Vulnerability, Stability, and Stupidity

In its fervor to eliminate nuclear weapons, the Obama Administration “is taking us back to the era of vulnerability” by sacrificing effective missile defenses of the US homeland in exchange for consensus with Moscow, said former State Department arms control chief Robert Joseph. “Not surprisingly, Russian leaders have dusted off the old [Anti-Ballistic Missile] Treaty line that we, the United States, must remain vulnerable to their missiles for the sake of stability. What is surprising . . . is that we have apparently acceded,” said Joseph during the June 13 Heritage Foundation panel discussion in Washington, D.C., commemorating the 10th anniversary of the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty. The Administration has clipped funding and “artificially constrained” deployment of the current ground-based missile defenses system in Alaska and California, shifting the effort to “less provocative” theater defensive systems in Europe, he said. “If ever there was an example of the power of a bad idea, it is the ABM Treaty,” chided Joseph. “While there are no vocal advocates of reinstituting the ABM Treaty, there is an unmistakable creep backward . . . to the defenseless posture of the past,” he concluded. (Heritage webpage of event with video link)