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Close the Missile Defense Gap Now
Missile threats are real and missile defense science is solid. The funding costs are low and the moral case is overwhelming.
With significant assistance from North Korea, Pakistan, and Russia, Iran is today closing in on the capability to make real President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s genocidal threats. North Korea, the client state of China, continues to develop and test its missiles. The recent launch of the Taepodong-2 missile raised international concerns from Japan and Europe to the Pentagon. Pakistan has dozens of nuclear weapons and a government at risk of falling to jihadism. Russia plays a variety of difficult roles in the politics of grand strategy.
The United States has some deployed, tested, and working missile defense systems, including perhaps a few dozen interceptor assets based in California and Alaska — and on Aegis cruisers meant to also assist Japan. Test after successful test of anti-missile missiles shows that President Ronald Reagan’s original vision of missile defense — not the immoral and limited option of massive retaliation — has become attractive both in the United States and Europe. Poland and the Czech Republic are logical sites for radar and system deployments. However, President Barack Obama’s recent European tour did not give our friends confidence that he would continue our path to defend Europe.
And President Obama has also indicated a dramatically-declining commitment to robust missile defense for the U.S. and our allies like Israel. He has proposed significant cuts in research and development funding, even though the price tag is in the low tens of billions of dollars, compared with trillions of taxpayer dollars being spent domestically by the federal government.
Several important developing U.S. missile defense projects all face looming budget cuts, including the Airborne Laser, a “boost phase” defense, which counters North Korean or Iranian long-range missiles; the Ground Based Interceptor program (our only operational system capable of destroying a Taepodong-2 missile approaching the U.S. mainland); the Multiple Kill Vehicle, designed to destroy multiple missile stages and warheads in space; and the Space Tracking and Surveillance System, which discriminates between real warheads and decoys in space, thereby defeating an enemy’s ability to overwhelm our missile defense system with countermeasures.
Missile threats are real and missile defense science is solid. The funding costs are actually quite low and the moral case is overwhelming. Political obstacles must be overcome, including the left’s rejection that the U.S. would be strong or independent in the world and the military establishment’s repeated bureaucratic resistance to using funds for projects that aren’t their own.
Rockets continue to rain on the children of Sderot in southern Israel. Syria has 50,000 missiles aimed at Israel, many buried in underground silos. Hezbollah in Lebanon has rockets that can now reach Tel Aviv. Iran has twice tested offensive ballistic missiles from ships. Israel is in danger. And threatening foreign military doctrine and stated enmity suggests the U.S. too is vulnerable to an EMP attack.
This is, alas, our 21st century strategic security challenge. For the sake of our allies, and ourselves, we should close the missile defense gap now.
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Larry Greenfield is vice president and fellow in American studies at the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship & Political Philosophy.
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17 Comments
1. typos_R_us:Good luck!
Apr 29, 2009 - 5:14 am 2. BPT (Australia):The left has been claiming missile defense won’t work for so long that it has becomes a cornerstone of Socialist dogma.
NOTHING will change their minds. NOTHING!
If Socialists start examining their dogma, the dialectic will lead to the collapse of Socialism. Socialism has become a religion over the centuries. You would have better luck persuading a Christian that Christ wasn’t crucified then a socialist that Missile defense works. If you try to show them, they close their eyes. Try to tell them, they close their ears.
Sadly, Obama Chamberlain’s Democrats and his many liberal Jewish supporters (80 percent, right?) will have to learn the hard way. It sucks. I know. But political correctness comes before a fall. They were warned.
Apr 29, 2009 - 6:24 am 3. Paul of Alexandria:There’s a certain irony in the fact that Isreal and the US had developed an anti-missile laser system, the Nautilus, that could shoot down “Katyushas, Qassams, and bombs with 100 percent success”[see next link], and canceled it for environmental and cost reasons. Now the locals are demanding its immediate reinstatement and deployment.
see also
Apr 29, 2009 - 6:46 am 4. backatcha:Spacewar.com and
ISN
Paging Sean Hannity. Ready to go here. Ready for a little bravery in action. No harm will come to you, as you know. Paging Sean Hannity. You;’re commitment to be waterboarded for charity was a noble utterance. Paging Sean Hannity. follow-through is everything, as you know. Mister Hannity. Paging Mister Hannity. Not that scary, after all Christopher Hitchens did it. Then again, he obviously has a bigger pair than you. Paging Sean Hannity. You run the risk of painting the entire conservative movement as a bunch of cowardly gas bags. You really should respond. Paging Sean Hannity.
Apr 29, 2009 - 7:29 am 5. J. Rockford:Just to add to what typos_r_us said, the Left/Democrats have always been dead-set against missile defense. Why is that? My theory is it’s only because Reagan initiated it and the right supports it; therefore the left must be against it. National security? Not a factor. The Left’s arguments against missile defense are lame but their relentless propaganda, carried by the mainstream media and academia, has, as always, been effective. Many Americans have been misled into believing that it can not work.
