The Obama administration has sent mixed signals on missile defense. Secretary of Defense Gates last month announced that the Administration would terminate the Multiple Kill Vehicle program and the Kinetic Energy Interceptor program, put the Airborne Laser Program into research and development status, and not add additional ground-based interceptors in Alaska as originally planned. At the same time, he announced increases in funding for programs to counter the threat from short and medium-range missiles. The net effect was a cut of nearly 15 percent or $1.5 billion of the Missile Defense Agency’s budget, a troubling harbinger given the Democrats’ penchant in recent decades for underfunding missile defense and then arguing that, surprise! the resultant underfunded technologies don’t work. On the positive side, until yesterday, the Administration had not abandoned plans to construct a missile defense radar in the Czech Republic and ten interceptor missiles in Poland to protect the United States and parts of Europe from missiles launched by Iran. In fact, in his April 5 speech in Prague, President Obama seemed to endorse these additions to the system, saying that “As long as the threat from Iran persists, we will go forward with a missile defense system that is cost-effective and proven.” It is thus surprising that the Administration’s FY2010 budget released yesterday shows that they have essentially decided to put the Polish and Czech sites on ice, allocating only $51 million for ongoing planning and design work. Last year, Congress appropriated $467 million for the sites, but construction was delayed because the Czechs and Poles have yet to ratify the necessary bilateral agreements they signed with the Bush administration. This may be the beginning of the end for the sites, a development which will be welcomed in Moscow, anxious to keep the United States out of its backyard. Even if the Administration decides in several months to move ahead with construction, missile defense opponents in Poland and the Czech Republic will use this anemic funding request and Obama’s schizophrenia on missile defense to argue that the United States is not committed to this project. Without the European sites, the question then becomes, how does the Obama administration intend to deal with the missile threat from Iran? Do they have plans for an alternative arrangement or are we to hope that the Supreme Leader will wake up one day and realize that Iran’s missile and nuclear programs are a colossal waste of money that could be better spent on Iran’s tattered economy? As Senator John Cornyn pointed out yesterday at AEI, the Obama administration’s policy on missile defense “makes no sense.” By not funding sites which would have contributed to a defense of the U.S. homeland and our allies from Iran and cemented our relationship with Poland and the Czech Republic, the Administration is strengthening Iran and Russia and leaving some of our closest NATO allies out in the cold.
