CNN Analyst Zakaria Backtracks on
'Fantasy' Eastern European Missile Defense Program
by Tony Lee 4 Mar 2014, 11:15 AM PDT
Four years after CNN
foreign policy analyst Fareed Zakaria
praised President Barack Obama for scrapping the missile defense system in
Eastern Europe, Zakaria swiftly
backtracked on Sunday after top Ukrainian officials declared that Russia
was invading the country.
Zakaria, the host of CNN's weekly Fareed
Zakaria GPS program, said on his show that NATO should
consider building a missile defense system in Eastern
Europe that the Obama administration scrapped:
Militarily there is less that can be done.
After all, Russia’s military
budget is about 18 times that of Ukraine. But NATO should restart
talks on providing assurances to countries like Poland – including perhaps building
the missile defense system that was abandoned.
During Obama's first year in office,
though, Zakaria had a different tone. He said that Obama did not cave on
scrapping the missile defense system in Eastern Europe
because Obama "traded the fantasy of the system with the reality of what
it is."
"The president's reasons for shifting
gears on the antiballistic missile systems for Poland
and the Czech Republic
are sound," Zakaria said in 2009. "Look at the facts. Since the
1980s, the United States
has spent well over $150 billion on missile defense. That's more than the total
cost of the Manhattan Project or the Apollo mission to the moon. Despite this,
in 25 years, the program has not produced any workable weapon system, something
unprecedented even in the annals of the Pentagon's bloated budgets."
He said that Obama's proposal to scrap the
missile defense system in Eastern Europe was
"attuned to the actual threat and proposing a workable response. This is
reality-based defense policy."
"So basically we have former National
Security Adviser Zbigniew Bzrezinski's formulation, 'a scheme that doesn't work
against a threat that doesn't exist,'" Zakaria wrote of the program that
he felt should be scrapped.
Fareed Zakaria
Fareed
Zakaria was a foreign policy
analyst for CNN, is a director at the New America Foundation, the editor-at-large
for Time magazine, a director at the Council on Foreign Relations (think tank), a member of the Clinton Global Initiative, and an advisory council member
for the Acumen Fund.
Note: Walter
Isaacson was the chairman & CEO for CNN,
is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations (think tank), and the president & CEO for the Aspen Institute (think tank).
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the New America Foundation,
the Aspen Institute (think
tank), and the Brookings Institution
(think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to
Promote Open Society, is a member of the Council on
Foreign Relations (think tank), a member of the Clinton
Global Initiative, and Andrea Soros
father.
Strobe
Talbott is the president of the Brookings Institution
(think tank), a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations (think tank), and an editor for Time
magazine.
Ivo H.
Daalder was a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution
(think tank), is a member of the Council on Foreign
Relations (think tank), and the U.S. permanent representative for NATO.
Andrea Soros
is George Soros’s daughter, and a director
at the Acumen Fund.
Bill
& Melinda Gates Foundation was a funder for the Acumen Fund,
the New America
Foundation,
the Aspen Institute (think tank), and
the Brookings Institution (think tank).
No comments:
Post a Comment