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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...

In the 1980s, when now-Secretary of State John Kerry was a Democratic U.S. senator from Massachusetts, he criticized the Reagan administration’s plan for a missile defense system—known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)—calling it a “cancer on our nation’s defense.” … One year earlier in June 1985, AP reported that Kerry was advocating the same position of limiting funding to SDI, calling it, “a dream based on an illusion.” “We must also recognize that we could never test a Star Wars system under realistic conditions until the moment of an all-out nuclear attack,” Kerry said. …

From the cover of Time, April 4, 1983 Editor’s Note: This week, we have run a series by Jay Nordlinger on missile defense. It has been 30 years since Reagan gave his speech announcing the project. What was his vision, and how has it fared? The last part of the series is below. Parts I through IV are at the following links: I, II, III, and IV.In that speech of his, 30 years ago, Reagan said, I know this is a formidable technical task, one that may not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet current technology has...

Editor’s Note: This week, we are running a series by Jay Nordlinger on missile defense. It has been 30 years since Reagan gave his speech announcing the project. What was his vision, and how has it fared? For the first three parts of the series, go here, here, and here.You will remember a curious incident in March 2012. Obama is talking with Dmitri Medvedev, Russia’s outgoing president. Their conversation is caught on tape. Obama says that a number of issues can be “solved,� and “particularly missile defense.� But “it’s important for him to give me space.�The “him� was Vladimir...

Editor’s Note: This week, we are running a series by Jay Nordlinger on missile defense. It has been 30 years since Reagan gave his speech announcing the project. What was his vision, and how has it fared? For the first two parts of the series, go here and here.The president who followed Reagan was his vice president, George Bush. The president who followed him was Bill Clinton — who was no fan of missile defense. He put the brakes on the program immediately. As Rich Lowry writes in his book on the Clinton years, he “slashed funding for missile...

Editor’s Note: This week, we are running a series by Jay Nordlinger on missile defense. It has been 30 years since Reagan gave his speech announcing the project. What was his vision, and how has it fared? For Part I of the series, go here.Reagan is the object of widespread respect today. He is respected even by some of those who once scorned him. So it may be hard to imagine just how mocked and reviled he was in his time. Liberal elites (to use a convenient though unsatisfactory phrase) painted him as a Hollywood simpleton who would inflict...

President Reagan addresses the nation on SDI, March 23, 1983 (The Reagan Library) Saturday, March 23, was the 30th anniversary of President Reagan’s famous “SDI speech� — the speech in which he announced our missile-defense project, which soon came to be known as the “Strategic Defense Initiative,� or “SDI.� I have a piece on this subject in the current National Review. I thought I would do an online series this week, blowing it out — expanding on this piece and this topic. There are not many more important topics, frankly. A defense against nuclear missiles ought to rank pretty high...

On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech that horrified the liberal establishment of the time: his call for a Strategic Defense Initiative. Ronald Reagan was not your typical politician. The only president born and raised in Illinois (yes, Lincoln, Grant, and Obama moved to Illinois as adults, but only Ronald Reagan grew up there), he came to politics with a heartland sensibility: do what makes sense, do what’s right; don’t worry about what the elites from the Ivy League or Foggy Bottom insist upon. Reagan came to party activism late in life, running for public office for...

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...

by Mark Finkelstein June 22, 2006 Norah loves Larry. At least, she loves the way Larry Eagleburger phrased things about North Korea. At the same time, Larry made it fairly clear that there's no love lost between himself and Dick Cheney. The former Bush, Sr. Secretary of State appeared on this evening's Hardball. Guest host Norah O'Donnell interviewed him along with former Clinton defense official Ashton Carter. Carter had in turn written an op-ed in today's Washington Post, which as indicated by its title, If Necessary, Strike and Destroy, advocates blowing the North Korean ICBM off its launch pad if...

National Security: Moscow threatens to strike our missile defense sites in Europe if we proceed, as missile defense advocates warn that the administration is defunding existing missiles in favor of future, theoretical versions. 'A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens," Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov said at an international missile-defense conference in Moscow on Thursday, apparently not waiting for the "flexibility" President Obama told outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that his re-election would give him. Makarov's blunt threat referred to administration plans to deploy the SM-3 IIB, a missile still on...

