Today, members of the House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee led by Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), sent President Obama a letter urging him to stop using the United States’ missile defense system as a bargaining chip with countries that don’t play by the rules like China and Russia, and instead to make investments in our missile defense so it stays well-ahead of the ballistic missile threat. This letter comes on the heels of a House Armed Services Committee (HASC) full committee hearing this week titled, “How is DoD is Responding to Emerging Security Challenges in Europe?”

Rogers said, “The world is more dangerous than ever, and under the President’s lead-from-behind policy, ballistic missile and nuclear weapons technology is spreading. Russia and China have also concluded the U.S. no longer has leaders interested in maintaining order, leading to aggression, provocation and bullying around the world. And here we find that, yet again, the President has given away our missile defenses to Vladimir Putin.

“We now know exactly what the President meant when he offered then-Russian President Medvedev ‘flexibility’ after his ‘last election.’ But the President’s efforts will end this year. Together with the new Senate, we will reverse course on the President’s efforts to undo U.S. missile defenses, which he has clearly never really supported.”

The Wall Street Journal recently wrote: “Within days of President Obama releasing his fiscal 2016 defense budget this month, Pakistan tested a nuclear-capable Ra’ad short-range missile, Russia announced plans to test a new RS-26 intercontinental ballistic missile, Iran launched a satellite into space and North Korea blasted five antiship missiles into the Sea of Japan. Each volley underscored the bad news that Mr. Obama’s budget again shortchanges U.S. missile defenses” and that missile defense will be “slashed 25% in real dollars over the Obama Presidency” based on his budget requests.

The Journal’s Editorial also quoted from a recent book (National Insecurity, by David Rothkopf): “John Kerry had his first meeting as Secretary of State with a man who was to become one of the international leaders with whom he worked most closely, Sergei Lavrov. Both sides dutifully reported the discussions were constructive, and by March 15, 2013, in the latest twist in the schizophrenic U.S. approach to its missile defense plans, the Obama administration effectively cancelled the final phase of the European-based defense system. According to a senior NSC staffer, this was ‘due largely to the fact that it had become an impediment to every area of important cooperation [with Russia] we had going or might need, including both Iran and Syria.’”

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