A Flexible and Stronger Commander in Chief

The lead story in today’s New York Times is titled, “Obama Reshapes a Missile Shield to Blunt Tehran.” The article describes a decision by President Obama to stop President Bush’s proposed anti-ballistic missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic and use smaller ground-based interceptors instead.

The article notes several advantages to this system. First of all, they meet an immediate threat due to Iran’s recent success in developing short and medium-range missiles. President Obama will be using SM-3 interceptors based on current technology. As a result, these interceptors can be deployed on ships in 2011 compared to a much later activation of an ABM shield.

Also, 40 to 50 interceptors can be activated instead of the 10 bigger missiles planned for Poland.  And the new configuration does a better job of protecting Israel, thus delaying an independent attack by that country on Iran. And even though the Republicans are doing their usual knee-jerk reflexive opposition to anything that President Obama decides, it isn’t such a terrible thing to have better relations with Russia who had expressed deep opposition to the Bush plan.

In my opinion, this is a win-win situation. We gain a better defense system sooner and placate the Russians and Israelis at the same time. We are reacting to the events on the ground (a phrase that Republicans love to use), namely Iran’s focus on shorter range missiles in a flexible manner.