In a July 21 op-ed in the International Herald Tribune (“All Together Now: Missile Defense”) former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (co-chair of the Nuclear Threat Initiative), former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, and former German Ambassador to Britain and the United States Wolfgang Ischinger call upon Washington, Moscow, and Brussels to embark on the development of a joint U.S.-European-Russian missile defense system. The three authors – co-chairmen of the Carnegie Endowment’s Euro-Atlantic Security Initiative – contend that the time is ripe to initiate a dialogue on such a system, including an assessment of common threats, and that “political will, not technical obstacles, will determine whether missile defense becomes a pillar of a more inclusive and better-defended Euro-Atlantic community.” Nunn, Ivanov, and Ischinger characterize joint missile defense as a magic bullet for an array of European and Eurasian security issues: not only would it be an “essential factor” in ballistic missile defense, it could be a “game changer” in Russian-Western relations and a “crucial step” in the development of a new European security architecture. Last but not least, the authors contend that joint missile defense will “aid progress in bolstering the nuclear nonproliferation regime” by adding momentum to existing joint efforts, compel Russia and the United States to grapple with principles of strategic offense and defense that underpin existing nuclear strategies, and open a door to the possibility of broader multilateral cooperation with China or other nuclear states.
