans were unaware that the Russians had deployed substantial forces on the South Ossetian frontier. US technical intelligence, from satellite imagery and signals intelligence to unmanned aerial vehicles, could not miss the fact that thousands of Russian troops were moving to forward positions.”

While Friedman suggests that the apparent surprise of the Bush administration was an expression of its strategic incompetence, there is another and more sinister explanation: the US government wanted the military conflict to erupt, despite the inevitable Georgian rout at the hands of the Russian army, because the crisis would serve its ends, both internationally—viz., Poland—and domestically, where the Republican Party is relying on war fever to bolster its beleaguered presidential campaign.

In the wake of the ceasefire in Georgia, reluctantly signed by Saakashvili Friday with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressuring him in person, it has become even clearer that the week-long American media and diplomatic campaign over alleged Russian aggression is an example of the “big lie” technique.

It now turns out that the scale of the Russian military intervention was relatively small, with a total of 15,000 troops engaged, barely half the number that Georgia has under arms, suggesting that Moscow never intended to overrun the country. CNN reported Friday that the total number of Russian troops in Gori, the city whose occupation supposedly represented an attempt to cut Georgia in half, was only 200.

The bulk of the US accounts of the events in Georgia consisted of unconfirmed charges of Russian and Ossetian atrocities against Georgian civilians, with little or no reporting on the Georgian onslaught on South Ossetia that touched off the conflict in the first place.

The Russian ambassador to the United Nations, Vassily Churkin, denounced US claims that Russia was conducting a “war of terror” in Georgia. Such language was “absolutely unacceptable,” he said, “particularly from the lips of the permanent representative of a country whose actions we are aware of, including with regard to civilian populations in Iraq and Afghanistan and Serbia.”

There has been virtually no acknowledgement in the American media of the grotesque double standard being employed by the Bush administration, under which its own violations of international law and depredations against innocent civilians are ignored, while far less provocative actions by other powers are vilified and their leaders demonized.

In Georgia, for example, Russia deployed, just outside its borders, less than 10 percent of the number of American troops that have been dispatched thousands of miles to invade Iraq and Afghanistan, overthrow their governments and establish US-backed puppet regimes.

Yet Bush could declare, in a press statement Friday, “The days of satellites and spheres of influence are behind us.” The man who in 2002 branded three sovereign states “an axis of evil,” ultimately invading one and conducting economic warfare against the other two, continued: “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”

Senator John McCain, by far the most vocal advocate of a confrontational policy against Russia, sounded a similar delusional note, telling reporters during a Michigan presidential campaign appearance: “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.” The Republican presidential candidate has been the most fervent advocate of US military escalation in Iraq, while his rival, Democrat Barack Obama, is playing the same role in relation to Afghanistan.

The bipartisan unity of Bush, McCain and Obama over the Russo-Georgian conflict demonstrates again that the vast majority of the American people—who oppose the war in Iraq and have no interest in provoking a war with Russia—are disenfranchised in the presidential election. There has been virtually no public discussion about the implications of the US-Polish agreement, which could involve the American people in a military conflict of incalculable dimensions.

The crisis in Georgia has sent shock waves through international relations. The ramifications extend not only into Eastern Europe, as demonstrated by the Polish action, but to the wider Caucasus region, the Middle East and Central Asia.

In the Caucasus, the initial impact was the shutdown of pipeline segments which carry Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan through Georgia to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (B-T-C) pipeline was built with American support to provide an outlet for oil supplies to the world market independent of both Russia and Iran, which Washington regards as its two main adversaries in the region.

Both Turkey and Israel have been drawn into the crisis. President Bush declared that the US Navy would move to the Georgian coast to provide “humanitarian aid” and test Russia’s willingness to allow freedom of the seas. But Turkey must give its consent to the passage of warships through the straits connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Black Sea. State Department officials indicated that the naval deployment might have to be abandoned because of Turkish opposition.

Israel is also deeply implicated in the conflict. As the Israeli web site Ynet observed, “The fighting which broke out over the weekend between Russia and Georgia has brought Israel’s intensive involvement in the region into the limelight. This involvement includes the sale of advanced weapons to Georgia and the training of the Georgian army’s infantry forces.”

