President Barack Obama recently rolled out a curious foreign policy. This policy leaves American troops carrying all the risks in overseas combat, while lowering our defenses at the same time dangerous regimes are developing their means of mass destruction. It also subjects American companies to foreign control, as European leaders speak about a new, secular global order no longer led by the United States. President Obama is sacrificing our sovereignty and safety in an increasingly perilous world.

North Korea showed the world exactly what that totalitarian regime thinks of U.N. resolutions and international opinion when it defied both in launching an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) over Japan into the Pacific Ocean. Some call this launch a failure because it didn't achieve its stated goal of putting a satellite into orbit. That's ridiculous, because North Korea's true goal had nothing to do with satellites. It was to test its new ICBM design and to see whether American and international warnings were toothless. And it was a success, as North Korean scientists will now use data from the launch to improve the ICBM design, and also in confirming that the international non-response to this provocative launch means North Korea has little to fear in continuing to pursue nuclear missile capability.

At the same time, President Obama announced his intention to eliminate all nuclear weapons worldwide. This longtime dream of the radical left is amazingly naïve, and only serves to lower America's defenses in a world where countries like North Korea are developing the means to target our shores.

America's nuclear capability has been and for now remains a deterrent. It serves as a powerful safeguard of American lives that we have the power to annihilate from the face of the earth any country that launches a massive attack against us. Even if the countries now possessing and on the verge of possessing nukes were to give them all up, the danger of massive attacks via chemical or biologic weapons that can kill hundreds of thousands or millions of people would remain. All a denuclearized world would accomplish is to leave America with no deterrent against attacks by other types of weapons of mass destruction. And, of course, there are countries in the world that will secretly retain nukes even when they declare to the world that they have none.

In terms of combating terrorism and conventional military force, President Obama's overseas trip was a complete failure. Don't buy the spin that his securing 5,000 more support personnel for Afghanistan is anything other than failure. While logistical support is nice to have, this is a shooting war in Afghanistan. We are in major combat operations, and what we need and asked for are combat troops to fight the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Remember that Afghanistan is a NATO war, not just an American war. President Obama asked NATO to carry their share of the burden, and they told him no. Continued...