POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

Are Obama’s foreign policy initiatives living in the past?

In large part, at least according to Jackson Diehl:

For help understanding the foreign policy headlines of the past week, let's return, briefly, to the spring of 1983, when Barack Obama was a student at Columbia University. What were the burning international issues of that time?

Well, first was the "nuclear freeze" movement, which was prompting mass demonstrations around the world by people worried about the standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States. Obama published an article about it in a campus magazine in which he invoked the vision of "a nuclear free world."

So has nothing changed in the past quarter-century? In fact, almost everything has - especially when it comes to nuclear arms control and Israel's national objectives. What hasn't changed, it seems, is Barack Obama - who has led his administration into a foreign policy time warp that is sapping its strength abroad and at home.

Start with the New START treaty that Obama has made a priority for the lame-duck Senate, at a time when Americans don't yet know what income tax rate they will pay on Jan. 1. The treaty resembles the landmark U.S.-Soviet arms control treaties that were negotiated in the years after Obama wrote his article - and it would perpetuate their important verification measures.

The difference is that no one stages marches today about U.S. and Soviet - now Russian - strategic weapons, and with good reason. The danger of a war between the two states is minuscule; and treaty or no, Russia's arsenal is very likely to dwindle in the coming years. The threat of nuclear weapons now comes from rogue states such as North Korea, Iran and Syria, and maybe from terrorist organizations. Obama believes that U.S.-Russian treaties will lead to better containment of that threat - but that's at best an indirect benefit.

People who’ve interacted with me on many comment threads here at POWIP are no doubt aware that this is something I’ve been saying for some time; especially when the subject turned to Obama’s single-minded determination in negotiating START.  Which seems to reveal an almost OCD-like obsession with what no doubt were his once hookah enhanced, and reinforced by approving hippy-chicks, dreams of realizing the NO NUKES! mantra that he assuredly once chanted in unison with others who actively sought to undermine then President Reagan’s plan to rebuild the US military-including modernizing our strategic systems.  A plan which ultimately worked, not only in re-asserting US leadership in foreign affairs and the top-to-bottom modernization of US forces,  but in hastening the end to a totalitarian Soviet regime.  A result that he and some of his more bitter fellow travelers probably still grieve over.

In fact, for Mr. Obama, in its original form START was surely a double win, as it managed to include limitations on missile defense systems; assets that only America has in any really effective sense, when talking about strategic missile defense, and direct descendants of that most equally hated Reagan program; The Strategic Defense Initiative, or “Star Wars Technology” as it was derisively called at the time.  I find it exceedingly curious that both our strategic adversaries and the American left view this clearly defensive capability as being somehow unfair.  To which I ask, “Unfair to whom”…

Fortunately, if Senators Kyl and Corker are correct, and to be believed, the offensive, limiting, language has been excised from the version of START being considered by the Senate, although, it should be pointed out that others have their doubts.

Now, in theory, limiting nuclear arsenals is not a bad idea in and of itself; it’s an agenda that many past Presidents, including Mr. Reagan, have fruitfully pursued.  But in this instance, with Obama’s START initiative, it seems that the treaty is more beneficial to the Russians than the US.  This is because the Russians are in a position to either upgrade their arsenal, to even retain their currents capabilities, or else scrap it altogether; a position that the US military is not in owing to our ongoing maintenance and modernization programs.  So the agreement relieves the Russians of making the hard decision to undertake an expensive military program and instead allows them to put the sorely needed money to work elsewhere.  Not so for our country.

It’s unclear what benefits we would receive in return for lightening the Russians burden.  Maybe greater cooperation regarding Iran, but that hasn’t appeared to be the case so far.  Maybe it is part of a greater strategy to draw them into the NATO alliance, which would be ironic indeed since NATO was established in opposition to the Soviets.  It would clearly be in the US long term interests for the Russians to be our strategic partners, both against Middle East threats as well as the growing Chinese strategic capabilities.  And make no mistake that the mercantilist Chinese are our strategic adversaries, both and economically and militarily.

But what is inexplicable is Mr. Obama’s apparent willingness to sacrifice an element the US strategic initiative by reducing the US arsenal, at a time when Chinese capabilities are being expanded, as well as being ready to surrender, or at least stall, further development of our strategic missile defense capability; this being demonstrated by his dramatically curtailing the already viable airborne laser system program, as well as canceling the deployment of the proven missile defense batteries in eastern Europe, opting instead to go with an already planned evolution of the SM based system that will involve ground based and sea-borne elements.  All this at a time when our chief global adversaries, China, Iran, and North Korea are evolving both their technologies and systems toward achieving strategic military parity with America.

So instead of moving ahead, he seems content to “fight the last war”; a strategy that has always failed miserably in the past.  But an effort that may, in the long run, prove to be successful for those who in their hearts seem to believe that the US needs to be taken down a few pegs when it comes to strategic dominance.

So would this be a case where it would be wrong to say, “I hope he fails!”?  What do you think kind reader?

Rocketman