Some Star Wars Talk
Nov 10, 2008 | Posted by Ashley

If you're anything like me, you're so eager for the "change" that you've been refreshing your Washington Post homepage every hour to see if any updates have come from the Obama administration. We know it will come, but after only a week after the elections, nothing has been laid out in too much detail.

The latest talk has been about missile defense -- which was pursued aggressively by the Bush administration. Will Obama pursue sites in Eastern Europe? Will he help ax the program that's been called his "first foreign policy test."

Plutomium Page over at Daily Kos wrote today about potential changes in national security strategy that the new President-Elect Obama could pursue, including missile defense. She cites analysis by Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, the chairman of our sister organization the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation.

Writes Plutomium Page:

Now, about cutting funding to national missile defense: bravo. Let's turn to Lt. Gen. Robert Gard...He's been talking about missile defense for a while now, and his latest analysis came out about three weeks ago.

[Gard states that] "Despite the Bush administration's investment of an estimated $60 billion since 2001, U.S. national missile defense continues to be an unnecessary and counterproductive enterprise. Testing objectives consistently are not met, cost overruns and scheduling delays are rampant, and relations between the United States and Russia are worse than at any time since the end of the Cold War, thanks in no small part to squabbling over the proposed third missile defense site in Europe."

He recommends three basic changes. Please click the link above for the details; basically, shift spending to systems countering existing threats, dissolve the Missile Defense Agency, and "spend political capital" on diplomacy.

For more on missile defense, check out this op-ed from Council staff Katie Mounts and Travis Sharp, and our resources over at the Center.