Warsaw — NATO needs to develop an anti-missile defence system with future nuclear and missile threats not always likely to come from only governments or even “rational actors”, the alliance chief said on Friday.
“We must develop an effective missile defence,” NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen told an international conference in the Polish capital.
“In the coming years we will probably face many more countries and possibly even some non-state actors armed with long-range missiles and nuclear capabilities,” he said.
Rasmussen said a system for protection against missiles should be part of NATO’s policy of deterring such threats.
“Deterrence works against rational actors but not all actors that we will have to deal with in the future will be rational.
“That’s why deterrence and defence need to go together and why we have the obligation to look into the missile defence options,” he said.
Anti-missile defence systems already in place within the NATO alliance fall under a US shield that has missile interceptors in the United States, Greenland and Britain.
Plans for it to be extended into eastern Europe have raised concern in Russia.
The system called for by Rasmussen would include the US shield.
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