Obama’s Deadly Defense Cuts
Posted by Stephen Flurry at 1:43 pm on August 16, 2009

In foreign policy, writes former Sen. Malcolm Wallop, seemingly minor signals can have far-reaching consequences. In a Newsmax piece, Wallop, a U.S. leader on defense and foreign-policy issues, details how the Obama administration’s proposed cuts in the area of missile defense are sending the message to the world that the United States does not have the will to deter aggression. He writes,

The Obama administration’s proposed defense budget cuts—particularly the deep cuts to our homeland missile defense system—are signaling North Korea and Iran that we do not have the will to counter their aggressive actions. In response, Iran and North Korea have tested ballistic missiles or nuclear weapons on numerous occasions, flouting decades of diplomatic nonproliferation efforts and nudging the U.S. onto a crash course towards armed conflict.

We might add that the U.S. is sending a signal of its weakness to more countries than just North Korea and Iran: Rising powers such as Europe, Russia and China would also be reading the signal clearly. Wallop goes on,

Wisely, North Korea and Iran are watching the money trail. The Pentagon’s proposed 2010 budget would cut the funding for homeland missile defense—known as the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or gmd—in half, allowing the U.S.’s only defense against long-range ballistic missiles to stall and eventually become obsolete.

The budget halts the installation of interceptor missiles in silos in Alaska and California, leaving us approximately a dozen missiles short of what security analysis has shown we need to counter the threat from North Korea. The budget also cuts the funding for gmd research and development by one third, making more robust testing impossible and potentially eliminating threat-representative missile shoot-downs. According to the budget, after a few years, there will be no more practice missiles available for operational tests.

Wallop also mentions that the budget does not provide funding for missile defense in Poland to protect Europe from a potential Iranian nuclear strike. “President Obama regrettably offered to scuttle the plans for the European missile defense site as a concession to Russia,â€