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National Security: Our secretary of state tells the Chinese we'll restrain missile defense activities in Asia in exchange for their help in reducing the threat of a nuclear North Korea. Isn't this where we came in? In a news conference after meetings with China's top leaders on Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry said the United States would reduce its missile defenses in Asia if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons program. Well, at least he didn't bow. In response to North Korea's threat to fire some of its latest missiles, including the road-mobile Musudan, amidst news that it can...

Missile Defense: The administration beefs up our Alaskan-based interceptors it once downgraded in response to North Korea's threat, while ending the final phase of the Europe-based defense against Iran it once supported. We welcome the Obama administration's decision to place an additional 14 ground-based interceptors (GBI) at Fort Greely, Alaska, and Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif., by 2017, as well as a second TPY-2 phased-array X-band long-range missile defense radar system in Japan following North Korea's deployment of a new road-mobile missile. We are reminded that if President Obama hadn't scuttled President Bush's plans, these added interceptors would already be...

Missile Defense: As Pyongyang threatens a nuclear strike, the administration says our missile defenses can handle anything they can throw against us or our allies. If so it's not because of anything the president did. 'I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack," White House spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday after North Korea's raging runt, Kim Jong-un, said Pyongyang was scrapping the 1953 armistice deal that ended the Korean War. He threatened a "preemptive" nuclear strike against the U.S. Carney added that "our recent success in returning...

Defense: Plans to reduce our most effective fighting force by 20,000 will leave it unable to meet all its global commitments or respond to spontaneous threats from the shores of Tripoli to anywhere else. There is no greater symbol of America's apologetic retreat from world leadership under President Obama than the planned reductions in the size of the Marine Corps, cuts that were in the works even before sequestration mandated under the Budget Control Act threatened to cut even deeper. The Marines are on course to cut around 4,000 positions a year through 2017, decreasing the total number of Marines...

Defense: The fruit of unilateral disarmament, appeasement and promised "flexibility" patrols our East Coast near one of our largest ballistic missile submarine bases. Defense cuts and Russian subs — a double whammy. 'On June 1 or a bit later, we will resume constant patrolling of the world's oceans by strategic nuclear submarines," Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said in February. Keeping that promise, a Russian Sierra-2 class nuclear attack submarine cruised within 200 miles of our East Coast on the eve of a U.S. presidential election in which defense spending and priorities were a key issue. This is the...

Defense: The fruit of unilateral disarmament, appeasement and promised "flexibility" patrols our East Coast near one of our largest ballistic missile submarine bases. Defense cuts and Russian subs — a double whammy. 'On June 1 or a bit later, we will resume constant patrolling of the world's oceans by strategic nuclear submarines," Russian Navy Commander Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky said in February. Keeping that promise, a Russian Sierra-2 class nuclear attack submarine cruised within 200 miles of our East Coast on the eve of a U.S. presidential election in which defense spending and priorities were a key issue. This is the...

Common Defense: The president says it's OK to have fewer ships because today's vessels have much better capabilities. But each ship can be in only one place at a time. When Mitt Romney noted the shrinking Navy under Barack Obama's budget cuts and the sequestration his Office of Management and Budget director drew up, the president sarcastically replied: "We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of 'Battleship' where we're counting ships; it's what are our capabilities." As we've...

Common Defense: The president says it's OK to have fewer ships because today's vessels have much better capabilities. But each ship can be in only one place at a time. When Mitt Romney noted the shrinking Navy under Barack Obama's budget cuts and the sequestration his Office of Management and Budget director drew up, the president sarcastically replied: "We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines. And so the question is not a game of 'Battleship' where we're counting ships; it's what are our capabilities." As we've...

Defense Spending: Despite debate assertions, our commander in chief has in fact presided over a shrinking Navy and an Air Force with planes older than their pilots. And what's worse, he planned it that way. When Mitt Romney accurately said that under President Obama the U.S. Navy had fewer ships than in 1917, our commander-in-chief petulantly and contemptuously responded, "Well, governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed." As a Marine tweeted Fox News after the debate, they still use bayonets and, yes, we'll have fewer of them under the combined impact...

