In voting to prop up funding for COPS and fire grants—two discredited programs that fail to deliver any bang for our security bucks—the House calls in to question its credibility that it is going to cut spending while not compromising on our security. What security hawk could argue that when it comes to government spending, “everything,” including security spending, is on the table? After all, defense is under-funded: The Pentagon has been on a decades-long “procurement holiday,” failing to modernize its aging fleet of vehicles, ships, and planes. Money ill-spent …
At 11:34 EST, Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman announced, “In these grave circumstances that the country is passing through, President Hosni Mubarak has decided to leave his position as president of the republic.” The departure of Mubarak has long been considered a prerequisite for transformation of the government. His departure, however, hardly means the crisis is at an end. The military has been prominent in guiding the government response, and now with Mubarak’s departure, the armed forces—one of the few government institutions widely respected in the country—will bear the responsibility …
History is not a strong point of this Administration. Last month it was President Obama declaring another “sputnik moment” for America–only to rattle off a list of big government ideas completely at odds with how Eisenhower responded to Sputnik. Yesterday, it was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs delivering another dose of “say what?” history. What’s been happening in Egypt over the last week or so, he informed the press, “are events that many people have not seen — nobody has seen in their lifetime.” Gibbs was born in 1971. …
From the outset of the Obama presidency and the emergence of the Obama Doctrine, the similarities between this Administration and that of Jimmy Carter have been striking. Like Obama, Carter trumpeted soft power and international institutions as the means to solve the most perplexing foreign policy problems. The programs of both Presidents hinged on the cooperation of adversaries who interpreted the U.S. initiatives as signs of weakness, and in the second half of their presidencies, both faced the prospect of sharp reversals.
The Middle East was meant to be the crowning achievement of the Obama Doctrine. Once in the White House, President Obama focused laser-like on a “charm offensive” with Iran. When voices rose against the regime in Tehran in the wake of a disputed national election, Obama offered virtually no support for the cries for freedom. Nevertheless, the “playing nice initiative” with Tehran fell flat. Today, the regime is more aggressive than ever—backing a terrorist take-over of the government in Lebanon, snubbing Western nuclear negotiators, and promoting an Islamist agenda across …
Before the State of the Union address, Heritage Foundation scholars laid out five foreign policy and national security commitments that needed to be in the speech. The President scored about 1 out of 5. The speech did nothing to dispel concerns that the Obama Doctrine just does not make the grade. A Commitment to Peace and Prosperity Through Strength. Grade: “0.” The President’s call for a federal spending freeze did not include “security.” The problem is that the White House’s five-year budget forecast already calls for cuts (in constant dollars) …
Writing in 1995, before anyone in the West thought all that much about war online, Major General Wang Pufeng (the former Director of the Strategy Department at the China’s Academy of Military Sciences) observed, “Our sights must not be fixed on the firepower war of the industrial age. … Rather they must be trained on the information warfare of the information age.” “In the final analysis,” General Pufeng added, “information warfare is conducted by people.” And China has a lot of people. For over a decade, China has been building …
Yesterday, Heritage China expert Dean Cheng mused that something must be up. He wrote, “As the world rang in 2011, one of the lesser noticed events is the absence of a Chinese defense white paper for 2010. The biennial public explanation of Chinese military capabilities and intentions was due out by the end of December. Yet as of Tuesday morning, no report has been released. This is a striking omission, as the Chinese government and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been assiduous in producing these reports in a timely …
Danish authorities have just sunk another plot to strike the West. According to press reports, “Denmark’s intelligence service says it has arrested four people plotting what it called an ‘imminent’ terrorist attack against the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, which printed controversial cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. The head of the agency, Jakob Scharf, described some of the suspects as ‘militant Islamists.’ He said the group had been planning to enter the newspaper’s building and kill as many people as possible.” It sounds like another “homegrown” plot. We have seen all too many …
Inflation and recession at home. Humiliation abroad. In the wake of the Vietnam War, America was foundering. Yet, the seeds of a national resurgence had already been planted by a most unlikely pair: Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and Melvin R. Laird, Richard Nixon’s secretary of defense. Throughout most of the Cold War, the United States used the draft to fill its military ranks. Previously, we had resorted to conscription only during hot wars — the Civil War and the two World Wars. But Cold War Congresses went along with …
