Is our offer to Russia (again). This time the president is stating it publicly:

“I know Russia opposes the planned configuration for missile defence in Europe . . . I have made it clear that this system is directed at preventing a potential attack from Iran and has nothing to do with Russia,” Mr Obama said in a speech to students graduating from Moscow’s New Economic School.

“I want us to work together on a missile defence architecture that makes us all safer. But if the threat from Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes is eliminated, the driving force for missile defence in Europe will be eliminated. That is in our mutual interest.”

Your Volgi went into this at a little length last time this proposal surfaced back in March. There’s not a lot to add at this late date. The Russians don’t feel threatened by the Iranian bomb because they’re on pretty cordial terms with Tehran, and the mullahs known that nuking Russia is a quick way to get their entire country turned into a sheet of glass.*

Anyway, for obvious reasons, I don’t think this proposal will gain much traction, as the Russians have very little to gain by it. They know the Czech-Polish missile shield is no threat to them. That’s a tactic, not a real objective. They’ll only sell the Iranians out if they win something really serious from us.

*They might claim not to be worried about losing a couple million people to an Israeli counterstrike, but there’s no way they’d risk retaliation on the enormous scale that Russian’s (expanding) missile forces could inflict. Then, you say, they’d obviously never risk striking us, even through a terrorist proxy. Really? You think they have the bedrock confidence that doing so is complete and utter suicide? I hope so, but I wonder.

Confucius, Œc. Vol.

Don’t ask impertinent questions like that jackass Adept Lu.