"US eyes preemptive cyber strategy" -- a new debate begins

Writing in The Washington Post this morning, Ellen Nakashima reviews the evolving debate over cyber-security: Specifically, is it OK to pre-empt a gathering threat.  Indeed, strategists are going to have to grapple with all the precedents, from the canon of international law to the Cold War to the Iraq War:


The Pentagon has standing rules of engagement for network defense, such as the right of self-defense. But the line between self-defense and offensive action can be difficult to discern.


"This is a big, big problem," said one former intelligence official who noted that it took years to develop nuclear deterrence doctrine. "We are just at the beginning of figuring this out."

"The China Challenge"

Peter Brookes of Heritage, writing in today's New York Post.

Iranian escalation in historical and cultural context

Reuters reports that Iran has unveiled a whole new generation of non-nuclear (at least so far) weapons: 

On a stage in front of military officials, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pulled a sheet away from the aircraft, called the Karrar, which Iran says is its first long-range drone.  With the United States and Israel saying they do not rule out a military strike to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, the Islamic Republic has showed off new mini-submarines, a surface-to-surface missile and announced plans to launch high altitude satellites over the next three years.

So what does this mean?   This author claims no special insight into Iranian plans--although I have never believed that Iran is guided by some sort of "death cult."  Yes, there's a strong martyrdom theme running through Shia Islam--written about by the eminent critic Matthew Arnold back in 1871--but if the Iranians, or at least their leaders, all wished to be dead, they could have done that by now.   In history, there have been precious few genuinely suicidal regimes.

Indeed, I recall hearing former CIA director James Woolsey saying, "The Iranians invented chess."  The Persians have had a continuous culture for 3000 years--they have obviously mastered the art of survival, in all its dimensions.   The question now is how far they will go with their skills--and what will they do with them.  

To me, the position of the Iranians today is somewhat like that the Chinese.  They know that in past millennia, their ancestors were at the top of the world "league tables," and they know that something went terribly wrong for them within the past 500 years or so.  So as part of their plan for moving ahead, they are looking to their own roots, as a way of affirming their identity, even as they prepare to take on a new identity of rapidly developing nation.

Thus the Chinese look to Confucianism, while the Iranians to Islam.  (The Shah of Iran made the mistake of trying to go back all the way to the ancient Achaemenids, which was too far back--and seemed to dismiss Islam.  The ayatollahs got the last word.)  

As the Englishman Edmund Burke said, the task of the statesman is to channel the tides of change through the canals of custom.  So while Confucius and Mohammed never heard of electricity, their professed spiritual descendants today are happily explaining to their subjects that they, the leaders, are doing the work that Confucius or Mohammed would want them to.  

The point here is not to get bogged down in a theological or cultural debate--instead the point is to show that the Chinese and the Iranians believe it is perfectly possible to be retro in politics and culture and cutting edge on science and technology.    They don't seem to need, or want, our democracy and pluralism--only our technology.   If they get that, one way or another, or if they invent their own, then we will have to deal with them on a military plane--ideology, theirs and ours, will be subordinated.  

And in fact, there's plenty of science and technology for Muslims to look back to--even if the US doesn't volunteer NASA for the cause of advancing Muslim self-esteem.   The Islam of the 13th century before, when Islam led the world--or at least led Europe--in science and understanding.

So we're on notice--there's no rule that says that Islam has to lag behind the West.   It didn't lag in the past, and it might not lag in the future.  American, and European, and Israeli security, based on military supremacy, is no given.

In fact, we were warned about the possibility of Muslim military catch-up many decades ago.   Hillaire Belloc, a British politician and writer, controversial to this day, had written some doggerel in 1898 about the true source of Western superiority over colonialized peoples in his era: "Whatever happens, we have got the Maxim Gun, and they have not."  In other words, a century or more ago, we had the power of shock and awe.   We had weapons--the machine gun, the airplane, the steamboat--that made resistance to the West futile.   These words are not repeated to defend colonialism, merely to note that at that time, the West could vanquish any non-Western foe--except, of course, for rapidly modernizing Japan, which blazed the trail on what be called nostalgic modernization, the trail that the Chinese and Iranians seem to be following today.