Budget: The GOP's vice-presidential candidate tells the president to either work to stop the mandated cuts to defense under budget sequestration, or tell us what the cuts will be and just what he'll be commander-in-chief of. From Day 1 of his administration, it was clear that President Obama had little use for the military except as a backdrop for the occasional photo-op. He saw it as an egregious example of the American exceptionalism and leadership for which he would incessantly apologize. He would let it wither, slashing our nuclear arsenal, gutting its budget, eviscerating missile defense and canceling major weapons...

Disarming America: The former vice president and defense secretary journeys to Capitol Hill to warn that looming mandated defense cuts will only imperil our ability to defend ourselves and our interests. If there's a common thread that runs through President Obama's policies, it's that they all seem to have the purpose of strengthening government power at home and/or weakening American power abroad. To President Obama, impending massive defense cuts merely means we can beat our swords into Chevy Volts. We have documented as part of our "Obama Record" series and before how the president has been dismantling America's defense brick...

The Obama Record: In pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, the president finalizes plans to decimate our nuclear deterrent and reduce our warhead count beyond even treaty commitments. President John F. Kennedy once said of those who would oppose us: "We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed." That was the longstanding reason for our nuclear deterrence strategy. President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on...

The Obama Record: In pursuit of a world without nuclear weapons, the president finalizes plans to decimate our nuclear deterrent and reduce our warhead count beyond even treaty commitments. President John F. Kennedy once said of those who would oppose us: "We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed." That was the longstanding reason for our nuclear deterrence strategy. President Obama has decided that indeed we are going to tempt them with weakness. According to an Associated Press report on...

Federal Priorities: A new report shows we have spent $70 billion on climate change since 2008 while our strapped military is ordered to become energy-efficient. Imagine weapons that don't harm the environment. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, and a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, took to the Senate floor Thursday to decry the green agenda being imposed on the military by the Obama administration at the same time the defense budget is being sacrificed on the altar of runaway deficit spending.

Security: The president insists he wasn't trying to "hide the ball" until after the election, but the man who as candidate pledged to "end misguided defense policies" such as missile defense is fulfilling that campaign promise. Despite the administration's rap-dancing with the help of the usual suspects in the mainstream media, it's clear that the recent meeting between President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Seoul, South Korea, couldn't be more different in tone and meaning from the one President Ronald Reagan had with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Iceland, in October 1986. President Obama has tried to...

National Security: The president tells his Russian counterpart to give him space until November when, if re-elected, he'll be able to give away missile defense and the rest of the store without political consequences. It seems President Obama has a space program after all, one in which the Russians cool it on the dismantling of U.S. missile defenses until the least transparent administration in history can razzle-dazzle, smoke-and-mirror and divide-and-conquer its way into a second term. One of the subtexts of the 2012 campaign has been the fear of what a second-term Obama will do unfettered by the need to...

The Obama Record: The president's shredding of the Constitution began at the Preamble's provision for the common defense. He gave away our missile defense to appease Moscow and betray our allies. Derided as Star Wars, the Strategic Defense Initiative announced by President Reagan on March 23, 1983, was to be the fulfillment of his dream of being able to deter or even defeat a nuclear missile attack, rather than avenge one, with a multilayered system of defenses aimed at enemy missiles in all stages of flight. SDI and its concept of defending America and its allies were attacked as destabilizing...

Security: A deputy defense secretary tells Congress that the administration is indeed considering giving Moscow sensitive Aegis ballistic missile defense data. We've gone from "trust but verify" to "appease and surrender." Brad Roberts testified before a House Armed Services subcommittee Tuesday that the Obama administration was actively considering giving Moscow classified missile defense data to allay Russian concerns about the capabilities and intent of our proposed ballistic missile defense system based in Europe to guard against missiles launched from Iran. Roberts testified that the administration believes "cooperation could be well-served by some limited sharing of classified information of a certain...

Appeasement: From ObamaCare to recess appointments, honoring the Constitution has not been an administration hallmark. But when it comes to betraying secrets to mollify the Russians, it becomes a document the president hides behind. It was bad enough that the 2012 defense authorization bill signed by President Obama set America on a downward spiral of military mediocrity. He also issued a signing statement, something he once opposed, saying that language in the bill aimed at protecting top-secret technical data on the U.S. Standard Missile-3 — linchpin of our missile defense — might impinge on his constitutional foreign-policy authority. Section 1227...

