President Obama promised he would win America friends where, under George W. Bush, it had antagonists. The reality is that the U.S. is working hard to create antagonists where it previously had friends.

That's one conclusion to draw from President Obama's decision yesterday to scrap a missile-defense agreement the Bush Administration negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic. Both governments took huge political risks—including the ire of their former Russian overlords—in order to accommodate the U.S., which wanted the system to defend against a possible Iranian missile attack. Don't expect either government to follow America's lead anytime soon.

"If the Administration approaches us in the future with any request, I would be strongly against it," Jan Vidim, a conservative Czech lawmaker who voted for the system, told the Associated Press.

The White House justifies its decision by claiming to have new intelligence showing that Iran's long-range missile capabilities are not as advanced as previously believed. Instead, it intends to upgrade and deploy currently available missile interceptors that are useful mainly for intercepting short- and medium-range missiles, where, it says, Iranian capability "is developing more rapidly than previously projected."

We're all for deploying interceptors to stop Iranian missiles of every range. But the Administration's argument is difficult to credit, not least because our sources told us as early as February that the Administration was prepared to abandon those sites—which is to say, well before the allegedly new intelligence became available.