Yet 40 years later after he wrote about the Maxim Gun, Belloc could see that Muslims would not be so militarily vulnerable and easy to defeat as they had been at Omdurman.  As Belloc observed in 1938:

There is nothing in the Mohammedan civilization itself which is  hostile to the development of scientific knowledge or of mechanical aptitude. I have seen some good artillery work in the hands of Mohammedan students of that arm; I have seen some of the best driving and maintenance of mechanical road transport conducted by Mohammedans. There is nothing inherent to Mohammedanism to make it incapable of modern science and modern war. Indeed the matter is not worth discussing. It should be self-evident to anyone who has seen the Mohammedan culture at work. That culture happens to have fallen back in material applications; there is no  reason whatever why it should not learn its new lesson and become our equal in all those temporal things which now alone give us our superiority over it--whereas in Faith we have fallen inferior to it.



In other words, Bellow was saying, the Muslims could learn Western wars of war.   With that knowledge, plus, in Belloc's view, their more intense faith, they would be formidable on the battlefield.   One needn't be a fan of Belloc the man--he was an anti-Semite, for example--to still acknowledge that he was on to something here.  

So more than 70 years ago, Belloc--no fan at all of Islam, either--warned the West against "The recrudescence of Islam, the possibility of that terror under which we lived for centuries reappearing."  

Well, here we are, and Islam has recrudesced.  Islamic radicalism is emerging in new places, such as Kenya, where  support for Al Shabab is soaring, The Washington Post's Sudarsan Raghavan reports.  What's our counter to this?  




Perhaps the time has come to admit that our efforts at promoting democracy and pluralism in the Muslim world are showing mixed results, at best.   Democracy and pluralism are wonderful things, but it might be the case, sadly, that our valiant and courageous military efforts notwithstanding, the plan of changing them seems to have either little effect or it provokes an outright backlash.    



For the last decade or so, the dominant view has been that the US can prevail against jihadism by public diplomacy and nation-building--we can call that Plan A.   But as Ayaan Hirsi Ali wrote last week in The Wall Street Journal, it seems that a more pessimistic Samuel "Clash of Civilizations" Huntington-type vision is needed for the future, at least as a failsafe.  Maybe they don't hate us because we're free, or because they're not free--they just hate us.   A sobering thought, perhaps, but thinking is always better when it's sober.   

So it seems clear that we need a Plan B, which is unchallengeable military strength--strength that creates a differential equivalent to the Maxim Gun.   

But first we need to take the measure of Iran as a potential military adversary.  Starting with all those new weapons they are unveiling.  Can we counter them on likely battlefields, or not?   Let's put that ahead of the question of whether or not we can convince them to like us. 

Prevail or not.  Survive or not.  Those are the questions that Belloc would be asking--and so should we.  

Is America still the Arsenal of Democracy? Or is it something less? Two columnists, one on the right, one on the left, weigh in.

With Labor Day coming up, we might give some thought, as well as thanks, to those workers who made the US the "arsenal of democracy," as President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it in his speech of December 29, 1940.   It was that industrial strength, just as much as our soldiers and sailors, that enabled us to win a victory and save the world.   As FDR said, nearly 70 years ago:


Guns, planes, ships and many other things have to be built in the factories and the arsenals of America. They have to be produced by workers and managers and engineers with the aid of machines which in turn have to be built by hundreds of thousands of workers throughout the land. In this great work there has been splendid cooperation between the government and industry and labor. And I am very thankful.


American industrial genius, unmatched throughout all the world in the solution of production problems, has been called upon to bring its resources and its talents into action. Manufacturers of watches, of farm implements, of Linotypes and cash registers and automobiles, and sewing machines and lawn mowers and locomotives, are now making fuses and bomb packing crates and telescope mounts and shells and pistols and tanks.


