The Obama Administration once again acts in mysterious ways. It's not clear why Obama would unilaterally deal away away a bargaining chip like the missile shield bases in Poland and the Czech Republic without winning any material concessions from Russia or Iran. I can only speculate how our allies' leaders, whom had take political risks in supporting the politically unpopular relevant missile sites on their territories, must have felt swerved.
Obama speaks with no credibility on national defense issues. We already know how he fought tooth-and-nail against the highly successful General Petraeus' anti-insurgency policy and waited until after he secured the nomination last year to make his first appearance in the area. We know how Obama during the Democratic campaign promised to deeply cut military research-and-development. We know that when the administration went looking for a lip service of $17B in cuts to Democrats' super-sized trillion dollar spending, the military budget took a disproportionate hit.
The new staged approach initially focuses on mobile, sea-based systems aimed at containing lower and intermediate-range Iranian missiles; second-phase long-range missile land-based systems are deferred to a future date. The justification for a staged approach is based on a revised intelligence assessment that the Iranian long-range missile threat is not imminent.
Perhaps Obama trusts the intelligence he has been given on Iraq and other rogue nations' (e.g., North Korea) development of nuclear weapons and relevant delivery systems and feels confident that he can punt the question of land-based systems down the line for some other President to deal with. [That's leadership for you; isn't that what he's doing in dealing with the humongous federal deficit? But surely we can understand Obama's willingness to scrub the results of Bush Administration negotiations with our east European allies based on intelligence agency assessments; after all, the Western intelligence agencies did such a great job analyzing Hussein's WMD programs.] I'm more risk-averse than Obama apparently seems to be, i.e., if I'm wrong about the time frame for risks posed by rogue nations or terrorist groups, we are being proactive; if Obama is wrong about the time frame, the people and cities of the United States and her allies may pay a horrific price.