Hillary Rodham Clinton, US Secretary of State, who met with the foreign ministers of the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) here yesterday, proposed a strong missile shield to protect Gulf Arab states from Tehran and sought to work with them to help end the violence in Iran's ally Syria. Clinton said: "It is a US priority to help the GCC build a regional missile defense architecture" against what that country sees as a looming ballistic missile threat from Iran. Clinton said that she looked forward to discussing the wide range of common strategic concerns, including preventing Iran from acquiring a...

The Pentagon has mothballed a laser-equipped jumbo jet after 15 years and $5 billion worth of research to develop an airborne missile defense system. Budget cuts shot down the Airborne Laser Test Bed but some research into anti-missile lasers will continue, according to the U.S. Missile Defense Agency. "We didn't have the funding to continue flying the aircraft," agency spokeswoman Debra Christman told the Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/xEnw3z ). The plane, a Boeing 747 mounted with a high-energy chemical laser, has been sent into storage at Davis Monthan Air Force Base, the agency said. The base near Tucson, Ariz., serves...

Rachel Maddow had a very tough evening Friday. Before telling a 100 percent falsehood about Reaganomics on HBO's "Real Time," the MSNBC commentator said the Strategic Defense Initiative would never work because you can't shoot a missile out of the sky with another missile (Snip) You know what? Here's the country, here's the kind of thing you put over like a cake to protect the cake from flies. Missiles don't work that way. That’s the whole idea of SDI. We'll protect ourselves by shooting missiles at other missiles. It’s never worked in a test. We spent billions on it.

MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia's parliament moved closer to approving a landmark arms reduction treaty with Washington Friday by amending domestic legislation to stress that Moscow could withdraw from the pact if it felt threatened by the West. The amendments required for Russia to ratify the New START treaty do not change the pact itself and were introduced before the second of three ratification votes in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament. The U.S. Senate included its own interpretations of the treaty -- the centrepiece of a "reset" that has improved long-strained relations between Moscow and Washington -- when...

Strategy: The heirs of Ronald Reagan abandon his legacy and dream of defending America from nuclear attack. Our security will rest on ambiguous language and vague assurances, not on the genius of U.S. technology. Peace in our time, or should we say appeasement in our time, as a sufficient number of GOP senators signed on the New START treaty to give the Democrats and President Obama the 67 votes needed for ratification. The Hill reported that Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-Ga., became the 10th Republican to support the treaty on Monday. Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., was No. 9, saying on Monday...

The nuclear-weapons treaty President Obama has negotiated with the Russians may help him make America's erstwhile Cold War adversary happy, but it won't help protect us from the rogue nations that threaten the United States today. Today, the Senate will begin debating the the New START treaty. Democrats want to jam it through with a flock of lame ducks. If ratified, it will force the U.S. to agree to strategic-nuclear-weapons parity with Russia, the direct descendant of a nation that threatened our country's existence for decades. Who would have thought in the year 2010 the United States would be renewing...

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...

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...

National Security: An unclassified Defense Department report says an Iranian missile could strike the U.S. by 2015. If only we were working as hard to defend ourselves as they are to destroy us. In any discussion of the Iranian nuclear threat, the assumption is always that Tehran's target is Israel. Iran's quite mad president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has pledged to wipe Israel off the map as part of his grand scheme to usher in the age of the 12th Imam. Tehran may have a bigger fish that it wants to fry, namely us. "With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop...

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...

It sounds like something from a James Bond movie: a massive satellite, the largest ever launched, equipped with a powerful laser to take out the American anti-missile shield in advance of a Soviet first strike. It was real, though—or at least the plan was. In fact, when Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev walked out of the October 1986 summit in Reykjavik, Iceland, because President Ronald Reagan wouldn't abandon his Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, the Soviets were closer to fielding a space-based weapon than the United States was. Less than a year later, as the world continued to criticize Reagan for...

THE CASE FOR SPACE-BASED DEFENSE The growing interest in nuclear technology by countries such as Iran presages the possibility that one or more nations may attempt to harness such a capability in the form of an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) attack against the United States, a prominent political scientist has warned. Such a scenario, writes Brian Kennedy of the Claremont Institute in the November 24th edition of the Wall Street Journal, is not far-fetched. "It would require the Iranians to be able to produce a warhead as sophisticated as we expect the Russians or the Chinese to possess. But that is...

