International irony
Remember when the Poles were furious at being thrown to the wolves by President Obama's cancellation of the ballistic missile defense systems to be installed in Poland because Russia was angry at the proposed ABM deployment? Well, apparently, as a compromise deal, Poland just received a Patriot surface-to-air missile battery.
Ironically, it turns out that this is what the Poles really wanted all along. The Patriot battery would do comparatively little to protect Eastern Europe from a hypothetical ballistic-missile attack launched from the Middle East (Iran, say), but would present a serious threat to local Russian air power, sufficient to give Poland at least temporary air superiority in its own airspace in the event of a conventional attack.
Find the STRATFOR analysis here, along with further discussion of Germany, Russia, the future of the EU, and the potential for a post-EU Russian-German alignment.
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