But all of our present efforts are not enough. We must have more ships, more guns, more planes -- more of everything. And this can be accomplished only if we discard the notion of "business as usual." This job cannot be done merely by superimposing on the existing productive facilities the added requirements of the nation for defense. Our defense efforts must not be blocked by those who fear the future consequences of surplus plant capacity. The possible consequences of failure of our defense efforts now are much more to be feared. And after the present needs of our defense are past, a proper handling of the country's peacetime needs will require all of the new productive capacity, if not still more. No pessimistic policy about the future of America shall delay the immediate expansion of those industries essential to defense. We need them.


And so, Roosevelt concluded in this "fireside chat," America must become "the great arsenal of democracy."  A memorable phrase, in and of itself, but also a useful phrase, because threats to our safety and freedom are omnipresent, then and now.

In this slideshow from Life magazine, we get a sense of the scale of industrial mobilization that the US achieved. (And, by the way, unemployment plummeted, during the war--it's possible to argue about the role of Keynesianism in getting us out of the Depression, but it's not possible to argue that military mobilization achieved that goal during the war.)

With all that in mind, we might consider two columns this morning, written by two thoughtful individuals of very different political persuasions, who nonetheless seem to come together around the idea that America should get back to making real tangible things.   But there are some hurdles along the way.

Michael Barone asks in The Washington Examiner, what has happened to the capacity of the federal government to do anything?   He reminds us that the Pentagon was built in 15 months, and LaGuardia Airport built in 25 months.  So why has it gotten to the point today, Barone continues, that the government can't even spend the stimulus money, and when it spends it, the money seems to disappear into a fog of lawyers and agitators?  Yes, we need environmental protections, but protecting the environment is not the same as using environment regulation as an excuse to block everything.

Some new thinking is needed here--unfortunately the Obama administration did not undertake such thinking, asking, for example, if every new project needs to undergo many years of environmental cogitation and litigation, before being, likely as not, struck down by some judge.

Barone is a conservative, but he is also an admirer of FDR, he still retains the sense that sometimes new thinking is needed to confront new problems, such as economic hardship.  And Barone is also a hawk, so he understands the value of military technology.  Finally, he is a native of Detroit, born in the 40s, so he remembers what Detroit was like in its industrial heyday, when America could tackle big projects.

Some might say that it's hopeless to think about building big things-that we are permanently entangled in our mess, that there's no way out.  Others might say that we shouldn't even attempt big things, because we can't be trusted--can't be trusted to safeguard the environment, can't be trusted with our power around the world.   Meanwhile, others would say that any sort of governmental activism is a threat to liberty--an argument that sometimes seems to devolve into the argument that governmental incompetence is to be celebrated, because it discredits the idea of collective action.  To which our greatest leaders, across the centuries, left and right, have said: "Nonsense.  We can do it we want to.  After all, we are Americans.  We can win this war.  We can go to the moon.  We can build the canals and railroads and interstates and national parks that we need."

Another column, by Harold Meyerson, appearing in The Washington Post, takes up some related themes.  Meyerson's argument is that America needs to revive manufacturing--a theme he has emphasized for years.   He pitches his argument mostly by Democrats, telling them that if they want an economic plan that actually creates jobs and builds things--as opposed to bailing out banks--they will help get the unemployed back to work, help rebuild our economic competitiveness, and reignite economic growth.  Which is to say, Republicans, too, might find some of these proposals interesting.    As Meyerson puts it:


If the Democrats focused on boosting manufacturing, with a corollary upgrade to our infrastructure, they'd tap into the only area in which the public wants a more activist government. . . .

Several recent polls have called the Democrats' attention to what should have been obvious to them: That helping America regain its industrial preeminence is one government activity that wins support across the board. One recent survey by Democratic pollster Mark Mellman found 78 percent support for having a "national manufacturing strategy," while 92 percent said they supported infrastructure improvements using only American-made materials. Another survey from Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg found 52 percent of respondents preferred government investment "in the future," while just 42 percent favored the alternative course of large spending cuts.