As for the Russian regime, Putin and Medvedev are pursuing a reactionary nationalist policy that appeals to the most backward moods in Russian society. Their arrogance and bullying only alienate the working people of Georgia, Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic States and the wider working class audience internationally.

The Putin regime is the instrument of the semi-criminal new bourgeoisie that emerged out of the dismantling of the Soviet Union, recruited in large measure from the ranks of the old Stalinist bureaucracy and possessing all its vices—above all, the national chauvinism that became the hallmark of Stalinism.

In the final analysis, the conflict between the United States and Russia is the inevitable outcome of the world crisis of the capitalist system, which takes the form not only of economic slump and financial convulsions, but of great-power conflict leading inexorably to imperialist war.

The only social force that can prevent imperialism from dragging mankind into a military holocaust is the international working class. It must be united and mobilized on the basis of the program of world socialist revolution to put an end to capitalism and the reactionary nation-state system, which are the root causes of militarism and war.

After Georgia conflict Missile agreement with Poland intensifies danger of US-Russian clash

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Russia could strike Poland over US shield: report

Moscow, Aug 16 (bdnews24.com/Reuters) - A top Russian general on Friday said Poland's deal with the United States to set up parts of a missile defense shield on Polish territory lays it open to a possible military strike, a Russian news agency reported.

Col-General Anatoliy Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of the general staff, told Interfax that Russian military doctrine would allow for a possible nuclear strike.

Poland agreed on Thursday to host elements of a U.S. global anti-missile system after Washington agreed to boost Poland's own military air defenses.

"The USA is engaged in an anti-missile defense for its own government, and not for Poland. And Poland, in deploying (elements of the system) opens itself to a military strike. That is 100 percent," Interfax quoted Nogovitsyn as saying.

Nogovitsyn said Russia allows nuclear weapons to be used in circumstances defined by its current security doctrine.

The Russian government revamped its national security doctrine in 2000, broadening the range of conflicts in which nuclear weapons could be used.

"It is written clearly: We will use it in instances against governments that have nuclear weapons; against allies of countries with nuclear weapons, if they somehow enable them," he said.

Washington says the missile system is aimed at protecting the United States and its allies from long-range missiles that could in the future be fired by Iran or groups such as al Qaeda.

The Kremlin has long said that was untrue, and has opposed the shield as a threat to Russia. The 10 interceptor missiles to be based at a site in northern Poland compare with Russia's own nuclear arsenal of more than 5,000 ballistic warheads.

In agreeing to deploy elements of the U.S. missile shield, Poland "becomes an actionable object. Those targets are destroyed in the first order," Nogovitsyn said.

Tension between Moscow and Washington has risen in the past week, since Georgia's attempt to re-take its separatist region of South Ossetia by force provoked a massive counter-attack by Russia.

Russia could strike Poland over US shield: report :: :: bdnews24.com ::

 

[BanglaBhoot]

Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War

By F. William Engdahl

URL of this article: Missile Defense: Washington and Poland just moved the World closer to War

Global Research, August 15, 2008

The signing on August 14 of an agreement between the governments of the United States and Poland to deploy on Polish soil US ‘interceptor missiles’ is the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis. Far from a defensive move to protect European NATO states from a Russian nuclear attack, as military strategists have pointed out, the US missiles in Poland pose a total existential threat to the future existence of the Russian nation. The Russian Government has repeatedly warned of this since US plans were first unveiled in early 2007. Now, despite repeated diplomatic attempts by Russia to come to an agreement with Washington, the Bush Administration, in the wake of a humiliating US defeat in Georgia, has pressured the Government of Poland to finally sign the pact. The consequences could be unthinkable for Europe and the planet.

The preliminary deal to place elements of the US global missile defense shield was signed by Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer and US chief negotiator John Rood on August 14. Under the terms, Washington plans to place 10 interceptor missiles in Poland coupled with a radar system in the Czech Republic, which it ludicrously claims are intended to counter possible attacks from what it calls "rogue states," including Iran.
To get the agreement Washington agreed to reinforce Poland's air defenses. The deal is still to be approved by the two countries' governments and Poland's parliament. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said in televised remarks that "the events in the Caucasus show clearly that such security guarantees are indispensable." The US-Polish missile talks had been dragging for months before recent hostilities in Georgia.

