Remember when Barack Obama canceled the space shuttle program, President Bush's manned lunar exploration program, and every other manifestation of American manned space flight in favor of dedicating NASA to the sole mission of.....what was it? Hoaxing climate change or "reaching out to Muslims"? Darned if I can remember which. Probably both. Anyway, it sure as shinola wasn't any more "giant leaps for mankind".
And remember how I've been expounding on how foreign policy deterrence of overseas adversaries works? How the planet must be conceptualized as a global chessboard, where their moves can be countered by our moves elsewhere on the "board" without necessarily having to be (1) military and (2) directly applied to their military moves? And how failure to utilize all options reduces those options to the point where military action is the only tool left in the statecraft toolbox?
Lastly, remember how I've also mentioned on several occasions that our lack of manned access to space and being more or less completely dependent on the Russians for it is a gaping vulnerability that Vladimir Putin couldn't help but exploit?
To quote Nick Fury.....
...."Ant....boot":
Russia cast doubt on the long-term future of the International Space Station, a showcase of post-Cold War cooperation, as it retaliated on Tuesday against U.S. sanctions over Ukraine.
Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Moscow would reject a U.S. request to prolong the orbiting station's use beyond 2020. It will also bar Washington from using Russian-made rocket engines to launch military satellites.
Moscow took the action, which also included suspending operation of GPS satellite navigation system sites on its territory from June, in response to U.S. plans to deny export licenses for high-technology items that could help the Russian military.
"We are very concerned about continuing to develop high-tech projects with such an unreliable partner as the United States, which politicizes everything," Rogozin told a news conference.
It ought be the commonest of sense for a country's government to maximize its advantages over all potential "geopolitical foes," to shivvingly employ Mitt Romney's 2012 debate phrase, and minimize its vulnerabilities to them. America's vast energy resources are a strategic advantage; we could and should be exporting liquefied natural gas to the European Union to checkmate Czar Vlad's leverage over the EU and especially the former Warsaw Pact countries; Barack Obama refuses to play that card. Scrapping manned American space flight was a foolish idea designed and intended not as any sort of "austerity" measure, given the ten trillion smackers in debt O has run up, but to deliberately increase our dependence on the Russians for our space access. Barack Obama did play that card. The wonder is that Moscow has waited so long to send the chickens home to roost.
Their Foggy Bottom summed it up quite nicely:
The Russian Foreign Ministry said earlier on Tuesday that the latest EU measures were an "exhausted, trite approach" that would only deepen discord and hamper efforts to defuse the crisis in Ukraine.
The One has been playing at sanctions, like a chuSwI' that creeps out to make a few annoying noises before scurrying back into its hole. Putin has gone for our sanctions jugular.
Memo to the White House: Call the 1980s; tell them we need their foreign policy back. And also their POTUS.
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