Tell Vladimir the capitulation is complete

Lest you forget, Obama always intended to cave on European missile defense systems. That's why he reneged on the U.S. commitment to install them in Poland and the Czech Republic as soon as he took office.

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For him, it was always more important to kowtow to the Russians so he could get an arms control deal and, he hoped, avoid other geopolitical showdowns with Moscow. And lest you forget, Obama the savvy smart-power negotiator gave away the game long ago: So don't be fooled into thinking that the threat from North Korea represents anything but a pretense for the Obama Administration to do what Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced yesterday. Yeah, we'll be bolstering our west coast missile defenses (although the upgrade won't be complete until 2017), but it comes at the expense of any missile defense commitment whatsoever in Europe. The BBC reports:

US Defence Secretary Chuck Hagel has scrapped the final phase of its European missile defence shield, citing development problems and funding cuts. Upgraded interceptors were to have been deployed in Poland to counter medium- and intermediate-range missiles, and potential threats from the Middle East. Mr Hagel said the threat had "matured" and that the US commitment to Nato missile defence remained "ironclad". The interceptors had been strongly opposed by the Russian government. It complained that they would be able to stop Russia's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and undermine its nuclear deterrent.

Got that? How dare you protect yourselves, the Russians asked, from our ability to attack you? Remember when Gorbachev demanded that Reagan give up the Strategic Defense Initiative during the Reykjavík summit in 1985, prompting Reagan to get up and walk out rather than make a deal that would compromise any U.S. strategic advantage? Different times. Different president. Very different. The Obama Administration claims that the European capitulation is necessary to respond to the North Korean threat, but the Wall Street Journal points out today that to the extent this is true, it's only because Obama made it that way:

The shame is that the U.S. could already have those 14 extra interceptors in place, plus another 10 in Europe next year. Those plans from the Bush Administration were well along when Mr. Obama pulled the plug in 2009. He also mothballed or killed several promising missile-defense development programs, such as the airborne laser. The decision to stop deploying interceptors and a radar to Poland and the Czech Republic was meant to promote the Administration's "reset" in relations with Russia, which even the White House now privately admits was a failure. The cuts to West Coast defenses reflected the Democratic Party's long aversion to any kind of missile defense. Seven years before winning the White House, Mr. Obama told a Chicago TV station that "I don't agree with a missile defense system."

Democrats have always hated missile defense, which I guess is connected to their post-Vietnam disdain for just about anything that strengthens America's strategic position in the world. You'd think they would prefer a missile defense system to massive stockpiles of ICBMs that can only be of use in a massive mutual assured destruction scenario. But during the Reagan years, Democrats hated defense spending so much that they reflexively opposed anything that came out of the Pentagon, which is why they derided the then-emerging notion of space-based missile defenses as "Star Wars." In those days, Democrats were also highly invested in the notion of negotiated arms reduction, since this would theoretically necessitate much-reduced spending on weapons systems. I suppose they feared that if America could defend itself from a missile attack, it would become unnecessary to negotiate a deal with the Soviets and the U.S. arms buildup could continue undeterred. So any U.S. strategic advantage warred against the Democrats' ideological agenda, thus inspiring the hard-wired opposition to missile defense systems that endures to this day. How ironic that even after Reagan helped take down the Soviet Union, in no small part by ignoring Democrats' shrieking against missile defenses, the Democrats' thinking on the subject endures to this day, and no one is benefiting from it more than Vladimir Putin.