THE GEOPOLITICAL FANTASY TOUR of OBAMA ET AL

(This article has been published in two parts due to its length.  As always, I included all information and opinions which I deemed pertinent.  Thank you for reading.)

Part One: Obama Gouges the Military

I've been carefully observing the current administration's approach to our armed forces both in rhetoric and policy.  I am greatly greatly displeased and disheartened.  Terms like "out to lunch", "in denial" and "checked out" come to mind. 

Back in January 2012, President Obama announced a new military "strategy" that cuts the Pentagon budget by nearly a trillion dollars over the next decade.   Oddly, the military is one of the only places the President has implemented serious budget cuts as he has drastically increased spending virtually everywhere else.

According to the President the plan to roll back defense spending is "smart, strategic" and sets "priorities".  During his speech at the Pentagon the President told us;  "I just want to say that this effort reflects the guidance I gave throughout this process...Yes, the tide of war is receding. But the question that this strategy answers is what kind of military will we need after the long wars of the last decade are over. And today, we're moving forward, from a position of strength."

I love that: "....the guidance (he) gave throughout this process..."

The Army and Marine Corps are going to get hit the hardest with these cuts. While both services grew in size to accommodate the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2003 to 2009, our work in those regions is far from finished and further nation-building efforts may be necessary in other areas of the Middle East and beyond.  In the near future we will have to deal with the ongoing conflicts in Syria and we have Iran quickly emerging as a nuclear threat.  There are the continuing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as issues with Egypt, Libya and Pakistan.  This of course does not take into account the ongoing problems with North Korea and Venezuela.  We are going to have to get involved in Sudan and possibly Somalia at some point.  And did I mention Mexico's spiraling drug cartel problem and China as a looming potential military threat in the Pacific?

Obama mentioned that the military will indeed be leaner, but that the U.S. will maintain a budget that is roughly larger than the next 10 countries' military budgets combined, as if this number has anything to do with anything taking place in the real world.  In case Mr. Obama is just checking in, it takes having a massive military budget to keep things in order in the modern world.  Perhaps he could use a history and world affairs refresher from Condi Rice. 

The cuts run deeper than just the Army and Marines though.  Aside from scaling back all U.S. ground forces by 20 percent,  the Navy’s surface fleet will be slashed by 20 percent – including two carriers and carrier combat air wings while the Air Force will be reduced by two combat air wings. At the same time, standing peacetime overseas deployments in Europe and East Asia will be cut by up to 50,000 troops.

This is scary on a number of levels.

After having already cut billions from the Navy's budget the Obama administration’s January/February defense budget proposal cut an additional $1.3 billion from Navy shipbuilding projects, which will mean scrapping plans to build 16 new warships through the end of 2017.  The budget also included ditching plans to buy 10 advanced P-8 anti-submarine warfare jets needed for ongoing advanced submarine detection.  The Navy is having its eyes, ears, brains and balls defunded.

Most people don't see this as a big deal but it is.

This past summer, in July 2012, a Russian Akula-class stealth nuclear-powered attack submarine armed with long-range cruise missiles operated undetected in the Gulf of Mexico for more than THREE WEEKS.  The presence of the sub was only confirmed after it left the region.  This is at least the second time since Obama became president that a Russian attack submarine has patrolled so close to U.S. shores.  The first time was in 2009, when two Akulas were spotted patrolling off the east coast of the United States.  This most recent undetected visit in the Gulf took place at the same time Russian strategic bombers made bold incursions into restricted U.S. airspace near Alaska and California and highlights a growing, blatant military aggression by Moscow.

According to naval analyst and submarine warfare specialist Norman Polmar: “Sending a nuclear-propelled submarine into the Gulf of Mexico-Caribbean region is another manifestation of President Putin demonstrating that Russia is still a player on the world’s political-military stage.  Like the recent deployment of a task force led by a Russian nuclear cruiser into the Caribbean, the Russian Navy provides him with a means of ‘showing the flag’ that is not possible with Russian air and ground forces."

What is equally or perhaps even more disturbing is that we now know that Russia has plans to sell eleven (11) submarines, at least one of which is Akula-class, to Venezuela (reported in Brazil’s O Estado de Sao Paoli, August 2, 2012.)   And just why would Hugo Chavez, who openly despises the United States need stealth nuclear attack submarines?  Furthermore, just after Mr. Obama released the news of the budget cuts at his Pentagon speech, Russian Deputy Premier Dmitri Rogozin announced that Russia was working on a plan to build 10 new stealth attack submarines and 10 new long range missile submarines through 2030, along with new aircraft carriers.  All this while working to set up naval replenishment facilities in Vietnam and Cuba.

