Obama’s Missile Defense Decision Wrong-Headed, Says Gaffney

President Obama’s decision to scrap the plan to establish a new system of missile defense in Poland and the Czech Republic to protect U.S. allies in Europe as well as to protect the United States from intercontinental-range ballistic missiles out of Iran is a mistake, according to Frank Gaffney at The Center for Security Policy.

This decision, if indeed undertaken to achieve diplomatic points with the former Soviet Union, strikes me as highly dubious. Gaffney characterizes it as “undermining our friends, emboldening our enemies and diminishing our country” as a matter of policy.

If indeed we and our allies in the Czech Republic and Poland are in a weaker position due to this decision, and if its strategic purpose is scoring diplomatic points with the Russians, it seems to me naive.

As my source in Iraq, Parliamentarian Mithal al-Alusi, told me last week via phone from Baghdad, the former Soviet Union has been obstructionist in U.S. efforts to contain Iran. “There is no real embargo, you don’t have it [because of the] old Soviet Union.”

I am no expert on missile defense, but basic psychological principles suggest to me the decision, at this critical juncture, appeases a country that is not acting in good faith. To expect we will be rewarded for it strikes me as unlikely in the extreme.

This entry was written by and posted on September 18, 2009 at 2:23 pm and filed under Blog. permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post. Keywords: . Post a comment or leave a trackback: Trackback URL. */?>