The Bush White House Press spoksperson, Dona Perino stated, officially, "We believe that missile defense is a substantial contribution to NATO's collective security." Officials say the interceptor base in Poland will be opened by 2012. The Czech Republic signed a deal to host a US radar on July 8.
The signing now insures an escalation of tensions between Russia and NATO and a new Cold War arms race in full force. It is important for readers to understand, as I detail painstakingly in my book, to be released this autumn, Full Spectrum Dominance: The National Security State and the Spread of Democracy, the ability of one of two opposing sides to put anti-missile missiles to within 90 miles of the territory of the other in even a primitive first-generation anti-missile missile array gives that side virtual victory in a nuclear balance of power and forces the other to consider unconditional surrender or to pre-emptively react by launching its nuclear strike before 2012. Senior Russian lawmakers said on Friday the agreement would damage security in Europe, and reiterated that Russia would now have to take steps to ensure its security.

Andrei Klimov, deputy head of the Russian State Duma's international affairs committee, said the deal was designed to demonstrate Warsaw's "loyalty to the US and receive material benefits. For the Americans, it is an opportunity to expand its military presence across the world, including closer to Russia. For NATO, this is an additional risk...many NATO countries are unhappy with this, including the Germans and the French."

Klimov called the agreement "a step back" toward the Cold War.

Russian response

The US plans to deploy a radar in the Czech Republic and 10 interceptor missiles in northern Poland as part of a US-controlled missile shield for Europe and North America, has been officially sold under the ludicrous argument that it is against possible attacks from "rogue states," including Iran. Last Spring then Russian President Vladimir Putin exposed the shallowness of the US propaganda line by offering a startled President Bush that Russia would offer the US use of Russian leased radar facilities in Azerbaijan on the Iran border to far better monitor Iran missile launches. The Bush Administration simply ignored the offer, exposing that their real target is Russia not "rogue states like Iran." Russia rightly views deployment of the US missile shield as a threat to its national security.

The latest Polish agreement advances a Russian response.
Russian officials earlier said Moscow could deploy its Iskander tactical missiles and strategic bombers in Belarus and Russia's westernmost exclave of Kaliningrad if Washington succeeded in its missile shield plans in Europe. Moscow also warned it could target its missiles on Poland.
Russia is also discussing to put in place an orbital ballistic missile system in response to US missile defense plans for Central Europe, according to a senior Russian military expert.

"A program could be implemented to create orbital ballistic missiles capable of reaching US territory via the South Pole, skirting US air defense bases," said Col. Gen. Viktor Yesin, former chief of staff of the Russian Strategic Missile Forces, now vice president of the Academy of Security, Defense and Law Enforcement Studies.

Previously as part of the post Cold War agreements with the US, agreements which have been ´significantly ignored by Washington as it pushed the borders of NATO ever closer to Moscow’s doorstep, the Soviet Union had abandoned such missiles in accordance with the START I Treaty.

Obama backs missile defense too

The deal would further divide European countries into what Barack Obama’s foreign policy adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski calls openly, US "vassals" and those pursuing more independent policies.

Any illusions that a Democratic Obama Presidency would mean a rollback of such provocative NATO and US military moves of recent years should be dismissed as dangerous wishful thinking. Obama’s foreign policy team in addition to father Zbigniew Brzezinski, includes Brzezinski’s son, Ian Brzezinski, current US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for European and NATO Affairs. Ian Brzezinski is a devout backer of US missile defense policy, as well as Kosovo independence and NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia.

 

[Cheetah786]

Ukraine offers West radar warning

Ukraine has said it is ready to make its missile early warning systems available to European nations following Russia's conflict with Georgia.

The foreign ministry said Moscow's abrogation earlier this year of an accord involving two tracking stations allowed it to co-operate with others.

