Radar full circle

ODS can't admit that it largely sees the radar as a not-to-be- missed commercial opportunity, so it needs to be flexible in justifying the military and geopolitical significance of the proposed installation. First, you might recall, it said the radar is needed to help defend against rogue states such as Iran, North Korea and maybe even Pakistan or Sudan. That bubble deflated, so then the Russian threat came into vogue. But that too cooled when Bush and Putin met in Sochi, so MEP Jan Zahradil of ODS came up with a novel substitute. The radar is needed as a weapon against the EU, he wrote on Aktualne.cz. Whatever geopolitical influence the CR loses with the Lisbon treaty it can regain with the radar, he said. So much for that original Iranian threat! What's next? Perhaps ODS's best hope of winning public support for the radar is to convince voters that it would be aimed against their own rogue politicians. [Czech Republic Vladimir George European Union reform United States]