AF General: Keep missile defense

posted at 2:30 pm on November 13, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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Saying that American security interests will suffer significant damage if missile defense gets derailed, Air Force Lt. Gen. Henry Obering called on Barack Obama to maintain the programs in place. Obering said that people have an outdated sense of the potential for missile defense, and hopes to start briefing the incoming administration soon on its importance:

The Air Force general who runs the Pentagon’s missile defense projects said that American interests would be “severely hurt” if President-elect Obama decided to halt plans developed by the Bush administration to install missile interceptors in Eastern Europe.

Lt. Gen. Henry A. Obering III, director of the Missile Defense Agency, told a group of reporters Wednesday that he is awaiting word from Obama’s transition team on their interest in receiving briefings.

During the campaign, Obama was not explicit about his intentions with regard to missile defense. The program has tended to draw less support from Democrats over the years, particularly during the Reagan presidency when it was seen as a “Star Wars” effort to erect an impenetrable shield against nuclear missile attack from the Soviet Union. More recently the project has been scaled back, although it has again created an East-West divide by stirring Russian opposition to the proposed European link.

Obama has said it would be prudent to “explore the possibility of deploying missile defense systems in Europe,” in light of what he called active efforts by Iran to develop ballistic missiles as well as nuclear weapons.

Actually, Obama made a pretty explicit statement about missile defense early in the campaign:

He did leave himself some wiggle room by talking aboutunproven missile-defense systems, but that’s standard boilerplate on the Left for the entire program.  The thrust of his message was a wholesale disarmament on new systems, especially missile defense.  He wanted to position himself to Hillary Clinton’s left and win the support and enthusiasm of the MoveOn/Code Pink wing of the Democratic Party.

Now that he’s won the election, the question will be whether he actually committed himself to that path, or whether it was just a campaign tactic.  The signals since Election Day have been mixed.  He confused Poland with his vacillation on missile defense earlier this week, but in any case did not rule out a continuation of the program Obering commands.  He has a free hand to do so, and his reluctance could signal a more open approach to missile defense than he gave in the primaries.

Of course, Obama received his national-security briefing this week as well.  Former national-security advisers liken that experience to a cold dash of water, as a new President absorbs all of the threats the nation faces for the first time.  We’ll see if Obama has decided that an umbrella against nonrational, asymmetrical threats like Iran makes sense soon enough.  A quick acceptance of Obering’s offer certainly seems in order either way.

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