President Viktor Yushchenko said his country could ensure its sovereignty only through collective security.

Last week, Kiev limited the freedom of movement of Russia's Black Sea Fleet.

The move came after several of the fleet's warships, based at Sevastopol in Ukraine's Crimea's peninsula, were deployed along the Georgian coastline.

Moscow denounced the restrictions as anti-Russian and said its military commanders would answer only to the Russian president.

'Unprecedented situation'

In a statement, Ukraine's foreign ministry said that because the country was no longer party to the 1992 agreement with Russia on the use of its radar stations, it could now "launch active co-operation with European nations".

This might include "the integration of Ukrainian elements of missile early warning and space control systems with those of foreign countries that are interested in gathering space data", it said.

Earlier this week, President Yushchenko issued a decree putting an end to Ukraine's participation in the accord in view of Russia's abrogation of it.

He said the situation was unprecedented and showed that his country could only ensure its national sovereignty through collective security.

Only that, he said, "could prevent any actions like those which occurred on 7-8 August at first in South Ossetia, and then in other regions of Georgia".

BBC diplomatic correspondent James Robbins says the decision is evidence Ukraine is now more desperate to embrace the West as its fear of Russia intensifies and Moscow seemingly becomes more determined to prevent any neighbouring states from joining Nato.

Russia clearly sees Nato as America's sphere of influence, despite US President George W Bush's insistence that it is a purely defensive alliance of sovereign democracies, our correspondent says.

Increasingly, the events of the past 10 days demonstrate Russia has gone back to arm-wrestling with its neighbours and the West after the immediate post-Soviet years, when it felt too weak, he adds.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Ukraine offers West radar warning<-----Link

 

[Cheetah786]

Russia is considering arming its Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads for the first time since the cold war, senior military sources warned last night.

The move, in response to American plans for a missile defence shield in Europe, would heighten tensions raised by the advance of Russian forces to within 20 miles of Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, yesterday.

Under the Russian plans, nuclear warheads could be supplied to submarines, cruisers and fighter bombers of the Baltic fleet based in Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave between the European Union countries of Poland and Lithuania. A senior military source in Moscow said the fleet had suffered from underfunding since the collapse of communism. “That will change now,” said the source.

“In view of America’s determination to set up a missile defence shield in Europe, the military is reviewing all its plans to give Washington an adequate response.”

The proposal to bring back nuclear warheads was condemned by Kurt Volker, the US ambassador to Nato, who said he knew of the threat.

“It is really unfortunate that Russia chooses to react by putting nuclear warheads in different places – if indeed it does that – when the rest of the world is not looking at some kind of old-fashioned superpower conflict,” he said.

The warnings came 24 hours after Russia told Poland that it could face a nuclear strike for agreeing to let the United States station components of the missile defence shield on its soil.

The Russian military also said it would ignore attempts to restrict the movement of its Black Sea fleet in and out of Sebastopol, in Ukraine. The Crimean port was emerging as a potential flashpoint in Russia’s efforts to prevent former Soviet countries on its borders from joining Nato.

This weekend Ukraine further angered Russian officials by offering to create a joint missile defence network with western countries.

The Russians have already indicated that they may point nuclear missiles at western Europe from bases in Kaliningrad and Belarus. They are also said to be thinking of reviving a military presence in Cuba.

In Georgia, Russian forces extended their reach across the west of the country yesterday, occupying several towns, seizing control of a main road and blowing up a railway bridge. Working with Abkhazian fighters they seized several Georgian villages and the Enguri power station. They pulled out of Igoeti, a village near the capital, after President Dmitry Medvedev signed a ceasefire agreement. The deal gave the Russians the right to continue patrolling “a few miles” inside Georgia. President George W Bush called the signing a “hopeful step”.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, seized the initiative with a lightning trip to Tbilisi, becoming the first British politician to meet President Mikhail Saakashvili since the conflict began. Critics have accused government ministers of dithering.

Writing in today’s Sunday Times, Cameron says: “Russian armies can’t march into other countries while Russian shoppers carry on marching into Selfridges.”

Russia&rsquo;s new nuclear challenge to Europe - Times Online<---Link