LONDON — Cynicism and hypocrisy are always part of international politics, but in the case of Poland and the antiballistic missiles (ABM) everybody is over-fulfilling their norm.
Nobody involved in the controversy, Polish, Russian or American, believes a single word they are saying about this misbegotten missile defense system, whose principal characteristic is that it doesn't work — never has, and probably never will. And yet we're all expected to report what they say as if it mattered.
Washington insists that the ABM missiles are being put into Poland to protect the United States and its allies from Iran's long-range ballistic missiles (which do not exist) tipped with nuclear warheads (which Iran doesn't have either). Yet after months of the U.S.-Polish talks on the subject being stalled, suddenly last Wednesday Warsaw agreed to provide a base for the "missile defense system" — because it would infuriate the Russians.