The Hill News

There is a growing consensus among U.S. allies in NATO and elsewhere that cooperative missile defense is an effective approach for countering missile threats in a dangerous and unpredictable world. Cooperative missile defenses represent a flexible, forward-looking strategy for protecting the United States and its allies and should enjoy support from both sides of the aisle.
 
A cooperative approach to missile defenses can allow the United States to take advantage of the military assets, territory, and intelligence capabilities of partner nations. Allied contributions will make U.S. missile defense systems more effective in facing down threats from outlier regimes like Iran and North Korea.
 
Cooperative missile defense arrangements with the NATO allies, as well as with other close allies like Israel and Japan, are not only already underway but iincreasingly well established. At the NATO Lisbon summit in November 2010,  the allies agreed unanimously ! to support a missile defense shield for Europe. This commitment was enshrined in NATO’s most recent Strategic Concept, the alliance’s guiding document. The principal element of that shield is the European Phased Adaptive Approach, a plan that calls for the deployment of progressively more capable defenses in the region through 2020.

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