Obama Should Back Missile Defense

During the campaign, Barack Obama was ambiguous, at best, on whether as chief executive he would support completing development and deployment of the U.S anti-ballistic missile defense system first proposed in 1983 by President Reagan. Now this ambiguity has now become a destabilizing factor because it encourages strategically risky probes by powers like Russia in seeking to determine the incoming president’s real position. That’s why Obama’s half-hearted pledge on the campaign trail of support only for missile defense technology that has been “proved” was so disturbing. The pledge led Time magazine last summer to list Obama as a missile defense supporter, but his use of “proved” suggested he only supported infalliable systems. To demand infallibility is to demand the impossible.

Obama should not wait till Jan. 20, 2009, to clarify his position. The moral case for completing the world’s first functional missile defense is compelling. Ballistic missile attacks on the U.S. homeland could kill millions of Americans if the weapon carried a nuclear, chemical, or biological warhead. If we can knock down those incoming missiles as soon as possible after they are launched, countless lives would be saved. Saving lives, especially in defense of human freedom, is a moral good. And missile defense is workable. On Nov. 1, the Navy successfully tested the sea-based components of the missile defense system, destroying an incoming missile target. On Sept. 28, the Army tested its land-based system, killing another incoming missile target. This was the sixth success in ten tests of the missile defense system. The liberal line that missile defense is a fanciful “Star Wars” scheme is so outdated as to be either a delusion or a purposeful lie.

The subject arises anew this month because Russian President Dmitri Medvedev immediately greeted Obama’s election victory with a threat to build new missiles in Kalingrad to target the missile defense installations the U.S. has planned in Poland. Two days later, when Obama spoke to Polish President Lech Kaczynski, Obama still couldn’t achieve clarity. Right after the meeting, Kaczynski released a press statement expressing relief that Obama had said that “the missile defense project would continue,” but then Obama’s transition team demurred, saying “President-elect Obama made no commitment on it.” Obama needs to heed the cautionary example of Jimmy Carter, whose vacillations in Iran preceded the capture of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. To save lives, reassure allies and put enemies on notice, Obama should make a full commitment now to complete development and deployment of the U.S. missile defense system.