The World

I don’t think it is particularly surprising that the Obama administration has decided to drop the plans to build an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. I remember, shortly before the election, an Obama foreign-policy adviser describing the plans to me as a “system that won’t work, against a threat that doesn’t exist, paid for with money we don’t have.” I took that as a hint.

Missile defence has, in any case, always been a Republican obsession, dating back to Reagan and “Star wars”. Abandoning the plan has financial and diplomatic attractions for Obama. Most obviously, it removes a bone of contention (or a “rotting corpse” as one Russian diplomat colourfully put it) between the Kremlin and the White House. It might now make it easier for Obama to make progress on nuclear arms-reduction  - and perhaps persuade the Russians not to veto a new round of sanctions on Iran.

If, however, the Russians react by becoming more assertive and demanding – for example over Georgia and Ukraine – then Obama could end up looking foolish. There will certainly now be heightened anxiety in Central Europe. The Poles and the Czechs were, initially, not that keen on the anti-missile scheme. But they won’t like the implication that America has backed off, in the face of Russian pressure – or, even worse, that the Nato military committment to eastern Europe is anything other than rock solid. Recent opinion polls show that respect for America has risen in western Europe since Obama came in, but fallen in the countries of the former Soviet bloc. American diplomats have a big job of reassurance to do there.