Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012) (19 page)
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Authors: Dinesh D'Souza
Tags: #Non-fiction, #Political Ideologies, #Conservatism & Liberalism, #Political Science
BOOK: Obama's America 2016 (Non-Fiction)(2012)
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How then can we sum up Obama’s energy policy? When it comes to developing countries, Obama’s philosophy seems to be: Drill, baby, drill. But when it comes to the United States, Obama takes the opposite tack. Oil drilling? Let’s block it when we can, and delay it with regulations when we must. Nuclear energy? No way. Coal? The Obama administration has issued new regulations that make it virtually impossible to build new coal power plants, and a few years ago Obama candidly said he sought to make coal power generation so expensive that existing coal plants would have to close. And now, the Obama administration has targeted fracking. Even though burning natural gas emits half as much carbon dioxide as coal, the Obama administration has been waging, as Steve Forbes put it, “an undeclared war against hydraulic fracturing methods of extracting natural gas.”
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I predict that if Obama is re-elected this will only get worse. He will heavily restrict, if not shut down, the fracking industry. His pretext will be environmental and safety concerns, although his real reason will be quite different: anti-colonial leveling. If Obama succeeds, it would be catastrophic for the U.S. economy, which is an energy-driven economy. America has been, in effect, a hostage to foreign energy for half a century; now, thanks to Obama, we could lose our chance to take the lead as a global energy producer. Such chances don’t come often, and if they are missed they seldom return. But that is precisely what Obama wants. In the name of his global redistributionist agenda, which calls for an equalization of living standards around the world, he wants to choke off America’s chance for energy independence.
CHAPTER TEN
DISARMING THE ROGUE NATION
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
—Pogo
T
hree decades ago, President Ronald Reagan mobilized America’s defenses to combat what he termed the “evil empire.”
hree decades ago, President Ronald Reagan mobilized America’s defenses to combat what he termed the “evil empire.”
The term was controversial, but at the same time accurate. The Soviet Union, after all, had an empire that included Poland, the Baltic States, and the rest of Eastern Europe, and the Soviets had occupied Afghanistan and had satellites in Cuba, Nicaragua, and a dozen or so other countries. Meanwhile, since the end of the Vietnam War, America had been in retreat across the world. Reagan set out to reverse this trend. He led a massive military buildup to counter the Soviets. He authorized the building of MX missiles and deployed medium-range missiles in Europe. He initiated the Strategic Defense Initiative, a missile defense program, to shoot down missiles fired at America or our allies. Reagan’s goal was not merely containment but rollback—to push the Soviet Union back behind its original borders. Ultimately Reagan got even more than he bargained for. The Communist regime itself disintegrated, and Russia ceased to be a global superpower.
Now, thirty years later, we have a very different kind of president. If our theory is right, he is a man who views the United States as the evil empire, or perhaps we could say, the rogue nation. While Reagan pursued “peace through strength,” Obama has pursued what may be termed “peace through weakness.” To this end he slashes America’s defense spending, even while potential enemies like China are rapidly expanding their military capabilities; he blocks missile defenses, both here and for our allies; and he dramatically reduces our nuclear stockpile, possibly to only a few hundred missiles, and eventually to none. The anti-colonialist theory predicts that Obama would seek not just containment but also the rollback of imperial America. Obama’s ultimate wish would be for America to lose its position of unparalleled military supremacy and become, like the Soviet Union, a former global superpower, or, to put it differently, a second Canada.
It may seem odd for Americans to hear others—let alone their president—think of their country as an evil empire. We don’t consider our nation, for all its flaws, to be a rogue nation. That’s a term we associate with Iran or North Korea. Those are, after all, the bad guys. In North Korea’s case, the rogue regime already has around ten nuclear bombs and seeks to build more. Iran has made rapid and startling progress in building its own nuclear capability, which would make Iran the first Muslim government in the Middle East to possess nuclear weapons. Here in America we perceive these as troubling developments, and hold that they pose a serious threat to peace and global security. But there is a hidden assumption behind this way of thinking. We assume that we are the good guys.
