The European Missile Defense Factor in Russia–USA/NATO Relations

The article analyses the issue of the NATO missile defense development and the evolution of views in the Russian political, military and expert circles. In 2009, the U. S. President Baraсk Obama declared a start of the NATO missile defense system construction with a goal to be able to intercept a limited nuclear strike from Iran. Russia is in doubt about the stated purpose of the European missile defense and considers it to be a threat to its own strategic nuclear forces. The European missile defense construction has been experiencing technical obstacles and political difficulties: the cancellation of deployment of interceptor SM-3 IIB and delays in establishing operational capability of the Aegis Ashore land-based missile defense system in Poland. The current architecture of the NATO missile defense, which allows only to intercept a limited number of incoming warheads, has no significant impact on Russian retaliatory strike capability. Nevertheless, the missile defense in Europe remains an irritating factor in relations between Russia and the USA. Apparently, Biden’s arrival in the White House creates an opportunity for parties to address the issue during negotiations on the New START follow-on Treaty. The research addresses the history of Russia–USA–NATO cooperation on theatre missile defense and the reasons for the failure of the joint missile defense in Europe. The author justifies the reanimation of the Joint Data Exchange Center project and outlines the idea of its transformation to the Multilateral Data Exchange Center. Acknowledgments. The article was prepared within the project “Post-crisis world order: challenges and technologies, competition and cooperation” supported by the grant from Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation program for research projects in priority areas of scientific and technological development (Agreement № 075-15-2020-783).