In both his annual Kremlin news conference, which occurred on Feb.1, and in his appearance at the Munich Security Conference the following week, Russian President Vladimir Putin denounced U.S. plans to deploy ballistic missile defenses in Eastern Europe. Insisting that the Russian government must consider how to ensure the country's national security, Putin pledged to adopt a "highly effective" response.

For several years, the U.S. government has been pursuing bilateral initiatives with select NATO members to deploy a small number of U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) interceptors in Eastern Europe. On Jan. 20, 2007, U.S. officials made a formal proposal to the new Czech government, offering to establish an American-run BMD radar system on Czech territory. On Jan. 22, they announced that the United States and Poland would soon begin formal discussions about the possible stationing of U.S. BMD interceptor missiles on Polish territory. This deployment would establish the first U.S. missile interceptor base outside the United States.

American officials have characterized the deployment as primarily intended to protect Europe and the United States from a possible future long-range ballistic missile threat from Iran or another Middle Eastern source. Even if Poland, the Czech Republic, or other candidate countries (e.g., Hungary) agree to these proposals, it will take several years and billions of dollars before the proposed U.S. BMD systems become operational. Lt. Gen. Henry Obering, the head of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA), said that the deployment would most likely occur in 2011 or 2012, when the MDA fears Iran might attain a long-range missile strike capacity.

Despite more than a decade of American insistence that U.S. BMD programs are no longer directed at Russia, that country's military and political leaders continue to decry NATO's missile defense plans as a potential threat. The Russian Foreign Ministry's initial response to the U.S. deployment proposal was sharply negative. A ministry spokesperson called the idea "a mistaken step with negative consequences for international security." When he returned from an early February visit to Washington, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters that U.S. officials failed to convince him that the deployment decision addressed the "real threats, which exist today in the sphere of nuclear and missiles proliferation."

Russia's military leaders were equally critical. Gen. Makhmut Gareyev, president of the Russian Academy of Military Sciences, said that NATO planned to use the missile interceptors in Poland to destroy Russian ICBMs shortly after their launch. He further claimed that the new bases would violate NATO's pledge not to extend its military infrastructure to Russia's borders.

Col.-Gen. Vladimir Popovkin, commander of Russia's Space Forces, warned that establishing an American-manned radar system in the Czech Republic would threaten Russian ICBMs in central Russia as well as the country's Northern Fleet. Elaborating on his concerns, Gen. Popovkin told journalists: "It is doubtful that Iranian or North Korean rockets would go across Poland or the Czech Republic. The radar in the Czech Republic would be able to monitor rocket installations in central Russia and the Northern Fleet."

American and other NATO officials insist that Russian fears are misplaced. Gen. Pavel Stefka, chief of staff of the Czech armed forces, called Russian claims that the BMD deployments would threaten Russia "absolute nonsense." He insisted that the location of the proposed U.S. radar system, along with the physical properties of its surrounding terrain, would be prevent it from monitoring military activities inside Russia. A spokesman for the Czech Defense Ministry, Andrej Cirtek, noted that the U.S. BMD interceptors would rely on kinetic force rather than explosive detonations to destroy their targets, making them unsuitable as first-strike weapons. Gen. Obering enunciated Americans' exasperation with Russian objections when he told reporters, "There is no way, shape or form that 10 interceptors can neutralize the hundreds of missiles in the Russian arsenal. I can't be any more plain than that."

Although the United States currently anticipates deploying only a few interceptors in Eastern Europe, Russian analysts fear that larger numbers of interceptors, and other U.S. BMD assets such as missile tracking radars, could soon follow. Alexander Pikayev of the World Economy and International Relations Institute explained that, "There is a threat here. It's not immediate, not today or tomorrow, but it is potentially a very serious one."

More generally, Russian officials challenge the notion that the systems' main purpose would be to intercept long-range ballistic missiles from rogue states in the Middle East. Russian military leaders argue that no Middle Eastern state, including Iran, will have missiles capable of reaching Europe or the United States anytime soon.

In his Kremlin news conference, Putin openly expressed his own disbelief: "Our military specialists do not think that the missile defense systems the United States wants to deploy in eastern Europe are aimed at countering threats from say, Iran or terrorist groups of some kind. What is the connection between terrorists and ballistic missiles? Do terrorists have ballistic missiles? The trajectories of missiles launched from, say, Iranian territory, are already well known. And they do not have ballistic missiles either."

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov expressed similar skepticism while attending the NATO defense ministers meeting in Seville the following week. He maintained that neither North Korea nor Iran had long-range missiles capable of reaching Europe, while terrorists could use simpler means to attack distant targets -- civilian aircraft and "human bodies." Ivanov warned that, "We will develop our own strategic system, which will have the capability to surpass any missile [interceptor] system. We want to be absolutely sure that under no circumstances are we under pressure."

At present, U.S. and Russian military experts are continuing to discuss the planned U.S. deployments. Gen. Obering recently offered a possible solution to the present impasse by suggesting that the countries hosting the new U.S. BMD sites might allow Russian government representatives to visit them. Such an arrangement would create a de facto inspection regime that could reassure Russian officials that the systems lacked the capacity to threaten Russia's strategic arsenal. At the same time, it would not impede the development of a possibly effective deterrent or defense against missile threats from Middle East countries.

Richard Weitz is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.