If you supported the Obama administration on this one, it couldn’t have turned out any better.
Back in September, the White House decided to swap missile defense programs. Out was a ground-based system in Eastern Europe that depended on a stationary missile battery and radar station in Poland and the Czech Republic, respectively. It was geared towards a long-range ballistic missile threat, and was over cost, over schedule, and under-performing to boot.
Conservatives howled that the White House was “abandoning its Eastern European allies” to a salivating Russia. Or was it a salivating Iran? Either way, conservatives were all worked up in a tizzy that, despite our mutual-defense pact with Poland and the Czech Republic, surely we were doing irreparable damage to the NATO alliance.
In the Eastern European system’s place, the Obama administration (with unanimous support from the Joint Chiefs) decided to deploy a sea-based system that was designed to counter a short-to-medium Iranian ballistic missile threat because it had higher technical capabilities and could be deployed more rapidly. Part of the White House’s justification was a new intelligence estimate that said Iran was focused on its short-to-medium range missiles.
So, six months on, how’s that workin’ out for you?
It appears the White House may have—gasp—known what it was doing. I’m a day or so behind on this, but the Wall Street Journal reported this week that … wait for it … Iran has in fact started production of the Nasr1, a highly accurate short range cruise missile:
Iran said it has started a new production line of highly accurate, short-range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country’s arsenal.
Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV Sunday that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size.
The minister said the missile can be fired from ground-based launchers as well as ships, but would eventually be modified to be fired from helicopters and submarines.
I’m curious as to how a cruise missile is fired from a helicopter, but I digress. The point is that the Obama has matched the current threat with appropriate, functioning, defensive capability. Game over!
And how about that abandonment? Here’s Eugeniusz Smolar, the director of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, who said to the Guardian adopting the Obama administration’s approach was an easy call for Poland:
“This [new] proposal is much more Europe oriented because the new system is to deal more with the medium- and short-range threats, and this is exactly what Poland has been seeking,” Smolar said.
He added that the new plan is also “more NATO oriented, which is good, because it means there will be much less tension among the allies who have been complaining that Poland has been doing its own agreement with the U.S. outside of NATO.”
I haven’t written much on the Marja offensive—the joint US/Afghan/NATO operation in the Helmand province city of the same name—because I wanted to see how it played out before drawing sweeping conclusions.
The “aught” decade that just ended was bracketed by 9/11, perpetrated by al-Qaeda terrorists who had enjoyed havens in Sudan and Afghanistan, and a thwarted Christmas 2009 airline bombing by a Nigerian terrorist, who learned his craft in Yemen. The years were filled with a running, halting effort to prevent the Taliban from re-taking the Afghanistan government. Throughout the millennial decade, a postmodern theme dominated: terrorists virtually taking over weak states that should have been eliminating them. Today, as we enter a shiny new decade, we should embrace a cozy and decidedly pre-modern tradition: the system of sovereign states that has served us well since the 17th century.
