Bullying Barack on MIssile Defense

[unhappycamper]

Bullying Barack on MIssile Defense
Peter Brookes | November 18, 2008

Barack Obama campaigned on the promise of "change," but one change the president-elect may be planning on - not deploying a US missile defense in Eastern Europe - would be a big mistake. Indeed, it's exactly the type of about-face that nations like Russia, Iran and North Korea hope for from the incoming administration.

Worse, it will likely be seen abroad as knuckling to Russian bullying. Two weeks ago, just a day after the US elections, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev made a virulently anti-American speech - his first major address since taking office this spring and arguably the first foreign "test" of the president-elect.

Amid other ranting, Medvedev demanded that the United States back off on its planned missile-defense bases in Poland and the Czech Republic. If the deployment goes ahead, Medvedev warned, Moscow will place short-range missiles in Kaliningrad - a Russian enclave nestled between NATO members Poland and Lithuania.

A few days after the Medvedev speech, a senior Obama aide came out after a phone call between the president-elect and Polish President Lech Kaczynski saying that Obama had "made no commitment on" missile defense.

Ugh. That's not a certain retreat by Washington in the face of Moscow's threats, but it's a very troubling start for the Obama team on a key national-security issue.


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,179457,00.html?wh=news



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About Peter Brookes

Peter Brookes is a Senior Fellow for national security affairs at the Heritage Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. He is also a weekly columnist for the New York Post. Brookes frequently appears on cable news such as FOX, CNN, and MSNBC as well as hosts major market radio talk shows. He is the author of: "A Devil's Triangle: Terrorism, Weapons of Mass Destruction and Rogue States."

Before coming to Heritage, Brookes served in the Bush administration as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asian-Pacific Affairs. Prior to the Pentagon, he worked as a staff member with the Republican staff of the Committee on International Relations in the House of Representatives. Brookes also served with the CIA's Directorate of Operations, and worked on international economic issues for the State Department at the U.N.

He also served in the U.S. Navy, including active duty in tours in Panama and Japan in aviation and intelligence/cryptologic billets. He has over 1300 flight hours aboard Navy EP-3 aircraft. Brookes is a Commander in the naval reserves. He is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy; the Defense Language Institute; the Naval War College; and the Johns Hopkins University.