The Strategic Debate the US Should Win

This is a legitimate concern, but it is clearly political doublespeak. A statement like this coming from China is hard to take seriously, for many reasons.

China's foreign minister warned on Wednesday that there was a "looming danger" of an arms race in outer space, as he urged countries not to deploy missile defence systems that could undermine global security.

"The practice of seeking absolute strategic advantage should be abandoned," Yang Jiechi told the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

"Countries should neither develop missile defence systems that undermine global strategic security nor deploy weapons in outer space," he added.

The irony of this statement is that China is the worlds largest producer of ballistic missiles, and has the worlds largest inventory. Unless China is somehow offering to negotiate ceasing production of massive ballistic missile stocks, it is clearly foolish for anyone to take this comment seriously as anything other than a nation complaining about others who would dare build defensive systems to the offensive systems China is producing.

This also ignores China's sudden anti-satellite demonstration of 2007, a foolish demonstration conducted without warning that resulted in one of the largest debris fields in the orbit of the earth.

It is not uncommon for competitors to be critical of advanced technology developed by the United States, and ballistic missile defense has become one of the more popular topics for competitors to rail against. It is not coincidence the nations who are the most critical of ballistic missile defense are spending enormous amounts of defense spending on offensive ballistic missiles, in particular Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. It is also worth noting that only the United States and Israel are criticized, even though the Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Taiwan (shhhh), and Spain are all involved in the development of ballistic missile defense.

I think this opens the door for the Obama administration to hit back hard, and start asking where the criticism of offensive weapon systems like ballistic missiles is. Why must the defenders defend their right to defend themselves, why not turn the tables and ask China why they continue to massively expand their arsenal of offensive ballistic missiles? If President Obama turns that question around on a nation like China, it will make international headlines.

I'm tired of taking a passive stance on the right to defend our interests while those who continue to expand large arsonals of purely offensive weapons carry the communication strategy without comment. This is a debate the US can win in the public space, but not since Bush 41 has the US attempted to take the moral high ground in these strategic defense debates. As the Greeks used to say, fortune favors the bold. Given the way the US is accumulating friends and allies due primarily to the offensive ballistic missile threats under development by Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea, the administration can successfully engage this debate and gain politically.