The decision of the Obama administration to shelve the deployment of missile defense components in Poland and the Czech Republic was greeted by many commentators and statesmen as a departure from the missile defense policy of the Bush years. Instead of prioritizing the protection against a distant threat of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the current US administration has shifted the focus on the manifest threat of missiles with shorter ranges and plans to deploy more reliable and technologically mature defense systems. Washington’s missile defense agenda thus changed in terms of...