Reflecting Warsaw's long-standing anger over the 2009 cancellation of a controversial Bush-era anti-ballistic missile system President Bronislaw Komorowski said Poland should build its own missile shield to ensure national defence.
"Our mistake was that by accepting the American offer of a shield we failed to take into account the political risk associated with a change of president," said Mr Komorowski in a magazine interview. "We paid a high political price. We do not want to make the same mistake again. We must have a missile system as an element of our defences."
Last week, Mitt Romney used a visit to Warsaw to condemn Russia as a "country where the desire to be free is met with brutal oppression" in a bid to establish hawkish credentials ahead of the US elections.
The Republican candidate has accused President Obama of "abandoning Poland" by cancelling the missile defence plan in order to aid his much-criticised attempt to "reset" relations with Moscow.
Mr Obama's decision to scrap George W Bush's original missile shield dismayed the Polish government, especially as many Poles saw it as an attempt to appease Russia, Poland's historical and Cold War foe.
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#1
I wouldn't trust the US as an ally either. Every 4-8 years the foreign policy changes, sometimes a complete flip of what it was before based on who is now in charge and you are left holding the bag as an ally.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