The appeal of bolstering manufacturing and upgrading infrastructure cuts across lines of race, gender and class. Even a demagogue like Rush Limbaugh would have trouble characterizing them, as he did health-care reform, as "reparations." Just as important, the public is right. Every bit of economic news confirms its apprehensions that by off-shoring our manufacturing, we have not only eliminated millions of good-paying jobs but we have also rendered ourselves incapable of regaining our economic health. The two major economies that are booming amidst the global bust are China's and Germany's -- that is, the two major economies most oriented to manufacturing. In the month since I first noted this in a column, China has surpassed Japan as the world's second-largest economy, and German exports have continued to soar. If China and Germany's growth rates for their second quarter are annualized, they come to 10 percent and 9 percent, respectively.

Meyerson, neo-New Dealer that he seems to be, is too smart to fall into the trap of talking only about "green jobs."  Green jobs are nice, but in the current crisis, a relative handful of green jobs are no substitute for what's needed--many millions of jobs, period.   We can't let the idea of green jobs, meritorious as they might be, get in the way of re-employing the country.  Doing something useful, such as building airports and power stations.

No doubt Barone and Meyerson supported different candidates in 2008, and probably will in 2010, too. But down the road somewhere, who knows, they might converge on a common re-industrialization platform.   And if both parties took up the challenge of hammering out that platform, bringing their respective views to the common problem of strengthening America--starting, perhaps, with its military and infrastructure, and then not stopping there--that would be a good thing.

Such an agreement on a core agenda would bring us hope and confidence that by working together, we can, indeed, solve our national problems.

"China is Crushing the U.S. In This Economic War"

"China is Crushing the U.S. In This Economic War" -- that's the headline atop Sy Harding's provocative but sobering post in The Business Insider:

Over the last ten years China’s economy has surged past those of Canada, Spain, Brazil, Italy, France, and Germany, and is expected to pass Japan this year, to become the 2nd largest economy in the world, behind the U.S. 

Whether it’s manufacturing efficiency, high-speed rail-line technology, nuclear power plant construction, clean air energy technology, education, China is making impressive global inroads, even in areas where the U.S. still has significant dominance. Much of it has to do with China’s massive population, about which the U.S. can do nothing.

As Harding further observes, the Chinese have been making these strides while the US has devolved into endless partisan acrimony.   

But there's another dimension, too--and that's the military dimension.    As John Pomfret wrote in The Washington Post in June,  it's not hard to find evidence of deep suspicion of, and hostility to, America in the senior ranks of the Chinese military. Pomfret cited the words of 


Rear Adm. Guan Youfei of the People's Liberation Army:

Everything, Guan said, that is going right in U.S. relations with China is because of China. Everything, he continued, that is going wrong is the fault of the United States. Guan accused the United States of being a "hegemon" and of plotting to encircle China with strategic alliances. The official saved the bulk of his bile for U.S. arms sales to China's nemesis, Taiwan -- Guan said these prove that the United States views China as an enemy.

It's not hard to draw some ominous conclusions from that outburst.  

We might note that more than a century ago, Japan started to develop according to the slogan, 


Fukoku kyōhei,  富国強兵 which means, "enrich the country, strengthen the military."  We all know what happened in the first half of the 20th century.  But interestingly, the phrase originally comes from China.  And it certainly appears that the Chinese have reimported their slogan.  So we are seeing "enrich the country, strengthen the military," with Chinese characteristics.  

What's needed is the same thing for the US: "enrich the country, AND strengthen the military."  

Making sure that vital military equipment is always available, and of the best quality--the Hamiltonian view

Do we care where our military equipment is made?  Should we have a domestic industrial base for necessary war materiel?  This has been a serious issue all through American history--and it’s emerging as a serious national security concern once again.   To put it bluntly, it’s hard for a country to maintain its integrity, security, or sovereignty if it doesn’t make its own munitions.   


