Cyrill Vatomsky, Where All Politics Are Global

A map published by Kommersant together with some reports from Bush-Putin talks at the G-8 summit in Germany suggest that Putin's offer of Azeri radar site will go nowhere and in reality does not do much at all. However, it becomes evident why is it that Russia is so adamant against the radar station proposed to be installed in the Czech Republic.

His [Bush's] main argument was that interceptors installed in Poland  will not be able to neutralize more then one ICBM, while Russia has "a huge arsenal that the proposed system would be incapable to intercept".  

Bush's point is also confirmed by looking at the map as well as preliminary calculations. In case of a Russian launch against the USA, missile would take the north-east trajectory since the shortest route lies over the North Pole. Earth rotation will also contribute to shortening of the distance. American interceptors based in Poland will be way to the West and will have to "catch up" Russian-launched ICBM. There will be not enough velocity or range to achieve that.

The most important aspect of the confrontation seems to be the ability of the proposed Czech radar to cover most of the Russian territory. That's the reason to use Azeri radar.

The funniest thing is that Putin's demarche might not bring him what he wants and result in exactly the opposite. US has been courting Azerbaijan with plans to build trans-Caspian pipeline in order to offer an alternative route for Kazakh oil and Turkmen gas, that will essentially remove Russian monopoly on transits from Central Asia. Azerbaijan seems to be quite excited about the prospect of having more US presence with or without Russia. I think it will not be too difficult to separate the two proposals as not related and go for both of them.  

Legend for the map

1. Blue 1: Range of the proposed Czech radar

2. Red 2: Range for proposed Poland based interceptors

3. Blue 3: Aleutian Islands radar station range.

4. Red 4:  Alaska based interceptor range

4. Ceyon 5: Coverage of the Azerbaijan based existing radar.

6. Missle Sylo: Russian missle location by divisions.

7. Russian strategic missle submarine bases. 

 If you are reading this as an email you will have to visit the blog itself and see the map there.