Missile Defenses and Mother Russia: Scarecrow or Showstopper?

Abstract: Missile defenses will neither derail the post-Cold War political relationship between the US and Russia nor repeal the existence of mutual deterrence as between their respective nuclear arsenals. Because politics rules strategy and strategy must pay homage to the realities of physics, missile defenses will emerge into arsenals gradually, if at all. Whether missile defenses exacerbate political tensions, or can be deployed cooperatively by the United States and/or NATO and Russia, is not a technological given, but a political decision point that will require care taking by the current and prospective administrations in Washington and Moscow.