The Obama adminstration must react responsibly to China’s declaration that military operations in space are inevitable, a top China expert says. “How will the US react to Chinese diplomatic efforts in light of the PLA’s blunt statements on space warfare? This is something the Obama administration has to take into account,” said Dean Cheng, China specialist at Washington’s Heritage Foundation. “Are we going to see outrage, any meaningful reactions to the Chinese statements or again that it was someone speaking out of school and we just aren’t sure.” Cheng was referring to what appears to mark a major shift...

William K. Black's Proposal for “Systemically Dangerous Institutions” /snip SDIs should: 1. Not be permitted to acquire other firms 2. Not be permitted to grow 3. Be subject to a premium federal corporate income tax rate that increases with asset size 4. Be subject to comprehensive federal and state regulation, including: a. Annual, full-scope examinations by their primary federal regulator b. Annual examination by the systemic risk regulator c. Annual tax audits by the IRS d. An annual forensic (anti-fraud) audit by a firm chosen by their primary federal regulator e. An annual audit by a firm chosen by their...

Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after midnight I was informed in a telephone call by President Barack Obama that (his) administration had decided to pull out from the planned missile defense shield installations" in the Czech Republic and Poland, the...

Defense: A ballistic missile launched from Alaska is shot down by an interceptor launched from California. With threats from North Korea to Iran, it's time to ignore the skeptics and fully fund missile defense.It was the most realistic and most successful missile defense test ever in a Strategic Defense Initiative that could one day save an American city from a rogue missile strike. Yet the "yeah, but" media greeted this triumph with claims the concept is still unproven. It was as if the Wright brothers had announced man's first flight, only to be greeted with cries that they hadn't built...

Vicenza, Italy. President Obama’s decision to cancel our European ground-based missile defense system will prove to be very costly and his public rationale -- changed intelligence and improved technologies -- is far from the whole truth. This is a geopolitical disaster and risks our security as well. Last year, President Bush said “Iran is pursuing technology that could be used to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles of increasing range that could deliver them.” His administration successfully negotiated with Poland and the Czech Republic to install a ground-based anti-missile defense system in those countries to counter the accelerating Iranian threat.

Security: An Iranian mullah once said "a world without America and Zionism" was a real possibility. Our sellout of Eastern Europe and missile defense brings that dream closer to reality. It would take only one warhead."Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism?" Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad asked at a "World Without Zionism" conference in Tehran in 2005. "But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved." He added that Iran had a strategic "war preparation plan" for what it called "the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization." A...

Strategic Defense: A new report says the United States must develop robust missile and space defenses to counter China. If you think the current economic crisis is something, imagine the effects of a nuke over Iowa.Imagine a world in which you can't get money from your bank or can't get a loan. You can't get money from your ATM even if it's within walking distance. You can't drive to one because your car won't work. No, it's not what would happen if the Congress doesn't pass a bailout bill. This is a small snapshot of what would happen if a...

Strategic Defense: With Iran on the verge of a deliverable nuke, the administration tells our allies in the dead of night that we will scuttle missile defense plans in Eastern Europe to please the Russians.Czechs are used to betrayal by their Western allies. It was at Munich in 1938 that British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sealed their doom in exchange for a piece of paper promising "peace in our time." The fact that this further gutting of missile defense came on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland on Sept. 17, 1939, is an eerie coincidence. "Just after...

Defense: On the same day a plot to supply Iran with nuclear materials is revealed, Israel conducts a missile defense test. Nothing concentrates the mind quite so wonderfully as the threat of imminent extinction.On Tuesday, word came that the Manhattan district attorney's office had smashed a plot to smuggle nuclear weapons materials to Iran through unwitting New York banks. A 118-count indictment accuses Chinese financier Lei Feng Wei of setting up fake companies to hide that he was selling millions of dollars in potential nuclear materials to Tehran. As the New York Daily News reports, among the materials involved were...

