Word: shields
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Moscow to support new U.S. sanctions against Iran. At the same time, Russian officials must be smiling wryly at Obama's explanation that the plan was changed because of revised intelligence estimates of Iran's missile capability - since Moscow had never taken seriously the U.S. explanation that the shield was designed to protect against an Iranian threat. (An interceptor system targeting Iranian missiles would be more appropriately stationed in Jordan than in Poland, after all, and Moscow's vehement opposition to the planned deployment on its doorstep was based on fears that it actually was aimed at weakening Russia...
...Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin made it clear from the outset of the Obama Administration that any effort to "reset" U.S.-Russian relations would require that Washington do more to accommodate Russian concerns - first and foremost, its opposition to the missile shield and to NATO's expansion into former Soviet-bloc countries. Soon after taking office, Obama reportedly wrote a private letter to Medvedev suggesting that the missile shield would become unnecessary were Russia to help the U.S. prevent Iran from developing into a nuclear threat. The Russians also made the missile shield a central issue...
Given the link drawn by Obama, soon after he took office, between Russian cooperation on Iran and the missile-defense plan, it's hard not to read the shelving of the missile shield as at least partly a move to enlist Russian support on Iran. It's not at all certain, however, that such support will be forthcoming. Moscow does not believe Iran is currently pursuing nuclear weapons, and its adversarial relationship with Washington will be maintained as long as the likes of Ukraine and Georgia are being considered for NATO membership. Critics in Washington are already accusing Obama...
...controlled territories. Already, the limits of what former Soviet-satellite states can expect from the West was cruelly demonstrated last year, when the U.S. was unable to do anything to prevent Russian tanks from rolling into Georgia to punish that country's military for attacking South Ossetia. The missile-shield decision will confirm fears that Washington's power to roll back Russian influence in the region is waning...
...Still, giving up the protection offered by the missile shield is not particularly difficult for the U.S. - for the simple reason that the shield doesn't offer any significant protection. The system that would have been deployed in Poland and the Czech Republic was in every sense a work in progress whose testing had not yet proved any real-world capacity to deal with a hostile missile threat. In that sense, the missile "shield" was every bit as hypothetical as the Iranian missile threat against which it was ostensibly deployed...