Since Tadeusz Kosciuszko helped Gen. George Washington turn a ragtag bunch of Colonial farmers into the Continental Army, the Polish and American peoples have shared a common bond built on the Polish motto “for our freedom and yours.”
President Reagan steadfastly supported Poland and the other peoples held captive behind the Iron Curtain under Soviet oppression. Of Reagan, former Polish president and Solidarity Movement leader Lech Walesa wrote in 2004:
“We in Poland took him so personally. Why? Because we owe him our liberty. This can’t be said often enough by people who lived under oppression for half a century, until communism fell in 1989.”
Since 9/11, Polish forces have numbered among the largest allied contingents fighting alongside our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
But when President Obama last year abruptly canceled the land-based missile defense system the Poles had risked Russian enmity to host, he broke that bond. Obama’s action on Poland is just the most obvious example of his policy that reduces advanced defense systems and alienates our allies.
Monday: Weakening America starts with emasculating intelligence agencies
Tuesday: Inside the Obama Doctrine for American decline
Wednesday: Putting on blinders about the future
Thursday: Obama’s dance with missile defense and American security
Friday: A critical failure of leadership
NATO has become an empty shell of its Cold War strength. Most of the Western European nations — Spain, Italy and Germany chief among them — have allowed their military forces to atrophy.
As the former commander of Britain’s Strike Command, Air Chief Marshal Sir Brian Burridge told me a few years ago, “We live in an era of ‘plug and play’ warfare. You’re either part of the network, or you’re not relevant. To be part of it, you have to invest both money and thought in the capability ‘umbrella’ — the overall strategic and tactical structure of computer networks, weapon systems, and people that make the forces able to ‘plug and play.'”
As Burridge and other military experts have told me, nations such as Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands are at least two generations behind us in defense technology. Others, such as Italy, have no defense capability at all.
And now the NATO nations — and allies elsewhere like Japan — face threats ranging from Putin’s reassertion of Russian domination over former Soviet satellites to Iran’s growing missile threat. None seem willing — or able — to invest in their own defenses. -Jed Babbin
Russia was the principal celebrant when Obama canceled the Poland-basing plan, promising to substitute a seaborne missile defense. They know — as Obama and the Poles must know — that promise is false and gives our allies another important reason to doubt us.
Obama’s plan, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates described it, would deploy in the Mediterranean Sea at least three Navy Aegis-equipped ships carrying SM-3 interceptor missiles in 2011, with land-based interceptors to be added in 2015. Obama and Gates claim that the seaborne defenses will be faster to deploy and cost less but it illusory because we have too few ships to accomplish it.
The Navy has about 80 Aegis-equipped ships, but only 21 of them are configured for missile defense. And all of the 21 are assigned to protect the Navy fleet or (at times) protect Japan and U.S. ground forces.
It’s a zero-sum game. To convert from fleet missile defense to ground defense, ships have to sail home to exchange computer software and missiles designed to intercept low-flying cruise missiles for others designed for high-altitude ballistic missile intercepts. And to add the Aegis system to an existing ship or build a new one takes years.
Even if Obama wants to deprive U.S. forces of the three Aegis ships’ protection, having three on station at all times requires at least nine ships, not three. If you need three on station at all times, you need at least six more to enable the three to rotate home for shipyard work and crew rotations. Obama’s promise of seaborne missile defense is illusory: Everyone — ally and adversary — knows this.
Though Obama claims to be strengthening both missile defenses and alliances, he is weakening both significantly. He has reduced the budget for missile defense significantly, reduced the number of interceptor missiles based in Alaska from 44 to 30, killed key new technologies such as the “multiple-kill vehicle” program to counter decoy warheads, and curtailed the Airborne Laser program.
Obama’s actions aren’t winning support from allies or adversaries.
Even before he subjected Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the diplomatic equivalent of a Chicago mugging, Obama has roiled the British, ignored India and failed to negotiate the support from NATO on which his Afghanistan strategy depends. Even the French — who are always there when they need us — are highly critical of Obama.
When Obama abruptly returned a bust of Winston Churchill that had stood in the Oval Office for years, the Brits were puzzled. But when Hillary Clinton declared American neutrality in the new British-Argentine dispute over the Falkland Islands, they were truly angered.
In 1982, Argentina seized the Falklands — sovereign British territory — by force. Reagan gave Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher more than moral support (satellite intelligence and other assistance) when she sent the British fleet to throw the Argentines out.
If the new Falklands dispute grows into another conflict, the Brits may withdraw from Afghanistan if we don’t stand by them again. Yukio Hatoyama, Japan’s new prime minister is far less friendly to the United States than his predecessors. Hatoyama demanded renegotiation of agreements that enable the Untied States to continue much of its military presence in Japan.
Unless Obama is uncharacteristically steadfast and diplomatically successful, America’s ability to protect its allies and interests in the Western Pacific and East Asia will come to an end.
NATO — formerly our strongest military alliance — is rejecting Obama’s foreign policy. On the eve of NATO’s 60th anniversary summit, Obama asked for more troops for Afghanistan saying, “Europe should not simply expect the United States to shoulder that burden alone,” he said. “This is a joint problem, it requires a joint effort.”
In response, Belgium offered 35 military trainers, Spain offered 12 troops, and France, being French, turned him down flat.
Every U.S. ally — from Ireland to Poland in the west and India to Japan in the east– understands how Obama’s actions affect them. And that is how alliances dissolve.
Last January, Walesa said of the United States, “but they don’t lead morally and politically anymore. The world has no leadership. The United States was always the last resort and hope for all other nations. There was the hope, whenever something was going wrong, one could count on the United States. Today, we lost that hope.”
Jed Babbin was deputy undersecretary of defense under President George H.W. Bush. He is the author of several best-selling books including “Inside the Asylum,” and “In the Words of Our Enemies.”
