The OpSec Attack

This is pretty interesting, not to mention damning, if true:

The day after this video went public, I (and millions of my closest friends) received an email from Jim Messina at Obama Campaign HQ, directing me to a blog post defending the President.

I invite you to look it over, bearing in mind a dog not barking. You will note that the blog post contains no actual defense. Rather, it is nothing but ad hominem attacks on OPSEC and the various people involved in making this video.

It's possible, of course, that the video is a lie. But the Administration would mount a more credible defense by explaining that, rather than just telling us we can't trust the video producers.

No Nukes, He Said

President Obama made the nation a little less safe today by announcing limits on when we would use nuclear weapons.

For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Just curious: what good is this expected to do? For the record, there are chemical and biological weapons (CBW) bans, too, which have been joined by nearly every nation. So a nation attacking us with those weapons would likely be out of compliance with some WMD treaty. We have long committed not to use CBW ourselves, so the only WMD we have left with which to respond is our nukes.

Which are rapidly aging, by the way. We could replace them, except that Obama is also preventing that:

To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Does our President think we should conduct diplomacy as if we were running a kindergarten? I'm curious if it has worked, ever, for a nation to "set an example" by disarming itself. What do other nations typically do? Do they disarm themselves, act nicely, start cooperating, out of a spirit of lovingkindness? I don't know of any cases where this has ever happened. There's no reason to think this time will be any different.

In fact, the great danger here is that, by systematically weakening the U.S. nuclear umbrella that currently stretches over the Western Hemisphere, Obama's policy actually increases the likelihood of nuclear proliferation. Many nations that could go nuclear easily rely on the U.S. to protect them: take Japan, Germany and the rest of the Anglosphere as obvious examples. India, a growing ally of ours, has never been under the umbrella: it went publicly nuclear in May, 1998, in response to a growing threat from Pakistan's nuclear program. Pakistan then went nuclear itself two weeks later.

It's not pleasant being the world's sheriff, and it's understandable that Obama doesn't relish being the leader of the nation that has been stuck with the job. But if he abdicates his responsibilities, he will end up making the problem of nuclear proliferation worse, not better.

Biden in Poland

VP Joe Biden is in Poland to get their buy-in to a revised plan for missile defense in Eastern Europe. There's obviously some diplomacy going on here that isn't being reported. The previous plan was withdrawn in response to Russian objections (ridiculous ones, incidentally), the assumption being that we would obtain as quid pro quo Russian assistance in reining in the Iranian nuclear program. But Russia gave no public assurance of that at the time and has since only stymied international efforts in Iran.

So is the new plan just a face-saving measure? Instead of reinstituting the old plan, which would be an admission that their strategy vis-a-vis Russia had failed, the new plan is put in place for technological reasons. (But if that's the case, then surely we should be updating our own missile defense sites in Alaska and California immediately. Aren't they more important to our own security that the Eastern European site?)

Let's hope that's the case, and that the new plan is much better. But I can't help but think back to 1930s Poland, whose independence was "guaranteed" by Great Britain and France after the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. When Poland was subsequently carved up by the U.S.S.R. and Germany in September, 1939, Britain had no choice but to stand by helplessly and watch, because they simply had no way to back up their guarantee. Lesson: don't make guarantees you can't back up. And don't provide Eastern Europe with a missile defense system that can't do the job.

What Is an Ally?

In the wake of the Obama administration's announcement of the cessation of missile defense plans for Europe, perhaps the President needs to review this very basic question.

To review the situation: the U.S. has finally developed effective defenses against ballistic missiles. They've been tested; they work. We have deployed two defense sites in the U.S., one in Alaska and one in California. But while these protect the U.S., they provide no defense for Europe. These defenses are not (at present) sufficient to defend against a massive Russian attack, which could involve hundreds of missiles. But they would be very effective against a rogue state such as North Korea or Iran.

Iran already has ballistic missiles of sufficient range to strike anywhere in the Middle East and many parts of Europe, and is developing ones that could strike the U.S. Despite their denials, they are also developing nuclear weapons. There is every reason to believe that by 2015, they will have a nuclear ICBM capacity.

Can Iran be deterred as the U.S.S.R. was during the Cold War? Maybe. But a culture that creates suicide terrorists cannot be counted on to be restrained by the mutual assurance of destruction. And even if they could, do we really want to have a Cold War with Iran? The world rejoiced when the Cold War ended because the threat of nuclear armageddon - even by accident - was reduced. Why would we want to return to that world?

Faced with this growing crisis a few years ago, the Bush administration proposed building missile defense sites in the Czech Republic and Poland to protect Europe. These are the sites that have been cancelled by President Obama. The apparent reason we are taking this reckless course of action is Russian worries about growing American hegemony in Eastern Europe.

The best possible result of all this would be a quid pro quo that brings Russian influence to bear against Iranian nuclear weapon development. I wonder if this move will really make a difference, though. Russia is in an odd position in all of this. On one hand, they oppose greater American power, and Iran is an expeditious ally in that effort. But Russia has its own Muslim problem, and surely fears nuclear-armed terrorists as much as, if not more than, we do. It is not clear how a marginal withdrawal of American power from Eastern Europe changes their calculus much.

Meanwhile, our own relations with our new Eastern European allies have suffered a blow. This is yet another example of the general rule that the American system is particularly prone to shafting allies, who have made agreements with one administration only to be disappointed by its successor. The Obama administration has made it clear that it considers it more important to court Russian favor than to have Poland and the Czech Republic as strategic partners. But the likelihood that this will ultimately lead to positive results for American foreign policy is slim.