From ACT For America <[email protected]>
Subject Brigitte Gabriel Analyzes Recent US Foreign Policy Failures and More
Date April 2, 2022 8:06 AM
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[Biden’s Mixed Messages Got Us Here]
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BRIGITTE GABRIEL ANALYZES RECENT US FOREIGN POLICY FAILURES AND MORE
[Brigitte on NewsMax]
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THE DEATH OF MAD
And the urgent need to reestablish deterrence
By Clifford D. May
The Washington Post 
[ACT NOW]
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Central to America’s Cold War strategy was the principle of MAD –
Mutually Assured Destruction. The idea was to make nuclear warfare a
lose-lose proposition. Whichever side was attacked would retain the
capability to counterattack. Both sides would end up devastated if not
annihilated.
I studied MAD in graduate school and considered it sane. I had spent
time in the Soviet Union and concluded that the men in the Kremlin
were evil but rational. They believed that Marxists like themselves
were on the right side of history (to coin a phrase) so there was no
need for “adventurism.” And the horrors Russia had suffered in
World War II were still fresh in their memories.
Now, however, Vladimir Putin rules the roost. He’s no dialectical
materialist. He’s more of a L’etat c’est moi kind of guy. To be
fair, he’s not alone in believing that he’s destined to be the
redeemer and czar of Russky Mir, Russian World, the idealized vision
of a revived pan-Russian or even pan-Slavic empire.
Three days after invading Ukraine he put his nuclear forces on alert
– the term he used was “special combat readiness.” He warned the
U.S. and other NATO countries that any attempt to prevent him from
pillaging and conquering his neighbor would result in consequences
“such as you have never seen in your entire history.”
Was he threatening to use chemical or tactical nuclear weapons against
Ukrainians? Or cyberattacks against Americans? Or was he saying he
won’t play by MAD rules? We can only guess which means he has
established what’s known as “strategic ambiguity.”
He dares to be so aggressive now because his many past aggressions and
transgressions elicited only feckless responses from the U.S., NATO,
and the chimera known as “the international community.”
President Biden, from the moment he moved into the White House, has
been eager to placate Mr. Putin and reluctant to “provoke” him.
Last year, he restricted arms assistance to Ukraine, gave his blessing
to the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (while curbing domestic oil and gas
production) and agreed to a five-year renewal of the 2010 Strategic
Arms Reduction Treaty despite Russia’s record of cheating and the
fact that the agreement imposes no limits on Mr. Putin’s
shorter-range nuclear weapons – the kind he might use against
Ukraine or in a future war against NATO.
These policies were consistent with those of President Obama who
seemed to believe that his magnetic personality coupled with clever
diplomacy could alleviate all tensions with Moscow, Tehran, and
others.
But back to MAD: One president was uncomfortable relying on it even in
Soviet times. President Reagan’s plans for high-tech missile defense
were derided by his critics as “Star Wars,” a crazy scheme to
“hit a bullet with a bullet.”
Nevertheless, research and development yielded results during his
administration and the George H.W. Bush administration that followed.
In August 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton bragged that
an American “defense umbrella” would protect the U.S. and its
allies from nuclear weapons that North Korea possessed and that the
Islamic Republic of Iran was attempting to acquire.
I had my doubts. So did Ilan Berman, vice president of the American
Foreign Policy Council. We responded by publishing an op-ed in the
Wall Street Journal granting that a “defense umbrella” was a
marvelous idea but adding that America’s was full of holes.
The George W. Bush administration had worked only on missile-defense
systems capable of intercepting a small number of ballistic missiles.
There had been no attempt to build a comprehensive architecture, one
that would be capable of neutralizing a large salvo of nuclear-tipped
missiles.
To build that would require much more research, development, and
funding. But both the Obama administration and Congress were – at
that moment –slashing the Pentagon’s budget for antimissile
systems.
In addition, as part of his “reset” with Russia, Mr. Obama
relinquished the Bush administration’s plan to deploy ground-based
radars and interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. That system
was intended to defend only against missiles from the Islamic Republic
of Iran, but Mr. Putin charged that it might protect Americans from
his missiles which would violate the MAD doctrine.
On the American left, there were objections to space-based missile
defense on the grounds that such systems would “militarize” space.
“This is dead wrong,” Mr. Berman and I countered. “A space-based
missile defense capability would instead block and destroy weapons
that enter the Earth's orbit on their way to their targets.”
We concluded: “The capability to make Iranian, North Korean, and
other foreign missiles useless has already been developed and
field-tested. Only America has it, and we should deploy it.” We
urged the U.S. government to build, as rapidly as possible, “a
comprehensive and impenetrable ‘defense umbrella’ to protect
itself and its allies.”
Needless to say, our advice was not taken. Nor did the Trump
administration make missile defense a priority. 
Over the weekend, Mr. Putin used a hypersonic ballistic missile to
destroy an underground arms depot in western Ukraine. It was another
threatening message to the U.S. which has not yet fielded its own
hypersonic missiles and is very late in developing defenses against
them.
MAD had its day. That day passed. Robust deterrence – a capability
based on overwhelming military power, clear projection of the will to
utilize it, coupled with defense systems that make it much harder for
our enemies’ missiles to reach their intended victims – should
have been the highest national security priority of American leaders
from both parties.
Instead, we took a holiday from history and spent a peace dividend. We
ought to be correcting those mistakes without further delay. We’d be
mad not to.
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