It is this assumption that the anti-colonial ideology calls into question. The anti-colonial assumption is that we are the bad guys. Let’s see how this changes the whole equation. Consider the nuclear map of the Middle East. How many Muslim bombs are there now in the Middle East? None. The Iranians are trying to go from zero to one. How many Jewish bombs? Quite a few—no one knows how many bombs the Israelis have. How many Western bombs? A whole, whole lot. America has the capacity to blow up the entire region using just a few of its nuclear weapons. Anti-colonialists insist that the nuclear problem in the Middle East isn’t Iran, it’s America. Who cares if the Iranians get a single bomb or even a dozen bombs? From the anti-colonial point of view, nuclear bombs would actually give Iran a way to counter Israeli and American aggression. Meanwhile, America has the most sophisticated nuclear arsenal in the world, and America is the only country that has actually used nuclear weapons. Therefore, the anti-colonial mission is not to worry about Iran building a single nuclear bomb but rather to slash the American nuclear arsenal.
Now let’s see how this anti-colonial approach squares with Obama’s behavior. Just fifteen months into his presidency, in April 2010, Obama held a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. The objective was to enhance global security by reducing the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Obama called for a “new international effort” aimed at “stopping the spread of nuclear weapons.”
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Observers, however, noticed that neither Iran nor North Korea was represented at the summit. They weren’t even invited.
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So who was there? America and its allies, some forty nations in all. Apparently Obama’s idea was to stop the spread of nuclear weapons by reducing the number of weapons possessed by America and its allies.
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Observers, however, noticed that neither Iran nor North Korea was represented at the summit. They weren’t even invited.
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So who was there? America and its allies, some forty nations in all. Apparently Obama’s idea was to stop the spread of nuclear weapons by reducing the number of weapons possessed by America and its allies.
Liberals and conservatives weighed in on the summit, and somewhat predictably both groups missed what Obama was doing. For Jonathan Alter, Obama cheerleader, America and its allies could, by slashing their nuclear arsenals “advance efforts to pressure Iran to curtail its own nuclear program.” This is classic Alter: a ridiculous assertion unaccompanied by any evidence or argument. If I slash my nuclear arsenal, how does that “pressure” you to stop building yours? The absurdity of Alter’s claim was effectively countered by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer. Krauthammer said it was dangerously naive of Obama to assume that if America set a good example by reducing its nuclear stockpile, the Iranians would meekly forgo their aspiration to build nuclear bombs.
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Krauthammer’s logic was entirely sound, but his whole argument was based on the premise that Obama’s actions were aimed at influencing Iranian behavior. In that case, Obama would not only be naive; he would be a complete fool. But Obama is not a complete fool, so we have to reconsider the argument. What if Obama had no intention of influencing Iran at all? What if his goal was to achieve the result he was actually achieving, namely, reducing the nuclear arsenals of America and the West? In that case, Obama would be the one guy who knew what he was doing, and his critics would be the ones who were being naive.
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Krauthammer’s logic was entirely sound, but his whole argument was based on the premise that Obama’s actions were aimed at influencing Iranian behavior. In that case, Obama would not only be naive; he would be a complete fool. But Obama is not a complete fool, so we have to reconsider the argument. What if Obama had no intention of influencing Iran at all? What if his goal was to achieve the result he was actually achieving, namely, reducing the nuclear arsenals of America and the West? In that case, Obama would be the one guy who knew what he was doing, and his critics would be the ones who were being naive.
Obama’s efforts—or perhaps we should say non-efforts—to stop Iran from getting a nuclear bomb are illustrative of his lackadaisical attitude. For the past several years, America has pushed for sanctions against Iran. Each time the sanctions get a bit tougher, but really tough sanctions are impossible to coordinate since Russia and China, which have extensive commercial and military dealings with Iran, won’t go along. And clearly the sanctions aren’t working; Iran continues to make steady progress. In November 2011 the International Atomic Energy Agency, a division of the United Nations, provided new evidence that makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device.” Experts estimate that Iran could be months, or at most a year or two, away from being able to build such a device. This gives Iran the option of sharing its nuclear secrets with terrorist groups or, even scarier, of developing a plan for removing Israel from the map, a kind of Second Holocaust. At the very least, one would expect a sense of urgency on the part of Obama to stop this. The
New York Times
reported that the Obama administration’s response to the new report of Iran’s atomic progress was “strikingly muted.”
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Indeed, Obama’s efforts seem focused not on deterring Iran but rather on deterring Israel from acting to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. Consequently, most intelligence analysts in America have become reconciled to the fact that Iran is soon going to get a bomb, and at that point there is not a whole lot anyone can do—at least not without risking that bomb going off and causing massive devastation and global economic upheaval.
