Tag Archives: Nuclear Weapons

News

How well is Democrat appeasement working to contain Russia?

Leave a comment

Not well, according to the Heritage Foundation.

Excerpt:

On Wednesday, Gen. Alexander Zelin, the commander of the Russian Air Force, announced that Moscow had deployed a state-of-the-art S-300 (SA-20 Favorit) long- range air defense system in Abkhazia, a region of the Republic of Georgia that Russia has occupied since the August 2008 war.

Since then, Russia recognized breakaway Abkhazia and South Ossetia as independent republics. According to Zelin, the task of the air defense systems is “to prevent violation of Abkhaz and South Ossetian airspace and to destroy any aircraft intruding into their airspace no matter what their purpose might be”.

However, there is much more than the defense of Abkhazia to the Russian deployment. Taken together with the S-300 base in Armenia, it extends the strategic air space over South Caucasus and over parts of the Black Sea, furthering Russian control.

What does it mean?

Most importantly from the perspective of the United States, Russian actions are aimed at denying the United Space airspace and over-flight options. The surveillance aspect is no less important—depending on the actual deployment of the air defenses: associated radars will be able to picture or “paint” much of western Georgia and the adjoining Black Sea coastline. The ultimate objective for Moscow is to become an uncontested hegemon in the South Caucasus. And of course this has potential implications in case of an Iranian contingency.

The Russians are committed to deployments in the Caucasus that lead to the strategic denial of U.S. power projection in that region. This bears on the U.S.’s future ability to resupply Afghanistan; to use power to disarm a nuclear Iran; to ensure energy supply from the Caspian; and to help pro-Western friends and allies. These are hardly great accomplishments for the Obama “reset” policy”.

So what else is in the news?

Well, the Taliban are seizing control of nothern Afghanistan, and Russia is assisting Iran with nuclear weapons development.

And that is why the deployment of these advanced SAMs is devastating to our foreign policy objectives. We’ve become a paper tiger by cutting defense systems, like the F-22, so that we can pay for turtle tunnels to nowhere with “stimulus” money. The first job of the federal government is to protect its citizens, not to study how to reduce drinking among Chinese prostitutes.

News

Obama’s naive foreign policy increases likelihood of war in Middle East

3 Comments

The Wall Street Journal explains.

Excerpt:

Events are fast pushing Israel toward a pre-emptive military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, probably by next spring. That strike could well fail. Or it could succeed at the price of oil at $300 a barrel, a Middle East war, and American servicemen caught in between. So why is the Obama administration doing everything it can to speed the war process along?

The article lists various elements of Obama’s weak stance against Iran, then continues:

[…]All this only helps persuade Israel’s skittish leadership that when President Obama calls a nuclear-armed Iran “unacceptable,” he means it approximately in the same way a parent does when fecklessly reprimanding his misbehaving teenager. That impression is strengthened by Mr. Obama’s decision to drop Iran from the agenda when he chairs a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on Sept. 24; by Defense Secretary Robert Gates publicly opposing military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities; and by Russia’s announcement that it will not support any further sanctions on Iran.

In sum, the conclusion among Israelis is that the Obama administration won’t lift a finger to stop Iran, much less will the “international community.” So Israel has pursued a different strategy, in effect seeking to goad the U.S. into stopping, or at least delaying, an Israeli attack by imposing stiff sanctions and perhaps even launching military strikes of its own.

How do you think Iran would respond to such an air strike? Their entire land force would be left largely intact. Do you think they are just going to take that and do nothing to retaliate? This is a nightmare.

News

Obama cuts military spending, blinks at North Korean aggression

2 Comments

You knew that the socialist ACORN lawyer was going to cut military spending at some point. Well, he’s done it.

Sweetness and Light reports on the cuts in military spending here. (H/T Gateway Pundit)

Excerpt from an AP article:

Production of the F-22 fighter jet, which cost $140 million apiece, would be halted at 187.

