Dear President-Elect Obama:

We the undersigned, members and supporters of the Global Network, write to congratulate you on your recent election as President of the U.S. We want to help you in every way possible to promote peace around the world so that our national resources could be used for the tremendous needs we have here at home like health care, education, job creation, dealing with climate change and more.

We specifically write to urge you to reject the Bush administration plan to deploy "missile defense" interceptors in Poland and a Star Wars radar system in the Czech Republic. We know you are aware of Russia's deep concern that these deployments are really aimed at them in spite of Pentagon assurances they are only directed at Iran.

Respected U.S. scientists George Lewis and Ted Postol recently studied these proposed deployments and wrote an article called "The European missile defense folly" that was printed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists in the May/June issue of 2008. In their report Lewis and Postol state that, "Despite claims to the contrary by both Missile Defense Agency and State Department officials, the interceptors that Washington wants to deploy in Poland are fast enough to catch Russian ICBMs launched from locations west of the Ural Mountains toward the continental United States. The location of the interceptor site in Poland is ideal for this purpose."

Russia of course has responded that they will be forced to upgrade their offensive nuclear capability if these U.S. weapons are indeed deployed in Central Europe. The people of Poland and the Czech Republic are in large numbers opposed to their countries being used as U.S. bases and we understand that in recent days over 30 mayors from Czech towns near the proposed U.S. radar base wrote you urging the plan be scrapped.

Expanding U.S. military operations near Russia's borders will only help create a new Cold War and a new arms race that would eventually spread throughout Europe and beyond. Instead of this we hope you will work hard to make nuclear disarmament and a space weapons ban treaty (PAROS) top priorities.

In addition, we do not believe that any president should enact base agreements or treaties (such as these with Poland and the Czech Republic) without the constitutionally required approval of the Senate.

We look forward to hearing from you about how you intend to deal with this important issue. We wish you well and thank you for your attention to this matter of grave concern to us. We pledge to you that we will keep our eyes on the ball.


In peace,

Bruce K. Gagnon
Coordinator
Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
http://www.space4peace.org


For the full list of signatories see the website AfterDowningStreet.org »