Just when you thought Russia had outgrown its appetite for other peoples' territory it invades Georgia and then threatens Poland with nuclear destruction. What was Poland's offense? It has accepted American missiles designed to shoot down incoming ICBMs.
As Powerline pithily puts it:
Yesterday the U.S and Poland announced that after 18 months of negotiations, they have reached on an agreement whereby the U.S. will furnish Patriot missiles to Poland and will locate a missile interceptor base in that country.
This outraged Russia, which believes that it has the right to point missiles at its neighbors, but its neighbors have no right to defend themselves against those missiles.
Gen. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, the deputy chief of staff, blustered that "Poland, by deploying (the system) is exposing itself to a strike-100 percent".
He added that Russia's military doctrine sanctions the use of nuclear weapons "against the allies of countries having nuclear weapons if they in some way help them." That would include elements of strategic deterrence systems, Nogovitsyn said.
This is a little bit like the U.S. threatening Cuba or Venezuela with a nuclear attack because they install Russian made anti-aircraft systems.
All that remains to complete this unpleasant trip down memory lane is for Putin to go to the United Nations and bang his shoe on the lecturn, and for our own home grown Russian apologists to tell us how this is all our fault.
I don't know at this point whether Poland really has much to fear from the Russians, but if I were a Ukrainian I'd be very, very concerned.
RLC