…The Army’s $160 billion Future Combat Systems modernization program would lose its armored vehicles. Plans to build a shield to defend against missile attacks by rogue states would also be scaled back…

See, the thing you need to understand is that wars start when aggressors believe they can win the war. When you build up your own military, aggressors start to understand that victory may not be so easy. That’s how you prevent wars from even starting. This is called peace through strength.

So, by cutting defense spending, Obama is basically emboldening aggressors. Not just aggression against us, but aggression against our allies. If our enemies do not believe that we have the will or the firepower to defend our interests, and those of our allies, abroad, then they will act against our interests. The North Korean missile launch is just the beginning.

Closing Velocity had some more details on the missile defense cuts. (H/T Hot Air)

  • Total cuts in missile defense: $1.4 billion or roughly 15%.
  • Cancel second Airborne Laser (ABL) aircraft, keep the one remaining ABL prototype as a testbed and revert to pure R&D.
  • No increases in Ground-based Interceptor (GBI) deployment in Alaska. Remaining silos will stay unfilled. European GBIs will be decided on later during the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR).
  • Termination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle (MKV) program.

    • Hot Air linked to this Politico article, featuring comments by Newt Gingrich.

    Excerpt:

    “Dick Cheney is clearly right in saying that between the court decisions about terrorists and the administration actions, the United States is running greater risks of getting attacked than we were under President Bush,” said the former speaker of the House and Georgia congressman.

    On the North Korean missile launch, he said “the embarrassing repudiation of the United States appeal to the United Nations Security Council Sunday afternoon is a vivid demonstration of weakness. This is beginning to resemble the Carter administration’s weakness in foreign policy.”

    He said Obama’s speech on nuclear disarmament in Prague on Sunday “is a dangerous fantasy that runs an enormous risk. It is part of the Obama administration’s substitution of words for thoughts and fantasies for achievements.”

    “Now we no longer have a ‘global war on terror,’” Gingrich said. “We have ‘overseas contingency operations’ Now we will no longer have ‘terrorist attacks.’ We will have ‘man-made disasters.’ None of our enemies seem to have learned this new language.”

    “There was amazing symbolism in North Korea deciding to launch a missile the very day President Obama was speaking to Europeans about his fantasy of nuclear disarmament. The West has talked with North Korea for over 15 years and they just keep building nuclear weapons and missiles. We have been talking with the Iranians for a decade and they continue to build nuclear capability and missiles.

    “Pakistan has a lot of nuclear weapons. Russia, India and China have nuclear weapons. Hamas in Gaza fires missiles into Israel virtually every day. In this reality, our president proposes we have a big meeting in Washington to discuss nuclear disarmament.”

    And he contrasts Obama’s plan with Ronald Reagan’s policy.

    “Reagan felt that keeping a defensive shield alive was more important than a paper deal. The Obama administration is rapidly undermining our missile defense system while describing a fantasy world of trust and cooperation.”

    Here is  a related quotation from Ronald Reagan’s debate against the 2nd worst president ever, Jimmy Carter.

    And I’m only here to tell you that I believe with all my heart that our first priority must be world peace, and that use of force is always and only a last resort, when everything else has failed, and then only with regard to our national security. Now, I believe, also, that this meeting this mission, this responsibility for preserving the peace, which I believe is a responsibility peculiar to our country, and that we cannot shirk our responsibility as a leader of the free world because we’re the only ones that can do it. Therefore, the burden of maintaining the peace falls on us. And to maintain that peace requires strength. America has never gotten in a war because we were too strong.

    Ronald Reagan’s focus on strength projected abroad ended the cold war without firing a shot. And military spending is vital for achieving peace. But Obama is choosing a different path… the path of Jimmy Carter. And we all know where that ended.

    UPDATE: More on the NK missile launch, including Gingrich video on Fox News Sunday at Nice Deb.

    UPDATE: A new post on the effectiveness of waterboarding and Obama’s intent to prosecute the authors of counter-terrorism policies, possible including George W. Bush himself.