Defense: The administration announces a leaner version of our military involving the cutting of tens of thousands of ground troops as a leading defense contractor closes a major plant due to budget cuts. In an unusual appearance at the Pentagon on Thursday, President Obama laid out his plans for a "leaner" military based on the need "to renew our economic strength here at home, which is the foundation of our strength in the world." In other words, failed domestic policies require us to cut our military in a dangerous world. Obama insisted that even after the currently budgeted $460 billion...

National Security: Portrayed as just a shuffling of priorities, the president's defense cuts reduce our two-war strategy to maybe one war and cross your fingers. Champagne corks are popping from Beijing to Tehran. Imagine a scenario in the not-too-distant future when an Iranian Shahab missile mated with an unexpectedly ready nuclear warhead is test-fired and detonates somewhere over the Indian Ocean. The next day Iran closes the Strait of Hormuz as China announces a blockade of Taiwan. The administration's defense cuts, or shifts in priorities as President Obama would have us believe, leaves us woefully unprepared for the unexpected in...

Exceptionalism: While the American space program is in a museum, Beijing orbits a nearly 9-ton space station module. Soon men will return to the moon, but they will likely be speaking Chinese. While America was scanning the skies waiting for an aging satellite to fall to earth, China was looking to the skies and seeing its future. On Thursday, Beijing launched into space aboard a Long March 2F rocket a space station module weighing 8.5 metric tons that will serve as a prototype for a 60-ton Chinese space lab to be in orbit by 2020. Americans may yawn and say...

National Security: The Sept. 11 commission stated that our biggest failure was one of imagination. Imagine an Iranian nuclear device detonating high over the American heartland. They're working on it. On the same day the 9/11 Commission issued its report, another commission issued a report on a threat that could change our world and way of life in ways we can scarcely imagine. It is a real and credible threat, and it is largely being ignored. The threat is a phenomenon known as electromagnetic pulse, or EMP, and demonstrates why the issue of homeland security extends beyond the need for...

Supremacy: As Beijing resumes double-digit increases in military spending, a leading think tank projects China will achieve military parity in less than a generation. We'd better practice our bows. Back in 1907, President Teddy Roosevelt sent what became known as the Great White Fleet on a worldwide excursion that lasted almost 14 months. Four U.S. naval squadrons, consisting of four battleships each and their escorts, demonstrated America's arrival as a great power that would soon pass Britain as ruler of the waves. Then, the passing of the torch from one great power to another was peacefully presaged by a seemingly...

Federal Spending: The secretary of defense announces that due to economic conditions, the military must be slashed by $100 billion. Since when did defending the United States become an optional budget item? As Chinese warships tour the Mediterranean and Iran adds four submarines to its navy, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced this week the closing of the Joint Forces Command (JFCOM) in Norfolk, Va., the first step toward finding $100 billion in savings over the next five years. The command was just formed in 1999 to improve the ability of the various services to work together and find efficiencies. It...

Military Superiority: By the end of the year, China could deploy an anti-ship missile capable of hitting U.S. aircraft carriers at long range. The naval dominance that American foreign policy depended on may be at an end. When the naval planners of Imperial Japan were laying out the attack on Pearl Harbor, the major question on their mind was — where are the American carriers? In the end, their failure to find them doomed Imperial Japan to defeat. Since World War II, every president alerted to a crisis has asked the same question — where are the carriers? These floating...

National Security: Think Moscow will violate the New START arms limitation treaty? A just-issued report says it never obeyed the first one. The motto of the Obama administration is blindly trust, don't verify and unilaterally disarm. You can forget about peace through strength, the Reagan doctrine that won the Cold War. Our policy is now peace through wishful thinking. If Neville Chamberlain and Jimmy Carter had a child, his name would be Barack Obama. The president is pushing ahead with what is called the New START Treaty to rid the world of nuclear weapons, but not those who would use...

Strategy: As the U.S. retreats from the world stage, the nation's top military officer is warning us about China's military buildup and intentions. Already, China is telling us to keep off the grass. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen, visiting U.S. troops at Camp Red Cloud in South Korea on Wednesday, talked about his growing concerns about China. "I've moved from being curious about what they're doing to being concerned about what they're doing," the admiral said. "I see a fairly significant investment in high-end equipment — satellites, ships ... anti-ship missiles, obviously high-end aircraft and all those kinds of things....

