4/6/10: President Bow n' Tax Loses the Cold War, Retroactively (Again)

Remember when President Obama announced he was going to scrap the missile shield in Eastern Europe? Yeah, this is kind of like that, only worse. President Bow n' Tax is simultaneously limiting America's ability to use nuclear weapons, while signing a deeply flawed arms treaty with Russia:

President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons, even in self defense.

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Source: NY Times via The Lonely Conservative

But that ain't all, folks! President Bow n' Tax is also planning to sign a nuclear arms treaty with Russia that will weaken US defenses while giving Russia the option to back out at any time:

Most Americans will be horrified that President Obama is compromising our deterrent to chemical and biological attacks on this country. Our allies will also be troubled by his aspiration to eliminate U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. Foes and friends alike will be bemused by his assertion that such steps will, as the Times paraphrased it, “create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions.” In fact, none — not one — of the other nuclear states or the obvious wannabes has evinced any interest in abandoning such “ambitions.”

I believe that the most alarming aspect of the Obama denuclearization program, however, is its explicit renunciation of new U.S. nuclear weapons — an outcome that required the president to overrule his own defense secretary. Even if there were no new START treaty, no further movement on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, and no new wooly-headed declaratory policies, the mere fact that the United States will fail to reverse the steady obsolescence of its deterrent — and the atrophying of the skilled workforce needed to sustain it — will ineluctably achieve what is transparently President Obama’s ultimate goal: a world without American nuclear weapons.

Source: National Review

Remember, back in September 2009, the Obama administration threw our Eastern European allies under the proverbial bus. Now, the Obama administration is throwing US (as in America) under the bus. Hope! Change!

Of course, Russia reserves the right to back out of this deal at any time:

The new U.S.-Russian arms control treaty is a much better deal for Russia than its predecessor, but Moscow reserves the right to withdraw from it if a planned U.S. missile defense system grows into a threat, Russia’s foreign minister said Tuesday.

Sergey Lavrov said Russia will issue a statement outlining the terms for such a withdrawal after President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev sign the treaty Thursday in Prague. The new accord replaces the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START I, which expired in December.

Source: AP via The Lonely Conservative

The Heritage Foundation puts this all into perspective:

Unfortunately for Americans, President Obama’s new strategy will have the exact opposite result of its intended effect. Instead of incentivizing countries to give up nuclear ambitions, it creates new incentives for them to maintain or develop their own nuclear programs. First look at the Russians, who clearly still see their nuclear weapons as the cornerstone of their defense, no matter how much President Obama wishes it were otherwise. Moscow has no interest in diminishing its own nuclear arsenal, but it is perfectly happy to allow the Obama administration to weaken the U.S. deterrent until it is on equal footing with Russia’s currently mediocre might.

A country like Iran is equally unimpressed with President Obama’s unilateral disarmament strategy. Tehran wants to be the pre-eminent power in the Middle East, and as a nuclear state it can more credibly make that claim. But more importantly, nuclear weapons would also boost the current regime’s domestic survival. Nuclear powers do not mess in the internal affairs of other nuclear powers. Witness Tiananmen Square. The ayatollahs believe that, when they have the bomb, they can crush the freedom-loving opposition with total impunity. They are counting the days.

Source: The Heritage Foundation via The Lonely Conservative

What a disaster. Meanwhile the Russians are strengthening ties with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. I guess we can safely say that Obama's "Russian reset" effort has failed... miserably:

The point of President Barack Obama's much-ballyhooed "reset" of relations with Vladimir Putin's Russia was simple: Get Russia to stop supporting American enemies and use its influence to reduce the threat of nuclear terror being rained down on the West by the world's rogue regimes.

Despite Obama's best efforts, including a unilateral withdrawal of the Bush anti-ballistic missile plan for Eastern Europe, Putin traveled to Venezuela, shook hands with a beaming Hugo Chávez, and announced (video here) that Russia would provide Chávez with both a nuclear energy capacity and a rocket program, the same as it has done for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in Iran.

In the last five years, Putin has sold Chávez over $4 billion in weapons, from attack helicopters to assault rifles. In a truly unhinged statement, Putin claimed: "Our goal is to make the world more democratic." By this, Putin meant that undermining American interests and jeopardizing American national security will enhance the power and prestige of his KGB regime in Moscow, something he would like to assert will make the world a better place to live in.

Chávez was less subtle: "The Yankee empire doesn't want us to have one single little plane. We don't really care what Washington thinks."

The same result occurred in regard to Iran. Ignoring Obama, Russia announced that it would go forward not only with finalizing a major nuclear power plant for Iran, but also with providing the rogue state with a missile defense system to ward off an Israeli attack.

Source: American Thinker