WORD COUNT 643                                                                                                                                                                            JUNE 11, 2008

STAR WARS SUFFERS CZECH INDIGESTION – by Victoria Samson 

Three weeks can seem like ages if you’re not eating. Just ask Jan Tamas and Jan Bednar. On May 13, these two Czech activists went on a hunger strike to protest the possible placement of a U.S. missile defense radar in the Czech Republic.  

The United States wishes to establish a European site for its missile defense systems and has asked the Czech Republic to host modified X-band radar. It has also asked Poland to host 10 interceptors. 

The primary purpose of the European missile defense site, expected to cost over $4 billion, would be to defend against long-range Iranian ballistic missiles. These missiles don’t actually exist nor are expected to exist for the better part of a decade, if ever.  

Nonetheless, the United States has been hustling to get official agreements signed with Poland and the Czech Republic before President George W. Bush leaves office next January. Presumably, this is being done with the intent of getting sufficient institutional momentum behind the European missile defense site so that no matter who succeeds Bush in office, it will manage to continue more or less unabated.  

In addition to disputes over the immediacy of this threat, the proposed U.S. missile defense site in Europe has been controversial on both sides of the Atlantic. The U.S. Congress cut $85 million from the site’s funding in last year’s budget appropriations, mostly because it was worried about the technologies involved.  

The interceptor that would be fielded in Poland is still in an embryonic stage of development. It is being modeled after an existing interceptor that has been deployed in Alaska and California despite still being in the midst of development and having had a mediocre 50 percent success rate during testing. In the current budget debate, Congress has indicated it will put restrictions on funding until the interceptor planned for Poland has successfully completed its own testing. Since the first test of that interceptor isn’t planned until the middle of 2010, it would appear that there isn’t a rush to push the European missile defense sites through.  

The government of the Czech Republic is very much in favor of hosting the radar. Their interest lies in establishing closer ties to the United States, and if they were to get some defense contracts, upgraded weapon systems, or more visas for their citizens by doing so, well, all the better. The agreement officially signing the Czech Republic on to the program has been delayed several times in order to spell out all of its terms and conditions. According to the latest reports, it may be finished this July.  

There is one small problem: according to public opinion polls, over two-thirds of the Czech people do not want to cooperate with the United States on missile defense. They worry about becoming a target themselves if they were to do so. That’s where the hunger strikers come in. Their goals for the strike were to get their government to stave off missile defense negotiations with the United States and hold a referendum to commence “real open democratic discussion" on the whole matter. Czech Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek refused to meet with the protestors, calling the strike “absolutely irregular means" of dissent. Czech Minister of Defense Vlasta Parkanova was blunter: “[T]his amounts to blackmail and I know that one must not discuss with blackmailers.” 

The strikers finished their protest on June 2, satisfied that they had brought sufficient attention to the subject. But this fight isn’t over. A chain hunger strike is being organized, with various politicians, journalists and other interested public figures symbolically planning not to eat for 24- or 48-hour periods to keep the protest in the public eye. Will U.S. desire for a European missile defense that relies on unproven technology to meet an imaginary threat override the wishes of the Czech people? We will soon find out. 

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Victoria Samson is a research analyst for the Center for Defense Information, a non-partisan think tank in Washington, D.C., that focuses on military and security issues -- www.cdi.org. A photo of Victoria Samson is available at: www.minutemanmedia.org  

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