National Security: The administration is ready to sign a treaty stripping us of our ability to defend ourselves against enemy nuclear missiles, including Iran's and North Korea's. In space, no one can hear you surrender. On Monday, the ground-based Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, part of the U.S. missile defense shield, successfully shot down a ballistic missile launched from a ship's deck off Kauai, Hawaii. The test simulated an Iranian SCUD launched from the deck of a ship off the U.S. coast, which, if armed with a nuke, could devastate the American heartland. The simulated Scud was launched from...

Leadership: Our commander in chief was to miss the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery to go on vacation. Other presidents have missed it, but never at wartime. All presidents deserve a vacation, and no president is ever off the clock. But we are at war, and Memorial Day at Arlington has special significance even in peacetime. Those who defend President Obama's decision to take time off were not so understanding whenever President George W. Bush spent time at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Obama was to be in his old Chicago-area stomping grounds, and those who attacked Bush for taking...

Defense: The administration proudly reveals a state secret to our enemies before a U.N. conference on nuclear nonproliferation. It wants to lead by example on disarmament, but Iran and North Korea aren't following. Not since the 1928 Kellogg-Briand Pact that sought to outlaw war as an instrument of national policy has there been such a stunning display of dangerous naivete. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton disclosed U.S. nuclear secrets to the U.N. conference while proudly proclaiming it showed America is sending "a clear, unmistakable signal" that this nation is committed to nuclear disarmament. Kellogg-Briand laid the groundwork for Munich in...

WASHINGTON – The United States has 5,113 nuclear warheads in its stockpile and "several thousand" more retired warheads awaiting the junkpile, the Pentagon said Monday in an unprecedented accounting of a secretive arsenal born in the Cold War and now shrinking rapidly. The Obama administration disclosed the size of its atomic stockpile going back to 1962 as part of a campaign to get other nuclear nations to be more forthcoming, and to improve its bargaining position against the prospect of a nuclear Iran.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – President Barack Obama declared the world safer Tuesday after a 47-nation summit agreed to a four-year deadline on securing vulnerable nuclear materials from terrorists. "Because of the steps we've taken," Obama told a news conference following the summit in Washington, "the American people will be safer and the world will be more secure." ------ Given the U.S. government's stellar record of keeping such grandiose promises, be afraid...be very afraid...especially if you live in a major metro area.

Realpolitik: At the start of the Nuclear Security Summit, we see an all-too-familiar gesture from our president. Is it a matter of courtesy, an idiosyncrasy or the administration's acceptance of a new world order? If there ever was an iconic tribute to the idea of U.S. exceptionalism, it was the fact that the American flag was never dipped during the parade of athletes at the opening ceremonies of the Olympic Games. We never dipped or bowed to anybody, with the possible exception of figurehead royalty.

Nuclear doctrine consists of thinking the unthinkable. It involves making threats and promising retaliation that is cruel and destructive beyond imagining. But it has its purpose: to prevent war in the first place. During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive U.S. nuclear retaliation. Goodbye Moscow. Was this credible? Would we have done it? Who knows? No one's ever been there. A nuclear posture is just that — a declaratory policy designed to make the other guy think twice. Our policies did....

Arms Deal: President Obama signs away U.S. nuclear security and gives the Russians a veto over whether we can defend ourselves. Our nuclear umbrella is in tatters as another piece of paper proclaims peace in our time. Completing a process of disarmament and appeasement that manifested itself in the dismantling and defunding of U.S. military power that began with his inauguration, President Obama signed a new strategic arms limitation treaty with a grinning and very happy Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Thursday in the Czech capital. How fitting this document was signed in Prague, which isn't far from Munich where...

National Security: Aiming at a world where nuclear weapons are obsolete, the administration's nuclear posture review leaves a world without American nuclear weapons and the backbone to use them. After his stunning bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto lamented that all that had been accomplished was to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve. Under policies announced by the Obama administration, a devastating chemical or biological attack on this country might merely awaken our very own Hamlet and fill him with a terrible sense of angst. We have said before that rather...