Reagan vs. Obama on Nukes

From the Heritage Foundation, James Carafano accurately outlines the stark differences between Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama regarding how to move ahead on disarmament. Any so-called similarity between the two men and strategies are superficial.

Reagan knew that to eliminate the need for large nuclear arsenals, you must first start to eliminate the dependence — both ours and others’ — on massive nuclear attack as the guarantor of security. That is why Reagan’s first priority was to build up U.S. conventional forces and introduce missile defense. That allowed his negotiators to approach arms control agreements from a position of strength.

President Obama has done the exact opposite. He has cut our national defense, including acquisition of the F-22, removed missile defense installations in Eastern Europe, and cut missile defense development programs. His lawyer-like NPR weakens America’s deterrence credibility by broadcasting our intention not to respond in kind if we are hit by weapons of mass destruction. And his New START agreement not only clearly links our missile defense shield with Russian missile reduction, but it also limits our own conventional weapons capabilities as well.

Reagan also understood how other nations viewed their own nuclear programs and recognized the limits of unilateral arms reductions. President Obama clearly does not. Russia’s nuclear and conventional weapons arsenals are declining faster than ours, due to age and funding, so of course they want to bring our levels down to theirs. New START plays right into the Kremlin’s needs by constraining our advantage in conventional (non-nuclear) “strategic” weapons, including missile defense, in order to accentuate the power of their nuclear arsenal.