At one time or another, the US has had to fight or at least confront just about other major power in the world--England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, China, just for starters.  We have also, at one time or another, had to fight representatives of just about every major culture in the world--Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto; and, of course, most recently, Islam.  We have  fought both of our neighbors: Canada and Mexico.  And we have fought innumerable near neighbors, including Cuba, Panama, and Nicaragua.  The point here is not that the US is uniquely belligerent--far from it.   Instead, the point is that every country, including the US, must plan for the reality that loyalties and alliances can shift.   As Britain’s Lord Palmerston said a century-and-a-half ago, nations don’t have permanent alliances, they have permanent interests.  And the paramount interest has to be national survival.  


Alexander Hamilton, who had fought in the Revolutionary War, articulated that view, setting the basic defense template for most of our subsequent history.  Hamilton thought we should make the stuff of our defense on the homefront.  Our first Treasury Secretary is remembered for his economic views, but in fact, his chief goal was national survival--no sure thing for the infant republic when he submitted his Report on Manufactures to Congress in 1791.   The Report was, above everything else, a national security document.  


In the late 18th century, the young nation of America was the third-richest in the world on a per capita basis.  But it was in no sense a great power, or even an adequate power; as Hamilton had seen up close, we had nearly lost the Revolutionary War because of our inability to manufactures muskets, cannon, cannonballs, and so on.   Even after that victory, American leaders were deeply and rightly concerned that European powers, if they made a concerted effort, could simply carve up, militarily, the new nation.   


So Hamilton got right the point in his Report.  On the very first page, he said that his prime goal was to “render the United States independent of foreign nations for military and other supplies.”


A few years before, in Federalist #34,  Hamilton had offered a stark warning to the United States: 


To judge from the history of mankind, we shall be compelled to conclude that the fiery and destructive passions of war reign in the human breast with much more powerful sway than the mild and beneficent sentiments of peace; and that to model our political systems upon speculations of lasting tranquillity, is to calculate on the weaker springs of the human character.


In other words, to borrow the phrase attributed to the Roman Vegetius, si vis pacem, para bellum -- "if you want peace, prepare for war."


Hamilton further understood that military power was also a technological issue--preparation for war was not to be taken lightly.  As he wrote in Federalist #25: 


War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice.


That’s not only wisdom from Vegetius--if you want peace, prepare for war--that’s even older wisdom, from Aesop: Measure twice, cut once. In other words, prepare, prepare, prepare.   So more than two centuries ago, Hamilton was warning us that we could never take our defense--which is to say, our survival--for granted.   And it could never hurt to push technological innovation as a strategic tool for maximizing military success and minimizing casualties.   


For most of our history, American leaders have understood Hamilton’s wisdom--and acted accordingly.  We always understood the need to keep defense strength insourced, even as we worked to improve our technology.    That’s why we developed the Bath Iron Works in Maine, for example, and a submarine factory in Connecticut, and shipyards in Boston, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Oakland.  


Wartime is no time to be relying on imports--especially if you might be fighting your chief trading partner for manufactured goods.   But that keen sense of military/national security preparation has fallen out of political fashion lately.   


For me, the “click” moment on the connection between manufacturing power and military effectiveness did not come until 2008, when I was working on the Mike Huckabee for President campaign.  On the campaign plane, I was sitting alongside Cong. Duncan Hunter, Sr. (R-Ca.), the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC).  We talked a lot about defense policy as we sat elbow to elbow; Hunter is a font of knowledge on the subject, beginning with his service as a combat grunt in Vietnam, all the way though to his chairmanship of the HASC for years in the middle of the last decade, until the Democrats won back Congress in 2006.  Which is to say, he is a great resource to be tapped in the future.  


The standout story for me was Hunter’s description of the desperate effort--desperate on his part, at least--to “up-armor” US military vehicles in Iraq.   As we all know, the Pentagon went to war “with the army it had”--which was not the army it needed to win the long war in Iraq.  In particular, our Humvee vehicles were disastrously inadequate to withstand enemy counter-measures; from the first, Humvees were vulnerable to enemy-fired rocket-propelled grenades and then, more chronically, to improvised explosive devices (IEDs).  Hunter was acutely aware of this problem for many reasons, but one standout reason was that his own son, Duncan Hunter, Jr., was in combat in Iraq during the worst of the fighting.   (Duncan Hunter, Jr. replaced his father in Congress in 2008.) 


