Ed Ross is the President and Chief Executive Officer of EWRoss International LLC. He is the former Principal Director, Security Cooperation Operations, Defense Security Cooperation Agency; former Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Affairs; and former Senior Director for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
As a US Army Officer he served as the Assistant Army Attaché to the People's Republic of China, as a senior political-military analyst in the Defense Intelligence Agency, and as the Chief, Counterespionage-Counterintelligence, 500th Military Intelligence Group, Hawaii, where he directed operations in the Asia Pacific theater.
His military service includes two tours of duty in Vietnam. As an artillery forward and air observer with the 9th Infantry Division's Mobile Riverine Force in the Mekong Delta, he flew more than 300 combat and combat support missions in O-1 and H-23 aircraft. As a military intelligence officer, he commanded intelligence-collection detachments of the 525th Military Intelligence Group in Pleiku and Nha Trang.
Ed Ross’ civilian awards include the rank of Meritorious Senior Executive, conferred by President George W. Bush; three Secretary of Defense Medals for Meritorious Civilian Service, conferred by Secretaries Dick Cheney, William Perry, and Robert Gates; the Order of Resplendent Banner with Yellow Grand Cordon, presented by Republic of China Minister of Defense Lee Tien-yu, and the Outstanding Achievement Medal, presented by Philippine Secretary of National Defense, Gilberto C. Teodoro, Jr.
His military awards include the Silver Star, the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Bronze Star, the Air Medal with "V" Device with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Army Commendation Medal, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Gold Star, and the Aircraft Crewman’s Badge. Ed Ross was inducted into the Artillery Officer Candidate School Hall of Fame in May 1997.
Ed Ross has completed extensive postgraduate work in International Relations and United States Domestic Politics at The George Washington University, Washington, D.C. He received his Master of Arts Degree in National Security Affairs, "With Distinction," from the Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He received his Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science from Quincy College, Quincy, Illinois.
He is a graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas; the Industrial College of the Armed Forces, Washington, D.C.; the Defense Language Institute, Washington, DC; and the American Embassy School for Chinese Language and Area Studies, Taichung, Taiwan.
He has traveled extensively throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. He is the author of numerous articles on US-China-Taiwan military relations and other topics. He writes a weekly Internet column posted at EWRoss.com and The DailyCaller.com.
What is not complex or difficult to understand about Obama’s new nuclear weapons strategy is that it abandons what has worked well for 11 U.S. presidents for over 60 years for the dubious and uncertain hope that the new U.S. posture will discourage nuclear proliferation.
The U.S. never renounced the first use of nuclear weapons nor did it declare that it would never respond with nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear attack. As Krauthammer phrased it, “During the Cold War, we let the Russians know that if they dared use their huge conventional military advantage and invaded Western Europe, they risked massive U.S. nuclear retaliation. Goodbye Moscow.” This is something a Soviet Premier, a Chinese Communist Party boss, or even a caribou-hunting former governor of Alaska could understand.
The Cold war is long over and the global strategic situation has changed. Nevertheless, Palin, conservatives like Krauthammer and Bolton, and the majority of Americans understand that human nature hasn’t changed. The more uncertainty in the minds of our enemies about how we will respond to any attack, the more likely we are to deter one.
As Palin’s playground comment suggests, let’s not tempt our adversaries to use any weapon of mass destruction against us, potentially killing hundreds of thousands of Americans, and force an American president to sacrifice thousands more to retaliate using only conventional means.
Liberals may want to reconsider the conservatives-are-stupid argument. It has worked for them in the past, before the days of cable television, the internet, Twitter, and the Tea Party movement. It’s far less effective now, when people no longer have to rely on the mainstream media for information, and they have multiple means of validating their common sense. Then again, perhaps conservatives should encourage them to keep it up and let them discover what happens in November when they keep calling conservatives (40 percent of American voters) idiots.
Ed Ross is the President and Chief Executive Officer of EWRoss International LLC, a company that provides global consulting services to clients in the international defense marketplace. He publishes commentary at EWRoss.com.
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