Remembering and Honoring Ed Feulner

Last week, The Heritage Foundation mourned the loss its founder, who had a major influence throughout the Christian right that Hillary Clinton called the "vast right-wing conspiracy," to which I was, and remain, a proud member. Edwin J. Feulner Jr. and Paul Weyrich were principals in laying that foundation, with generous backing from other conservative leaders.  

Heritage gained a major following during the Reagan administration, when I first met Dr. Feulner and spoke in Heritage conferences about our negotiations with the Soviet Union and our defense of then-President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which gave us enormous negotiating leverage, leading to major reductions in offensive nuclear weapons.

Subsequently, I enjoyed his steady backing, especially while serving as SDI director under President George H.W. Bush and initiating a major effort to build a modern theater missile defense (TMD) capability following the Patriot-Scud battles during the Gulf War. Among those initiatives were the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and the Navy's Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) systems.

As noted in my previous Newsmax articles, I insisted that the Aegis defenses be limited to a TMD role, even though it was clear they could easily have been given a capability against long-range ballistic missiles. Such a capability would have violated the ABM Treaty.  

After the Clinton administration gutted SDI when Les Aspin took "the stars out of 'Star Wars'" in his early days as secretary of defense, I often consulted with Heritage and others about how to keep the SDI flame alive until we would again have friends in power in key administration posts.

Most notable, I think with prompting from Jack Kemp, Ed sponsored a major study that he asked me to lead as a Heritage visiting fellow. Thus, our 1995 report, "Defending America: A Near- and Long-Term Plan to Deploy Missile Defenses," actually laid out a game plan for a Global Golden Dome, which may now be realized under the advocacy of President Donald Trump.

(See Chapter 3, which calls for a "Global Defense, First From the Sea and Then From Space." And note the political and technical qualifications of the advisory group that concurred in our findings three decades ago.) 

More recently, my last Newsmax article essentially reiterated that recommendation, now tailored more fittingly to meet President Trump's agenda plans.

But it would truly honor Ed Feulner to go back to the future by fulfilling the vision of our Heritage vision that he sponsored three decades ago.

Henry F. Cooper, a Ph.D. engineer was Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative during the GHW Bush administration and Ambassador and Chief U.S. Negotiator at the Geneva Defense and Space Talks during the Reagan administration. Read More of Dr. Cooper's Reports - Here.