But despite Hunter Sr.’s efforts to accelerate the up-armoring of the vehicles, the Pentagon said back to him that it would not be so easy--in fact, could not be done for years.   Why?  Because, Hunter told me, the US simply could not make enough armor plate to protect our vehicles.  It was a simple problem of lack of supply, and it took years to solve the problem, until Humvees were either adequately armored, or replaced by the newer and stronger MRAP vehicles.  


Needless to say, this procurement paralysis was a deeply frustrating experience for Hunter Sr.--not to mention a perilous experience for Hunter, Jr. and his fellow troops.   And it should be noted that much of the support for Operation Iraqi Freedom fell away during the crucial years of 2004-2006, when it seemed that Uncle Sam did not know what he was doing in Iraq.  From an Iraq hawk’s point of view, the war effort needed the reinforcement of better technology; “moral clarity” would not suffice.   


To put it bluntly, we had not gone to Iraq with the army--more to the point, the equipment--that we needed.   And even after Iraq went critical, the Bush administration was slow to see the challenge, and to respond to it.  Such preparation and response would have required a serious rethinking of our policy toward manufacturing and procurement, and a overarching resolve to make sure that we could always get what we needed for our troops.  In other words, the mobilization effort would have been expensive and difficult--but it would have been worth it.  


And of course, we are starting to learn that we aren’t adequately prepared to win in Afghanistan, either--but that’s a point to dwell on, in more detail, in the future.   


In the meantime, we can say that the same blindspot toward military/national security preparedness is cropping up in a new arena.   That new arena of satellite communications--as vital an arena, of course, as any in this Information Age.  


Astoundingly, the US is headed toward offshoring some of its most vital communications.    In other words, we are setting ourselves up for a repeat of the armor-plate-shortage in the sky.  If present trends continue, down the road somewhere, we will discover that the satellite communications we need either won’t work, or won’t be there.  


This spring, Iridium Communications--the satellite-phone company best known for its spectacular corporate flameout in the late 90s--announced that it would buy $2.1 billion worth of satellites from a French company, Thales SA, thereby bypassing American competitors, most notably, Lockheed Martin.  From an economic point of view, it is, shall we say, interesting that such a huge contract--all those good jobs at good wages--is going to a foreign firm in these recessionary times.  We might ask: Whose economy do we wish to stimulate?  


Even more urgently, there’s the question of whether or not we want to outsource our satellite production--and thus, inevitably, our satellite production capacity--to a foreign company in a foreign country.  That’s exactly what Hamilton warned against.   This author is no Francophobe;  I never bashed France for its unwillingness to be part of the Iraq-bound “coalition of the willing,” for example, and I have many times praised French president Nicolas Sarkozy for his willingness to confront Islamic radicalism within his own country.  Yet for reasons stated earlier, it’s simply not smart to depend on another country--any country--for vital national security equipment.    The US after all, pioneered the communications satellite; it’s a great “national champion” or “tentpole” industry if there ever was one.     


But most urgently, the Iridium system is not very good as a tool for communication--and that, too, is a national security concern.  The Pentagon relies exclusively on Iridium to provide “sat phones” to our troops around the world, including Iraq and Afghanistan. But substantive reports show that the Iridium network is not effective and not reliable.  According to a National Science Foundation/Raytheon presentation--see key slide below--the Iridium network shows a "data drop rate" of at least 20 percent, even in the South Pole, which is one of Iridium’s better regions, in terms of satellite footprint.   That is, there’s a better than one-in-five chance that a call won’t go through on the Iridium network, and a pretty good chance that a will eventually be dropped.  That’s no way to practice “netcentric” warfare.  

