by Mike Miller

Created on: June 26, 2008   Last Updated: November 20, 2008

Part I.

Once Barack Obama gets elected President, the anti-missile defense system will come to be seen as the most dramatic foreign policy difference between the two main candidates.

The anti-missile defense system stands as the defining center piece of an American foreign policy that is driven by military strategy, ever since it was first proposed as the "Star Wars" program during the Reagan administration. For Obama, the missile defence shield is a headache, an obstacle, and an expense that is at cross purposes to his foreign policy vision. He most certainly will characterize it as an embarassment that must be abandoned. He has not promised to install it.

Obama can be expected to take Bill Clinton's thesis of "Inclusion" and raise it to a worldwide level. Presently, we are seeing that the global economic chaos sparked by the rupture of the credit bubble in the American sub-prime housing market is requiring as a fix the melding of national economies into a single international financial system. The new unified system will need centralized oversight by an Agency or Institution that has as yet not been determined. Having missiles pointed at each other, even if for alleged defensive purposes, makes this degree of financial unity virtually impossible. Obama, therefore, cannot endorse the missile shield.

Technical problems also dog the implementation of the missile defense system that make it vulnerable to be the biggest money item deleted from the new administrations budget. First, it is not yet fully proven to work properly, and, Second, Russia's objections to the installation of the missile shield is absolute, going so far as to provoke threats of an attack on Poland and any other place where the missiles might be installed.

Personally, I have a lot of ambivalence with regard to the missile shield. It's more weaponry in the field...you can't have a war without weapons, and I am not fond of war. The missile shield, as Russia has claimed, does represent an ESCALATION. Its whole premise is that it will be used in a war. However, on the other hand, certain countries, i.e. specifically Iran, North Korea, and (I would add) China seem to be preparing a nuclear missile attack on the United States, Israel, or Europe. If that is the case, I would rather have a fully functional missile shield in place, than not have one. Still, our efforts to install the missile shield may only be hastening an attack prior to its projected placement in 2013.

Nevertheless, I would rather have

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