I wonder how American Jews, who always vote Democrat, will feel if and when Israel gets taken out by a ballistic missile carried WMD?
How long after that until it’s our turn?
Apr 29, 2009 - 10:27 am 6. John Moore:Not having a missile defense is a typical leftist head-in-the-sand approach to human threats. They want us to sacrifice our whole economy on the speculative threat of Climate Change, but are unwilling to spent a pittance (compared to Obama’s spending increases) on defending ourselves from potentially undeterrable, unstable regimes (Iran, NK). A single conventional nuke (with NK’s capabilities and soon to be within Iran’s), launched as an EMP attack, would be as destructive to the US as a fifty nuclear weapons impacting in our cities. The orbiting Iranian satellite could just as easily have been an orbiting Iranian EMP nuke, just waiting for some nutjob to push the button as it flies over the heart of our country.
Apr 29, 2009 - 11:21 am 7. Travis, Ancient Wisdom (is a link):If there is a threat being posed on the world, its not coming from Iran nor other such countries, but rather whoever is controlling the governments of Great Britain, The US and Is-Ra-El.
These are the real threat to the people, the corporates who are robbing resources in order to sell back with excessive usury.
Saddam was hung because he refused to take dollars for oil, nor would he allow the corporates to incorporate Iraqi oil fields, and the good people of Iran are now under the same pressure to give up their oil to the Corporatocracy.
And soon all those who refuse to bow down to the Corporatocracy “Anti-Christ” will be detained and their earth-suits taken to FEMA camps to be disposed of.
However, there is a much deeper agenda. One most people do not even wish to consider. However, I have found much evidence that suggests Anti-Christ is doing its duty in service to The Author of life.
Examine the evidence for yourself on my “Ancient Wisdom” page, for one can not see into his future, without knowing his past.
Apr 29, 2009 - 4:31 pm 8. DoubleTapper:There’s no need to worry. Obama’s lack of expertise is an asset for him. He’s making friends with the
terrorists and alienating allies
.
Besides,
the missiles can’t even reach as far as Denver!
… So only the East Cost of the US is threatened.
DoubleTapper
Apr 29, 2009 - 10:42 pm 9. DoctorT:DoubleTapper@gmail.com
DoubleTapper, blogging on Guns Politics Defense from Israel
Obama has figured out a new way to deal with the threat to Israel. Turn his back on it. The middle east is rapidly destabilizing, now that his terrorist allies that he hobknobs with have figured out how weak he is.
Apr 30, 2009 - 11:49 am 10. Adina Kutnicki,:Obama’s religion of pacifism is no less a danger to western civilization than the threat of our enemies exploding missiles over our collective heads. While Obama and his hard left funders (think Geoge Soros)wax poetic about what IS and what IS NOT torture, our enemies are planning our ultimate torture-death by the millions.
Therefore, for those who care about western survival-whence the Saturday people go, so too do the Sunday people-putting Obama’s feet to the fire is a moral and manifestly urgent imperative.
Withholding taxes is a good place to start.
May 1, 2009 - 4:03 am 11. Manu, India:I am the editor of an Indian defence newspaper and as you know the Indians have been buying Israeli technologies recently.
I do not know how you can talk about Morals after all the war crimes Israel commits on the Palestinians. The only justification for the recent calls for expansion of settlements in West bank are fundamentalist religious and hence I compare the Israelis to the fundamentalist Muslims, as equally brutal, regressive and repressive. In time, both Israel and its U.S. backers will be charged for war crimes.
May 1, 2009 - 7:08 am 12. deguello:Considering that the likely targets for North Korean, and Iranian missiles are blue cities, why would,anyone want to strengthen our missile defenses?Let the voters live(or die ) with the consequences of their choices.
May 1, 2009 - 9:08 am 13. J. Rockford:Hey editor Manu, it is “defense”, not “defence”.
May 1, 2009 - 1:13 pm 14. typos_R_us:“In time, both Israel and its U.S. backers will be charged for war crimes.”
The Sun will enter it’s red giant phase before that happens. Remember, only the loser gets charged with war crimes, and there is no possible combination of nations that can defeat the USA in a military conflict.
May 2, 2009 - 4:46 am 15. davod:“Hey editor Manu, it is “defense”, not “defence”.”
Hey Rockford – Real English – defense.
May 2, 2009 - 4:16 pm 16. davod:“The Sun will enter it’s red giant phase before that happens. Remember, only the loser gets charged with war crimes, and there is no possible combination of nations that can defeat the USA in a military conflict.”
You forget the “One”.
May 2, 2009 - 4:18 pm 17. nora:Love your article though it does make me crazy! So sick of the Obamateur Hour in the White House. While our president is making friends with tinpot dictators and making overtures to the Muslim world, making the US look weaker than it did under Carter, the left (American Jews included) looks the other way and focuses on savaging anyone who disagrees with The One. May heaven help us all.
May 5, 2009 - 9:40 pm