Indeed, living in Washington, one hears anecdotes about soldiers in Afghanistan so desperate to get a signal that they stand on top of their vehicle--not what you want to do in a war zone. Or else US troops dip into their own pocket to buy cell phones on the local black market.   Thus one is reminded of stories of military inadequacy from the Vietnam era; tales of US GI’s finding their M-16s to be so unreliable in jungle combat that they preferred to use sturdier Soviet-made AK-47s captured from the North Vietnamese.  


Thus we are reminded of Hamilton’s wisdom: “War, like most other things, is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence”--and that means constant diligence about technology, and its constant improvement.   The phrase “close enough for government work” is at best a synonym for waste, but in wartime, subpar performance is far worse--it’s a threat to our national security. 


Our troops deserve the best we can give them, and so we should do our best to give them our best.  Here in the US, people are filing lawsuits because Apple’s latest iPhone suffers a drop rate of .5 percent--why should our troops suffer a drop rate that is 40 times worse?  


So why is this happening?  And what to do about it? Those are topics for future posts, but for now, the mission of the Defense Strategy Institute is to revive the wisdom of Hamilton--our first goal should be to render the United States independent of foreign nations for military necessities.  True then, true now.  

Peace Through Strength

This was published today at Foxnews.com's FoxForum: 


A new conservative group, the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, is reviving the stern wisdom of the ancients: If you want peace, prepare for war.   More recently, that same wisdom guided Ronald Reagan, who, as president in the 1980s, ordered a major defense buildup, as part of an overall strategy for subduing the Soviet Union.   As commander-in-chief, Reagan prepared for war so well, in fact, that he won a great victory over the Soviets without firing a shot.    

We need that sort of vision today, and while the Gipper himself is gone, we are seeing the same wisdom in the work of some old Reagan hands.   But first, a little history.    

In the mid-70s, two well-meaning presidents, Republican Gerald Ford and then Democrat Jimmy Carter, were both optimistic that the Cold War with the Soviet Union could be managed into something like permanent co-existence.  As Carter said in a 1977 commencement speech to Notre Dame University, “We are now free of that inordinate fear of communism.”   And so he set about preparing for peace, while the Soviets not only prepared for war, but made war--in Angola, in Ethiopia, and, most notably, in Afghanistan, which the Red Army invaded in 1979.  


The result of this Soviet aggression was a political revolt in America.  If Carter couldn't deal with the Russians--and with new threats, such as Iran--Americans would find someone who could: Reagan. 


The 40th President didn’t fear communism--he hated communism.  He had seen it up close in Hollywood in the 40s and 50s, when, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, he dealt with communist-front labor unions.   All through the Cold War, Reagan was a consistent advocate of “peace through strength,” supporting presidents of both parties who were willing to stand strong.     

When he reached the White House in 1981, Reagan didn’t hesitate to describe the Soviet Union for what it was: “the focus of evil in the modern world.”   He zeroed in on those who claimed to see moral equivalence between the free world and the Soviet bloc, jibing at “the temptation of blithely declaring yourselves above it all and label both sides equally at fault, to ignore the facts of history and the aggressive impulses of an evil empire, to simply call the arms race a giant misunderstanding and thereby remove yourself from the struggle between right and wrong and good and evil.”

That was Reagan--calling ‘em as he saw ‘em. But of course, he did much more than that.  Behind the scenes, he was working closely with fellow anti-communists around the world, from British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to Pope John Paul II to a shipyard worker in Gdansk, Poland,  by the name of Lech Walesa.   

The result of this peace through strength policy can be summed up in one word: victory.   In 1987, Reagan spoke in front of Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate, standing in the shadow of Soviet concrete and barbed wire, declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”  And two years later, that’s what happened.  Two years after that, the Soviet Union itself collapsed.   

Peace through strength works.   It requires patience and fortitude, but peace is better than war, and strength is better than weakness.    

Today, one of the great leaders of the Reagan era, Edwin Meese III, who loyally served Reagan for more than two decades--in California as a gubernatorial aide, then in Washington as White House Counsellor and as Attorney General--is now spearheading an effort to revive those powerful Reaganite words: “peace through strength.”   

