Background

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was founded in Washington in 1949. The original purpose of the Alliance was, according to Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General, purpose of the Alliance was to “…keep the Soviets out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.” Primary focus of the Alliance was military and American security guarantees, the American nuclear deterrent will prevent seizure of the rest of the Europe by the Soviet armies that had enormous conventional superiority.

Indeed, many things changed after the breakup of the Soviet Union and dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the military alliance counterbalancing the NATO. Patterns of cooperation slowly emerged and although not supported by the USA from the very beginning eventually it became clear that it is more than desirable to support former Warsaw Pact countries to join the Alliance which eventually happened in 1999 and 2004.

In 1999, NATO’s Strategic Concept recognized the need for missile defense to counter nuclear, biological, and chemical threats.

 

Current Development

At the Prague summit in 2002 it was agreed that a new NATO Missile Defense Feasibility Study will explore opportunities to examine options for protecting its territory, forces and population against the wide scope of emerging threats. This effort was in tandem with work on building an NATO Active Layered Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) for the protection of deployed forces, program launched in 2005.

Major development took place after the Bucharest summit in 2008 where, for the first time in NATO history, member states concluded most importantly that missile defense proliferation is an increasing threat, missile defenses are an important part of an effective response to the threat.

 

Active Layered Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD)

This system is specifically designed to protect troops in a specific area against short- and medium-range ballistic missiles by early 2010. Components of this multi-layered system are low- and high-altitude defenses, early warning sensors, radar and various interceptors. NATO should be responsible for development, facilitation and integration of battle management, communications, command, control and intelligence aspects of the system so the interoperability of the system is assured.

 

Missile Defense for the protection of NATO territory

A Missile Defense Feasibility Study concluded that missile defense is technologically feasible and the results became basis of provision of technical results for ongoing political and military discussions about the NATO missile defense. Member states concluded that the US-proposed missile defense system at a time consisting of an X-band radar in the Czech Republic and Ground-Based Interceptors in Poland, will become part of the missile defense architecture of NATO.

Theatre Missile Defense cooperation with Russia

Cooperation in missile defense issues exploring interoperability and joint opportunities is under way.

 

Russia welcomed Obama Administration plan to replace proposed “Third Site” with Ground-Based SM-3, but it is not willing to exercise pressure on Iran where it has significant economic interests (selling An-148 aircraft last year and having contract on S-300 Air Defense Missiles). On the contrary, Russia called on the US to make more concessions, which is not the reaction that the Administration expected.