Alliances: The U.S. has expressed a willingness to barter away missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic. Now the Polish foreign minister says he hopes his country doesn't regret trusting the United States.The Brussels Forum is a privately organized high-level meeting of the most influential North American and European political, corporate and intellectual leaders to address pressing challenges currently facing both sides of the Atlantic. One of the pressing issues discussed at this year's conference was whether the U.S. is serious about bartering away plans for missile defense sites in Poland and the Czech Republic in exchange for...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27, 2009 – Boosted by a few strong years of testing successes, much of the United States’ missile defense technology that once was questioned is now ready to be fielded. The destroyer USS Hopper launches a standard missile 3 as it operates in the Pacific Ocean on July 30, 2009. The missile successfully intercepted a sub-scale, short-range ballistic missile launched from the Kauai Test Facility at Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands, Kauai, Hawaii. The launch was the latest Missile Defense Agency test in conjunction with the Navy. U.S. Navy photo   (Click photo for screen-resolution image);high-resolution image available....

A test-firing of a high-energy laser beam aboard a modified Boeing 747 has been called a success, the Missile Defense Agency said. A team from Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin conducted the Airborne Laser (ABL) test Tuesday over the California High Desert. The laser was fired into an onboard calorimeter, which captured the beam and measured its power. The test is preparation for an upcoming demonstration in which the laser will be fired through a nose-mounted turret on the aircraft toward the target. In a test Aug. 10, a low-power laser beam hit an instrument-equipped missile. "This test shows...

Defense: The Air Force airborne laser program successfully completes a simulated kill from a plane able to find, track and destroy a live ballistic missile. We can shoot down enemy missiles. Instead, we're shooting down the laser program.The Aug. 10 effort was the third such test — sort of like a sniper sighting the target with the red dot of a laser without actually pulling the trigger. In early June, the airborne laser (ABL) program engaged two un-instrumented missiles. This was the first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile. A modified Boeing 747-400F aircraft took off from Edwards Air...

Defense: Overlooked in the defense budget cuts is the decimation of missile defense systems. As North Korea tested an ICBM, our defense secretary was scrapping a system that could have destroyed it with a single shot.We will miss the F-22 Raptor, perhaps the only plane that could evade the sophisticated S-300 surface-to-air missile defense system Russia is selling to Iran. Russia's S-300 system is "one of the most lethal, if not the most lethal, all-altitude area defense" systems, according to the International Strategy and Assessment Service, a Virginia-based think tank. But the aircraft we and the nation will miss the...

EDWARDS AFB, CA - The Boeing Company and the US Missile Defense Agency successfully completed the Airborne Laser's (ABL) first in-flight test against an instrumented target missile, achieving a historic milestone.During the test, the modified Boeing 747-400F used its infrared sensors to find a target missile launched from San Nicolas Island, Calif. The battle management system aboard ABL issued engagement and target location instructions to the beam control/fire control system, which acquired the target and fired its two solid-state illuminator lasers to track the target and measure atmospheric conditions.ABL then fired a surrogate high-energy laser at the target, simulating a...

Strategic Defense: The Air Force's airborne laser program passes yet another test, proving "unproven" missile defense once again. The question is not whether we can get it to work, but whether we can afford not to.The news that Iran has enough nuclear material to build a nuclear weapon in relatively short order and is well along on missiles to deliver its nukes has put a sense of urgency on the proposed missile defense system slated for Poland and the Czech Republic. Fortunately, another answer to the threat posed by rogue regimes like Iran and North Korea has just passed a...

SDI: If you missed the news, which isn't hard given how poorly these things are covered, our "unproven" missile defense proved itself again last week, when a U.S. warship downed a simulated North Korean missile in flight.The test, conducted in Hawaiian waters by the Navy and the Department of Defense's Missile Defense Agency (MDA), was the 23rd firing by ships equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile defense system. It was the 19th success, including the shoot-down of a dead U.S. spy satellite last year. A short-range ballistic missile simulating a missile like North Korea's Nodongs or Scuds was fired from...

(Japan and its role on the international stage grow increasingly important by the day. As North Korea accelerates its nuclear and missile threats and China builds its military at a frantic pace. the role of Japan as one of American’s premier allies in the Pacific becomes even more critical and the byzantine internal politics of Japan are gaining more attention. On Sunday, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lost the latest in a string of municipal elections to the opposition Democratic Party of Japan, this one in the capital city of Tokyo. Almost immediately, Prime Minister Taro Aso called a national...

