The first would involve depending upon the manufacturers of the Airbus, EADS - a European consortium whose workforce is represented by hard left unions with records of hostility towards the United States. The second could entail leasing or purchasing Antonov airlifters from the Kremlin. No matter how much the Obama administration enthuses about its "reset" relations with the Russians, it would be irresponsible to entrust to Moscow any role in decision-making about whether and when American forces are deployed around the globe.
A similar conundrum looms with respect to tankers. Earlier this year, President Obama promised his French counterpart, Nicholas Sarkozy, that EADS would be allowed to compete for the long-overdue replacement of U.S. aerial refueling aircraft initially bought during the Eisenhower administration.
To enable a foreign-owned company to bid on this expensive modernization program, the Defense Department has not only had to allow a European-manufactured aircraft that manifestly cannot meet the Air Force's requirements to participate in the competition. It has also had to waive longstanding rules restricting foreign access to some of the crown jewels of the national defense: secure communications technologies. The latter is of particular concern insofar as EADS is owned in part by two of the most serious perpetrators of espionage against U.S. industries, France and Russia.
Even if those problems did not exist, the question recurs: Can America safely rely on potentially hostile foreign workers and suppliers for equipment so vital to our national security - and the ability to safeguard it at far remove from our own shores?
Regrettably, these are just two examples of the sorts of far-reaching - and possibly dangerous - implications for the U.S. defense industrial base of programmatic decisions that Team Obama is now taking or has under active consideration. Others likely to have such repercussions include: the cancellation of the state-of-the-art F-22 fifth-generation air superiority fighter; the veto threat over funding for a cost-reducing second engine source for the hoped-for alternative, the F-35; cancelation of the deployment of long-range anti-missile systems in Europe; shrinking the Navy's ship-construction budget; eliminating planned orders for more solid-fueled rocket motors for access to space, strategic missile defense interceptors and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles; and dispensing with the Marines' mission to insert forces over the beach.
Ronald Reagan espoused and practiced the time-tested philosophy he called "Peace through Strength." President Obama is reverting to the failed alternative of hoping for peace despite American weakness. In the process, he is hollowing out the military and its vital industrial base, and thereby transforming this country in ways that are going to make the world much more volatile and get some of us killed.