Shield, No Shield

Writing for National Review Online, Clifford May offers his thoughts on Obama's shameless capitulation to the Russians with his call to scrap the missile defense program in Poland and the Czech Republic.

The Third Site [the sites in Poland and the Czech Republic] would not only have helped counter the growing Middle Eastern ballistic missile threat, it also would have strengthened transatlantic security. As Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht has pointed out, Europe’s transatlanticists — not a burgeoning club — “have stuck their necks out in both the Czech Republic and Poland.” The death of the Third Site ensures that “pro-American forces throughout Europe will take a serious hit” and “the widespread European reflex to appease Russia” is likely to grow, “perhaps exponentially.”

At the same time, Iran’s ruling mullahs will be delighted. They will view this as weakness. And they will find such weakness provocative, as tyrants always do.

Americans overwhelmingly favor missile defense, as poll after poll has revealed. But many don’t realize that what we have deployed so far is not nearly adequate to the evolving threat. We are encouraging our enemies to invest in increasingly advanced weapons technologies in the belief that, at a time of their choosing, they will be able to overwhelm our outdated system.

American policy should be designed to elicit the opposite response: It should make clear to our enemies that resources spent on nukes and missiles will be wasted because we have both the means and the will to block them. American scientists are providing the means. Senator DeMint notwithstanding, too few American politicians are providing the will.