The Lessons of History

President Obama this week continued his curious foreign policy by scrapping a missile defense shield that he had previously promised to keep.  Poland and Czechoslovakia were the primary beneficiaries of the defense umbrella designed primarily to thwart Iran’s growing short and medium-range ballistic program and their coincident nuclear capability.

A secret report from the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog [International Atomic Energy Agency] warns that Iran has the ability to make a nuclear bomb and is developing a missile system to carry it — an assessment that could call into question the Obama administration’s claim on Thursday that the biggest threat from Iran comes from its short- and medium-range missiles.

Just hours after President Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced that they were shelving plans for a missile defense shield in Eastern Europe because of Iran’s shift in strategy, the Associated Press revealed details of the secret report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. It says Iran has “sufficient information” to build a bomb.

Rewind  Vienna.  June, 1961.

The new U.S. President, John Kennedy, met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to discuss a wide range of topics.  One subject that was not publicized was the presence of U.S. Jupiter missiles in Turkey.  The green Kennedy was pushed around by the blustering Khrushchev, leaving the president looking very weak.  Last year, the New York Times printed a very good story about that confrontation.  Interesting – and relative to Obama – is this passage from that article:

Senior American statesmen like George Kennan advised Kennedy not to rush into a high-level meeting, arguing that Khrushchev had engaged in anti-American propaganda and that the issues at hand could as well be addressed by lower-level diplomats. Kennedy’s own secretary of state, Dean Rusk, had argued much the same in a Foreign Affairs article the previous year: “Is it wise to gamble so heavily? Are not these two men who should be kept apart until others have found a sure meeting ground of accommodation between them?”

But Kennedy went ahead, and for two days he was pummeled by the Soviet leader. Despite his eloquence, Kennedy was no match as a sparring partner, and offered only token resistance as Khrushchev lectured him on the hypocrisy of American foreign policy, cautioned America against supporting “old, moribund, reactionary regimes” and asserted that the United States, which had valiantly risen against the British, now stood “against other peoples following its suit.” Khrushchev used the opportunity of a face-to-face meeting to warn Kennedy that his country could not be intimidated and that it was “very unwise” for the United States to surround the Soviet Union with military bases.

With Kennedy’s political feebleness established, the Soviet Union’s puppet regime in East Germany soon began construction of the Berlin Wall.  But more dangerously, the Vienna encounter emboldened Khrushchev to bolster the new communist regime in Cuba.

Two months before Vienna, Kennedy’s Administration literally left Cuban freedom fighters to die on the beach at the Bay of Pigs.  The following month, the Soviet Premier announced that an attack on Cuba would spark a new world war and the USSR was investing in the island country’s defense.

Less than a year later, the Soviet Union was shipping, erecting and manning missile installations aimed at the United States.  In October, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis gripped the world with the prospect of nuclear war.

Today, instead of a troika of Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro, it’s Obama, Putin and Ahmadinejad.

Normally, I side with the Pentagon and the military in decisions about weapons systems.  Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Vice-Chairman James Cartwright encouraged the move to alter the defense strategy that included the missiles.  As always, I will continue to respect their opinion.

But what concerns me most are the diplomatic and geopolitical repercussions of Obama’s decision.  Aside from the asinine timing of the announcement – on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s invasion of Poland – who gains from this change in policy?  The U.S. does, marginally, according to the Pentagon, but Putin’s Russia and Ahmadinejad’s Iran are the greatest beneficiaries.

When Nikita Khrushchev challenged the American president and our national resolve and put missiles in Cuba, JFK responded with strength, wisdom and a naval blockade on Cuba.  He stared the bully down.

The missiles in Turkey were ultimately removed, but not as a condition to the USSR’s dismantling of their weapons in Cuba as Khrushchev at one point demanded.

Barack Obama is no John F. Kennedy nor do his advisors in any way resemble those of the 35th President of the United States.

This policy change along with other national security and foreign policy “curiosities” by the Obama administration are troubling.

When the Soviets announced their withdrawal of missiles from Cuban, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said famously, “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

With Barack Obama at America’s helm, I fear a Russian or Iranian finger in the eye.

Those who ignore the lessons of history…