Bell: Obama's Unilateral Disarmament Poses Great Danger

The Obama administration's arms treaty with Russia is likely to leave the United States military behind in the nuclear arms race as both Russia and China upgrade their stockpiles, claims military analyst Larry Bell.

Writing in Forbes, Bell says the New START talks with Moscow need to go off in a completely different direction.

"As Russia blocks U.S./NATO plans to deploy a series of sea- and land-based missile defenses in Europe while they provide those same systems to a regime we oppose in Syria; as our strategic assets are allowed to deteriorate while theirs and China's expand and modernize; as hostile rogue countries establish serious nuclear threat capabilities; as secret deals are made that seek to end-run congressional oversight and authorization ... it might be prudent to ask 'what’s wrong with this picture?'" he writes in his column "The Bell Tells For You."

Bell says the proposed cutback in the United States' nuclear capability comes at a time when Russia, China, and North Korea are all expanding and modernizing theirs.

But in the United States, cuts are the order of the day, he points out. "While North Korea has demonstrated a capability to launch over the South Pole, the U.S. currently has no early warning or missile defense assets devoted to intercepting missiles coming from the south," Bell writes. "All are positioned and located to intercept an inbound strike from the northern pole region.

"It gets worse," he writes. "There is good reason to believe that North Korea is already positioned to fit a small nuclear electromagnetic pulse warhead on an ICBM that is capable of causing devastating damage to our U.S. electrical power grid."

Instead, Bell says, Obama has plans to deploy 14 more ground-based interceptors in Alaska — but due to delays they won't be in place until 2017.

"Obama has mothballed or killed several other missile defense development programs," he writes. "This includes a scale-back of the Airborne Laser program to enable enemy missile interceptions during their early launch phase, along with the elimination of the Multiple Kill Vehicle and Kinetic Energy Interceptor, which uses small warheads on a single rocket to handle decoys and offers a better chance of success."