Defenseless: America in the Twenty First Century

By John Griffing

Under the guise of addressing the debt crisis, President Obama is leaving America exposed to multi-pronged attack by myriad hostile powers. Necessities like national defense are being sacrificed on the altar of handouts to constituents. Arguably secondary entitlement programs have supplanted the primary necessity of a strong national defense capable of deterring aggression. To state the obvious, the vital security needs of the nation can not be replaced with a one-time shot of welfare utopia. What nation or civilization has ever survived that has turned inward, gratifying pleasure and consumption over the preservation of outer-defenses? Rome serves as only one pertinent example among many. Leaving America defenseless is indefensible.

The new super-committee is taking the heat for its proposed defense cuts, but the super-committee is just a cover for an agenda that has spanned the entirety of the Obama Presidency thus far. Since President Obama took office, he has taken consistent aim at the military, seeking, for example, drastic cuts in the Navy which would require an over-reliance on allies to prosecute wars and even provide for basic contingencies against potential adversaries. As early as 2007, Adm. Mike Mullens was already glibly accepting the prospect of a "fleet-in-being" to supplant current American naval dominance with an effective coalition of "freedom-loving" states.

Such a dangerous proposition, of course, rests on the continued allegiance of said "freedom-loving" states. And as has been observed in the naval decline of other formerly great powers, e.g. Great Britain, naval dominance once lost is rarely reclaimed, and almost always sinks further beneath the waves into even greater decay. The US Navy is already stretched to the breaking point with global commitments that, according to naval insiders, exceed current naval capacity. Why then would President Obama seek more cuts to this most precious American enterprise?

The answer may be revealed in yet other suspicious actions the sitting US President has carried out in relation to the US military.

After pledging to maintain a "robust" nuclear deterrent when pursuing new arms reduction talks with Russia, President Obama forced an agreement through Congress that promised to "de-MIRV" American ICBMS. MIRVs are crucial in order that the US be able to target multiple locations of strategic value simultaneously. Russia was not required to reciprocate by removing its MIRVed missiles.

Furthermore, President Obama reduced the number of deliverable US warheads to 1,000, rendering America impotent as a so-called "superpower," an eventuality Obama favors if his lament of America's superpower status is any indicator. Consider that the current list of strategic targets exceeds 3,000, growing after 9/11. The gap between the number of strategic locales and available warheads means that America will be unable to defend its territory and the territory of its allies against future nuclear attack. By abandoning nuclear weapons as a response option, Obama, whether by accident or design, has placed America in the greatest strategic danger since WWII. President Obama has exacerbated this heightened state of danger by relaying to world leaders that America wouldn't really use nuclear weapons if attacked, and by ending a practice known as "calculated ambiguity," a doctrine which kept the actual number of deliverable US warheads off public record to ensure strategic advantage.

America does not live in the early Twentieth Century, but in the Twenty-First, an age dominated by a growing number of nuclear powers. What policy aimed at protecting a nation as large and powerful as the United States can justify removing the means of nuclear retaliation? The obvious answer is: none. Why then does our President counsel this course of action, if not to achieve a more vulnerable state for the nation he governs? What might one assume about the intent of a sitting President who, in essence, weakens America's nuclear deterrent in the absence of global cooperation? The question bears examination, and preferably before America finds itself without the needed number of warheads to fulfill strategic obligations.

It can be logically concluded, then, that President Obama, an educated man, has repeatedly sought to undermine America's defenses, leaving America exposed to attack. He does so under the guise of advancing global peace, but in the process makes America less safe.

The world is now testing America's weakened force field, to borrow a Star Wars reference, in open and inflammatory ways. Only last year, China was reported to have launched a missile within 30 miles of Los Angeles. In an exclusive interview, former NORAD Director Jim Cash revealed to me that on the basis of his professional experience, the sighted object was indeed a Chinese missile. The missile was dismissed by official FAA reports as vapor trails from a commercial airliner (even though no airliners were seen in the applicable quadrant at the time concerned).

China has been flexing its muscles in Asia in a host of ways, testing American resolve, and this incident represents only the latest such example of Chinese crisis-baiting. Obama's response is instructive. What was the old adage, something to do with twiddling thumbs? If Cash is correct, America has much more to be worried about in its Commander-and-Chief than misplaced pacifist sentiment. After all, it was President Obama who proposed awarding the first medals in American history for "restraint" in battle. This is much like awarding medals for surrendering and hoping the enemy won't shoot, very similar to abolishing American domestic nuclear weapons stockpiles and hoping the rest of the world doesn't notice.

America has been steadily drawing down its defenses over the last few decades as part of an entrenched process under the direction of the US State Department which admittedly seeks the "disbanding of all national armed forces and the prohibition of their reestablishments in any form whatsoever other than those required for internal order and for contributions to a United Nations Peace Force...." This plan is a Cold War relic, and yet Arms Control and Disarmament Agency communications with public officials reveal that it is still official policy. This explains why Republican and Democrat presidents weirdly seek severe defense cuts at times of increasing global tension, but it does not excuse the act of public officeholders abandoning their duty to "provide for the common defense."

From 1989-2004, military spending as a percent of GDP dropped from 6.2 percent to a scant 2.9 percent. Over the same period, entitlement spending went from 28 percent of federal outlays to nearly 40 percent. The cuts have been so drastic that former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger has said,

"Our nominal objective, our nominal strategy is to be able to fight two MRCs [Major Regional Contingencies] more or less simultaneously. The simple reality today is that we cannot fight two MRCs more or less simultaneously."

For years we've been destroying our ability to defend ourselves, and this President has accelerated the process beyond all reason.  Defense Secretary Leon Pannetta informed super-committee members last week,

"Such a large cut, applied in this indiscriminate manner, would render most of our ship and construction projects unexecutable...we would have the smallest ground force since 1940, the smallest number of ships since 1915, and the smallest Air Force in its history. We would have to formulate a new security strategy that accepted substantial risk of not meeting our defense needs."

Why is there no outrage? It is known that former President Clinton used massive defense cuts to claim a budget "surplus." It is a big deal when the President of the United States knowingly weakens our defenses for his own political purposes. 　Why are we giving Obama a pass? 　

The American military, with rising global commitments and an endless supply of newfound foes eager to strike at the heart of freedom, can ill afford more cuts so that whiney presidents can achieve mythical budget surpluses. We could not afford it in the nineties, and we can certainly not afford it now. Obama seeks one cut too far. Obama's budget reduction plan is the "peace dividend" to end all peace dividends. While America writes itself a large entitlement check, the enemies of America will grow ever more sanguine, watching patiently as the world's greatest power and greatest debtor (we owe these people money) lays down its arms. Applause at a new age of peace and "swords into plowshares" idealism will likely accompany this suicidal move. If this path is not reversed, and this ludicrous move not defeated, the Social Security "trust fund" will be the least of America's problems.