Issue Briefs
Will President Biden Make The Same Mistake On Missile Defense That President Obama Did? (From Forbes)
Loren B. Thompson
October 23rd, 2020
When Barack Obama became president in 2009, he almost immediately set about scaling back missile defense efforts for protecting the American homeland that he had inherited from his predecessor. In the end, he killed almost everything. The only program that remained, Ground-based Midcourse Defense, languished for years. Then Obama’s team discovered that all the warnings they had received about North Korea’s nuclear program were true. So they had to begin building back what they had cut or killed. Will President Biden make the same mistake? If he does, the U.S. could be left vulnerable to increasingly sophisticated North Korean ballistic missiles and a new generation of Russian/Chinese hypersonic weapons. I have written a commentary for Forbes here.
The views and opinions expressed in this issue brief are those of the author.
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Loren B. Thompson is a Senior Adviser at GPI, Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute and Chief Executive Officer of Source Associates, a for-profit consultancy. Prior to holding his present positions, he was Deputy Director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and taught graduate-level courses in strategy, technology and media affairs at Georgetown. He has also taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Mr. Thompson holds doctoral and masters degrees in government from Georgetown University and a bachelor of science degree in political science from Northeastern University. |