| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
THE GEORGE W. BUSH ADMINISTRATION, which has departed from the political arena, has left new President Barack Obama not only a host of unresolved regional problems, but also an array of issues concerning such a sensitive subject as arms control. The White House has effectively shelved such problem areas as further reduction of strategic offensive weapons (capabilities), tactical nuclear weapons, and control over five key types of conventional weapons in Europe, failing, together with its NATO partners, to ratify the well-known Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE).
Now Moscow and Washington will also have to deal with such a sensitive issue as the so called European missile shield - i.e., the deployment of U.S. strategic missile defense systems in Poland and the Czech Republic, planned by the previous Republican administration for deployment by 2011 - if established, they will account for around 25% of the U.S.'s entire strategic missile defense capability.
In this context, special attention also needs to be given to such a problem as the strategic and tactical missile defense system 1 that the United States has widely deployed and constantly upgrades in the Asia Pacific region - a system that has been left, as it were, outside the international debate due to the prominence given to Washington's plans to extend its "missile shield" to eastern Europe, closer to the Russian borders
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