The latest incident in the Gulf of Mexico sheds more light on the failure of the Obama administration’s policy of conciliatory actions designed to develop closer ties with Moscow.

He's not creating "closer ties", he's showing the Russians he is a spineless pushover and operating in a dense mist of world-peace fantasy.  He is being tested and he is failing. 

In June 2012, Russian strategic nuclear bombers and support aircraft conducted a large-scale nuclear bomber exercise in the arctic. This exercise included simulated strikes on “enemy strategic sites" that defense officials say included attacks on U.S. missile defenses in Alaska.  Under the terms of the 2010 New START arms accord, such exercises require a 14-day advance notice of strategic bomber drills, and notification after the drills end. 

No such notification was ever given.

The response from the Obama Administration?  Crickets.

A second and more alarming "exercise" took place July 4, 2012 on the West Coast when a Bear H Russian strategic bomber flew into U.S. airspace near California and was met by U.S. interceptor jets.  This kind of mission has not been seen since before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The response from our administration was to send U.S. Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to have a discussion with Russian Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov about the matter. Dempsey questioned him about the Russian strategic bomber flights near U.S. territory.  The Russians told us to go scratch.  And the mainstream media didn't touch this story or cover any of the news of the Russian war games.  Apparently, no one at the major networks found any of this to be newsworthy.  Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow over at NBC much like Wolf Blitzer and Anderson Cooper at CNN seemed to be asleep on this story, naturally.  Even FOX News snoozed and only covered the crumbs weeks after several smaller internet media outlets released articles discussing the incident.

Let's take a look at this without the vagary of treaties and hand shakes and all the nonsense that happens in front of the cameras.

In the eyes of Vladimir Putin, Obama is like a child who is trying to look good in front of his peers, parents and teachers (ie. his constituents) by coming across as a smooth, intelligent savior - the leader among leaders who convinces all the bad guys to turn their swords into plowshares.  When that submarine pulled out of the Gulf in July, President Putin, an ex-KGB intelligence officer and cold-blooded assassin, spilled his Vodka on himself, slapped his knee, laughing hysterically, and then had group sex with a few Russian models just for the hell of it.

Ruthless, cunning, power-hungry leaders who kill off political opponents don't care what is written on paper.   Diabolical thugs who rig national elections through intimidation and who control what is written in all of the newspapers don't take treaties or agreements seriously.  This is the REAL WORLD and in the real world Obama's geopolitical strategy is an absolute disaster.  Putin has made it clear that he wants to restore elements of Russia’s Soviet communist past and the ideal of "Mother Russia".  In return our President slashes the military budget, decapitates the Navy and signs weightless treaties that only serve to weaken our position as a superpower.

Mr. Putin's hardline policies against the United States have been met with virtually no response other than the creation of nonsensical policy shifts to the progressive extreme.

After the submarine incident, Senator Cornyn of Texas, (member of the Senate Armed Services Committee), said, “(This) is a confounding situation arising from a lack of leadership in our dealings with Moscow. While the president is touting our supposed ‘reset’ in relations with Russia, Vladimir Putin is actively working against American interests, whether it’s in Syria or here in our own backyard.”

What is Mr. Obama doing with our military at a time when the world is so completely unstable and foreign powers are showing confidence in their own ability to challenge the U.S. militarily?

How is it prudent to roll back the Pentagon's ability to maintain its far-reaching advantage in scale and technological advancement right now? 

Hold on.  It gets worse.

____________________

Part Two: Enter the 2012 Unified Security Budget

It appears, not too surprisingly at this point, that a crafty handful of key progressive organizations behind much of Obama’s first-term agenda have now come up with even more radical proposals.  The White House is gladly embracing these proposals in an effort to continue to “transform” the U.S. military.

If progressive groups like John Podesta's Center for American Progress (CAP) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) have their way, the U.S. armed forces will be reduced to a social work style organization designed to fight “global warming,” and “injustice.”   It will be tasked with bolstering the useless United Nations and to combat global poverty. Obama's massive, second-term slashes to the military budget are to be used to invest in a defense position based on “sustainable energy” and to fight against "climate change" around the globe. There is also a subtext for a plan to wrestle control of the military budget away from Congress by creating an "independent panel" that will decide on such matters.