Thirty years after Jimmy Carter's malaise speech, we return to the days of rising joblessness, an unresponsive economy, deference to dictators, gutting the military and an energy policy tilting at windmills... As history repeats itself on the anniversary of the speech MSNBC's Chris Matthews wrote, we wonder if the "Hardball" host, who has worked for four Democratic politicians, is still getting tingles up his legs. The Democratic Party apparently has learned nothing in the past three decades. Will we see a return of the misery index? The only thing that's different is the sweater.

The Obama administration is reacting to the anticipated launch of another North Korean long-range ballistic missile, expected to fly over the Pacific toward Hawaii sometime soon, by putting missile defense on alert. That's a big change from last time. Back in April, in advance of North Korea's last missile test, the administration pretty much pooh-poohed the threat posed by the Taepo Dong launch, characterizing Pyongyang's saber-rattling as bluster. Indeed, from all outward indications, Team Obama did just about nothing but bloviate to defend U.S. territory and interests from the missile that, by almost all accounts, has the potential to reach...

Call this coming July Fourth Dependence Day -- the day marking prudent and responsible America's realization that we do indeed depend on the diplomatic power and technological capability of anti-missile defensive systems. North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il is threatening to fire a ballistic missile "test shot" at Hawaii on July Fourth. Kim's hyperbolic bombast and paranoid theatrics likely engage Pyongyang's opaque domestic intrigues. Still, the missile and the moment are dangerous -- and instructive. The first decade of the 21st century has made it clear that we are engaged in a global battle between the constructive and the destructive...

National Security: Iranian missile experts are helping North Korea with the imminent launch of an ICBM that can hit Alaska and Hawaii. Imagine a Taepodong-2 with a nuke. This is no time to gut missile defense.The enemy of my enemy is my friend, the saying goes. On Sunday, the Japanese paper Sankei Shimbun reported that a 15-member delegation from Tehran has been advising the North Koreans on their imminent "satellite" launch since the beginning of March. Iran recently launched its own satellite to demonstrate its global reach. The Iranian experts include senior officials with rocket and satellite producer Shahid Hemmat...

Defense: As we prepare to celebrate our independence, North Korea wants to remind us of Pearl Harbor. Fortunately, we can make use of assets dreamed of by Reagan and deployed by Bush to defend our 50th state. Japan's Yomiuri newspaper reported Thursday that North Korea would launch a long-range Taepodong-2 missile at Hawaii on or about July 4. This would be the anniversary of the first Taepodong-2 test on July 4, 2006. It would also mark the 15th anniversary of North Korean President Kim Il Sung's death.Those who know have stopped laughing at North Korea's increasingly credible nuclear and global...

As Defense Secretary Gates tours our missile defense site at Fort Greely, Alaska, Gov. Sarah Palin calls for restoration of the missile defense cuts. Meanwhile, North Korea points another missile at the U.S. Robert Gates' visit to our missile defense facility at Fort Greely on Monday was a pointed reminder to the North Koreans that while we have been talking softly, we still have a few big sticks in the ground ready to turn the North Korean missile program into so much scrap metal.

Democrats: Joe Biden shares Barack Obama's lifelong commitment to keeping America unprotected against nuclear missile attack. Neither he nor Obama wants to protect Georgia — theirs or ours.What sealed the deal for Poland in allowing the deployment of U.S. ground-based interceptors (GBI) on its soil was the deployment of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) missiles on its soil. PAC-3 missiles are true anti-missile missiles, much more sophisticated than their predecessors that were pressed into action during Desert Storm. Warsaw knows that PAC-3 missiles might have proven useful in Russia's invasion of Georgia and would be useful in its defense as well....

Missile Defense: North Korea's test of an ICBM shows the folly of depending on others for our security. If we wanted to stop the threat of nuclear weapons, we should have shot it down.In Prague on Sunday, President Obama pledged an effort to rid the world of nuclear weapons, calling them "the most dangerous legacy of the Cold War." Well, we won that war in part because of our possession of those weapons and in part to the commitment by President Ronald Reagan to build a missile defense against them. Such defenses were available Sunday but went unused when North...

ST. JAMES, N.Y. — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin will receive an award from a New York group that advocates for people with developmental disabilities. The Independent Group Home Living Foundation says the former Republican vice presidential candidate will be honored next weekend on Long Island.