Meese is the lead signatory on the Peace Through Strength Platform, along with many others, including such Reagan defense officials as Frank Gaffney, of the Center for Security Policy, and Elaine Donnelly, of the Center for Military Readiness.  Even more encouragingly, a growing number of incumbent politicians and political candidates, too, have signed on to the Peace Through Strength Platform.   

Here’s the Coalition's 10-point manifesto:  

1) Renewed adherence to the national security philosophy of President Ronald Reagan: “Peace Through Strength.”American security is most reliably assured by having military forces that are fully trained, equipped and ready to deter or defeat the nation’s adversaries.

2) A robust defense posture including: A safe, reliable effective nuclear deterrent, which requires its modernization and testing; the deployment of comprehensive defenses against missile attack; and national protection against unconventional forms of warfare – including biological, electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) and cyber attacks.

3) Preservation of U.S. sovereignty against international treaties, judicial rulings and other measures that would have the effect of supplanting or otherwise diminishing the U.S. Constitution and the representative, accountable form of government it guarantees.

4) A nation free of Shariah, the brutally repressive and anti-Constitutional totalitarian program that governs in Saudi Arabia, Iran and other Islamic states and that terrorists are fighting to impose worldwide.

5) Protection from unlawful enemy combatants.  Enemies who refuse to wear uniforms, use civilians as shields and employ terrorism as weapons are not entitled to U.S. constitutional rights or trials in our civilian courts.  Those captured overseas should be incarcerated at Guantanamo Bay, which should remain open, or in other prisons outside the United States.

6) Energy security, realized by exploiting to the fullest the natural resources and technologies available in this country.  We Americans must reduce our dependence for energy upon – and transfers of national wealth to – enemies of this country.

7) Borders secure against penetration by terrorists, narco-traffickers or others seeking to enter the United States illegally.  Aliens who have violated immigration laws should not be rewarded with the privileges of citizenship.

8) High standards that protect the military culture essential to the All-Volunteer Force.  The Pentagon should implement sound priorities, policies and laws that strengthen recruiting, retention, and readiness.

9) A foreign policy that supports our allies and opposes our adversaries.  It should be clearly preferable to be a friend of the United States, not its enemy.

10) Judicial and educational institutions that uphold the constitutional responsibility of elected officials to make policy for our military and convey to future generations accurate portrayals of American history, including the necessity of defending freedom.

That’s an expansive agenda, covering much more than ships and missiles, important as military hardware might be.   And while the Platform is a strong rebuke to President Barack Obama--whose Carter-ish administration acts as if it agrees only vaguely, at best, with these ten points--the document could raise hackles on the right, too.   Border security, for example, is not welcomed by every libertarian.  Similarly, energy independence is also controversial in some free-market circles, because the goal of energy independence presupposes government activism to achieve that end.  However, it seems clear that if America is at war, then we must take prudent steps to defend ourselves: We need to police the frontier of our homeland, and we should pull back from funding our enemies through oil and gas imports.  

Moreover, the Peace Through Strength Platform is also notable for its omissions: The document makes no mention of the “liberty century” that President George W. Bush declared in his 2005 inaugural address, when the 43rd president emphasized the importance of internationalizing freedom and democracy.  Similarly, the words “Islam is peace,” spoken by Bush   just days after 9-11, do not appear.  Instead, the document focuses on Muslim extremism and jihadism, labeling such “isms,” quite rightly, as a mortal threat to America and its allies. 

The critical issue facing America is not whether we can make friends with Muslims and bring them around to our democratic values; the issue, instead, is the survival of freedom for Americans and for their allies.   One is reminded of the motto of the US Army: “This we’ll defend.”   

And that’s what the Peace Through Strength Platform does: It calls for the energetic and comprehensive defense of America, which Ronald Reagan described as “the last best hope for mankind.”  That should be a cause to rally all Americans--although we will need an election or two before we get back on the right track.