So they intend to piss away more money on an implausible theory that still can't be proven after 25 years of observation and change the Constitution in order to control spending in the direction they see fit.  If people don't think this is Socialism at work, they're kidding themselves.

The two aforementioned progressive think tanks –  CAP, and IPS – have put together a 96-page plan called the "2012 Unified Security Budget".  Many of the previous recommendations from the CAP-IPS annual Unified Security Budgets have been adopted in the past by the Obama Administration.  CAP alone has had such heavy influence on the crafting of White House policy that Time magazine referred to it as the “idea factory” of the Obama administration.  The two organizations combined are responsible for large portions of the now infamous $800 billion stimulus package and the colossal failure that is Obamacare.  

As President, Obama has insisted that "we need to change our nuclear policy and our posture, which is still focused on deterring the Soviet Union – a country that doesn’t exist.”  This is conceptually flawed on so many levels.

First; we have changed our nuclear policy and posture over the last twenty plus years.  The last three administrations have done this and drastically altered the strategic focus of our military.  Where does Obama get off smugly saying that HE is making the requisite post Cold War shift in our military strategy?  This would be funny if it weren't such a pathetic statement. 

Second; the cuts Obama wants to make are straight across the board.  It's not like he's cutting funding for new ICBMs and that's all.  Notwithstanding the aforementioned, there are cuts all the way down the line.  Every branch of the military is facing severe cuts of all kinds (more on this below).  For instance, bonus combat pay to soldiers serving in foreign lands is being cut from a monthly $225 (a joke to begin with) for being in-country to a daily $7.50 for each day a soldier serves in a designated "hostile" zone. Soldiers now have to keep track of how many days they are in particular zones in order to receive the pay. They only receive the full $225 for the month if they are actually engaged in live combat scenarios.

Third; the statement about the Soviet Union is also idiotic because Russia, the country that used to be called the Soviet Union, is clearly showing that it wants to challenge us as a world superpower.  Russia is huge, full of natural resources, has a substantial nuclear arsenal, a powerful military, and a foreign policy that operates counter to the interests of the United States at almost every turn.  Putin is a tough-as-nails dictator who shows every sign of wanting to stick it to us.  Russia is busy rebuilding its Cold War-era bases in the Middle East and Putin is putting his money where his mouth is without any reservation.


Take into account some of the cuts recommended by the CAP/IPS report that are being adopted by the Obama Administration:

- The joint CAP and IPS report recommends the U.S. cease all (ALL!!) further development of missile defenses. The report covers a list of current missile defense programs, including Ground-based Midcourse Defense, Airborne Laser and Kinetic Energy Interceptors.  All programs are to be cut.  (Meanwhile, the Chinese and Russians are both developing their Ground-based defense and Airborne Laser programs.  Russia has had a kinetic Energy Interceptor program for some time.)

- The U.S. military’s vital Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation program is to be cut by $10 billion across the board.

- The complete cancellation of our second SSN-744 Virginia Class submarine.

- Targeted for cancellation are the V-22 Osprey helicopter and the Navy and Marine Corps versions of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

The 2012 Unified report does advocate a massive spending increase in one area: any spending that funds “alternative energy” or that focuses Defense Department resources on combating “climate change" as a security threat. The report’s authors recommend investing the lion's share of the few allotted military increases to address the “threat” of so-called climate change. CAP and IPS are also pushing Obama to take billions of dollars from the U.S. military and instead use the funds for a “green stimulus.”

This goes on and on and the more you read the 96 page report, the fruitier it gets.  You can wow yourselves here: http://www.comw.org/qdr/fulltext/Unified_Security_Budget_FY2012.pdf

During this time of escalating world tension, global terrorism, drastic power shifts and civil instability, our elected President is concocting a ten year plan to reduce U.S. military preparedness.

If Obama and the progressives have their way, our armed forces will be cut off at the knees as our enemies prepare for the next chapter in their respective histories.

The President's approach to dealing with these realities has an unprecedented air of disillusioned arrogance to it.  As Obama told Russian Prime Minister Medvedev when he thought no one was listening: “Tell Vladimir (Putin) after I’m re-elected I’ll have more flexibility.”

That's the last thing we need.