New York Times
reported that the Obama administration’s response to the new report of Iran’s atomic progress was “strikingly muted.”
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Indeed, Obama’s efforts seem focused not on deterring Iran but rather on deterring Israel from acting to bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. Consequently, most intelligence analysts in America have become reconciled to the fact that Iran is soon going to get a bomb, and at that point there is not a whole lot anyone can do—at least not without risking that bomb going off and causing massive devastation and global economic upheaval.
None of this is to suggest that Obama is indifferent to the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. He is acutely alert to those dangers—but for him the dangers seem to be posed mainly by the United States. Once again, Obama’s actions speak much more clearly than his words. In 2009, when Obama took office, the United States had approximately 5,000 nuclear warheads in its arsenal. Obama resolutely set about slashing that number. In 2011, Obama negotiated an arms reduction treaty with Russia, the so-called START treaty, in which both countries agreed to reduce their warhead count to 1,550. America and Russia also limited their launchers to 700. In convincing the U.S. Senate to support the treaty, Obama promised to modernize America’s existing nuclear assets—a promise he subsequently abandoned. Some of the provisions of the treaty were downright odd: the limit on 700 launchers imposed no restrictions on Russia, for example, since Russia already had fewer than 700 launchers. So that was a unilateral restraint on the United States. Once START was ratified and became law, Obama went much further. According to recent reports, he has asked the Pentagon to study reducing America’s nuclear deterrent by up to 80 percent, which would bring us down to around 300 strategic warheads.
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All of this is occurring at a time when other nuclear-armed nations like China are expanding and modernizing their arsenals. Undoubtedly the leaders of those nations view with surprise bordering on incomprehension America’s decision to wipe out the bulk of its own defensive arsenal. At this rate, China will soon have nuclear parity with the United States; eventually other nations may also reach this point. It is worth noting that never before in history has a global superpower disarmed itself so rapidly and so thoroughly.
It may seem to the uninformed that even 300 nuclear warheads is plenty. Who needs more in this post-Cold War era? But consider the following scenario. America has 300 warheads; so do Russia and China. Russia and China make an alliance with each other, and each nation agrees to launch 150 warheads against America in a first strike. True, America’s entire arsenal won’t be wiped out; some of the Russian and Chinese warheads may miss, and some of our warheads are carried on submarines and bombers that are much harder to target. Let’s assume America has enough warheads left to destroy a dozen Chinese cities and a dozen Russian cities. America can strike back, to be sure, but if it does, the Russians and the Chinese have an additional 150 warheads each with which they can level every major American city. The point is that America is now deterred from striking back, because it fears a completely devastating second strike that would basically end America as we know it. These are not wild speculations; they are precisely the “war games” that the Pentagon has played since the dawn of the nuclear age. The Cold War is over, but the logic of deterrence has not changed.
Nuclear weapons are dangerous, but when two countries have a lot of weapons they are less likely to attack each other, because there are plenty of warheads left over to strike back. The paradoxical conclusion is that when a nation like the United States draws down to just a few dozen, or a couple hundred, warheads, it is actually increasing the danger of being attacked. A world in which nations have just a few nuclear weapons is in some ways a more perilous world than one in which those same nations have a lot. And a world in which there are no nuclear weapons may be the most dangerous of all, because even when the weapons are gone, the knowledge of how to make them remains, and in this situation the country that goes ahead and builds them first is in a position to obliterate its adversaries.
It is against this backdrop that we should understand Obama’s speech, delivered in April 2009 in Prague, in which he said, “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Obama insisted that the United States should lead the march to global nuclear disarmament. Why? Not because we are the world’s leader. Rather, “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear weapon, the United States has a moral responsibility to act.”
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Thus we should go first as an act of repentance. And in Obama’s case repentance means unilateral nuclear disarmament. Obama calls for the whole world to get rid of its nuclear weapons and then, while the rest of the world ignores him, he sets about slashing the nuclear arsenal of the one nation that he happens to be in charge of, namely, his own.
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Thus we should go first as an act of repentance. And in Obama’s case repentance means unilateral nuclear disarmament. Obama calls for the whole world to get rid of its nuclear weapons and then, while the rest of the world ignores him, he sets about slashing the nuclear arsenal of the one nation that he happens to be in charge of, namely, his own.
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