The most obvious one was the cancellation earlier this year of NASA's Constellation program, which was intended to provide a "man-rated" expendable rocket to replace the shuttle as America's means of putting humans into space. The national security and commercial implications of this decision have been exacerbated, however, by two other, seemingly unrelated actions: President Obama's decision to stop producing long-range missile defense interceptors and to defer indefinitely any replacement of our aging nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile force.
As a result, real concerns are beginning to be expressed about the viability of the U.S. industrial base for solid-fuel rocket motors. Without government procurements in one or more of these areas - possibly for years to come, America will see at a minimum the continuing attrition of domestic suppliers for vital components and the steady erosion of the skills required to manufacture boosters capable of reliably lofting large payloads.
Matters would be made worse when one combines this reality with another Obama priority: relaxing export controls on sensitive dual-use technologies. The argument usually made is that such steps are necessary to ensure that American producers can compete in world markets and that "higher fences around fewer technologies" can safeguard what absolutely must be protected, and allow easier transfer of products that need not be.
In practice, it is predictable that the result of this policy will be that manufacturing jobs associated with presently controlled technologies will move offshore, where production can take place at lower cost. And the price that will surely be extracted by Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Muslim nations from whom NASA will be seeking "contributions" will be access to know-how and possibly space-launch-related production capabilities currently deemed too sensitive to transfer.
It would be bad enough if the results of such initiatives would be simply to build up America's commercial competitors. Given that many of the relevant technologies are inherently applicable to military uses - notably, delivering nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction over long distances via ballistic missiles - these steps will ineluctably result in greater threats to American citizens, interests and allies, as well.
Worse yet, in a recently unveiled policy pronouncement, President Obama has expressed an openness to exploring Russian and Chinese ideas for new, multilateral space arms control negotiations. As Moscow and Beijing have long appreciated, unavoidable verification and definitional problems ensure that, as a practical matter, any treaty likely to emerge from such talks would further weaken America's ability to protect its interests in space and on the ground - without denying such advantages to our potential adversaries.
As in so many areas, it seems President Obama's space policies and programs are designed to "fundamentally transform" America from a preeminent world power to just another nation, dependent on the good will and assistance of others to safeguard its interests. To the extent that such reliance is placed on sources like the Russians, the Chinese and "the Muslim world" that have made little secret of their ambition to weaken, if not destroy, the United States, it is likely to end badly, as it did for poor Blanche DuBois.