-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Foreign Policy in Focus 9:4 - Oct 2004
http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol9/v9n04missdef.html
Missile Defense All Over Again
By Michelle Ciarrocca
Key Points
* President Bush has directed the Pentagon to begin fielding an
initial set of missile defense capabilities by the end of 2004.
* Despite Bush’s more than 100% increase in funding for missile
defense, the resulting multilayered system is no more workable than
previous systems.
* The current administration’s push to deploy a missile defense
system, coupled with its aggressive nuclear policy, could halt progress
toward nuclear arms reductions.
Under President Clinton, it became U.S. policy to deploy a National
Missile Defense (NMD) system “as soon as technologically feasible.”
However, Clinton’s commitment to missile defense was tempered by his
pledge to base a deployment decision on four criteria: the overall cost of
the program, its technical feasibility, an assessment of the ballistic
missile threat facing the United States, and the impact that NMD might
have on arms control and arms reduction efforts. In contrast, President
Bush has set no criteria to constrain deployment.
Citing a critical test failure in July 2000 and a growing chorus of
criticisms, Clinton felt safe in delaying deployment of the proposed
missile defense system. In September 2000 he said, “I simply cannot
conclude with the information I have today that we have enough confidence
in the technology, and the operational effectiveness of the entire NMD
system, to move forward to deployment.” Clinton added that even if
missile defenses could be made to work, they would at best add a modest
margin of protection from nuclear weapons and could, at worst, spark a
new, multisided nuclear arms race that would increase the risks of nuclear
war.
Today, little has changed in regard to the technical capabilities of
missile defense, but the Bush administration’s stubborn determination to
deploy some kind of missile ****eld has not wavered. With Defense Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld by his side, on May 1, 2001, Bush delivered a speech at
the National Defense University reiterating his campaign pledge calling
for a missile defense system capable of protecting the entire United
States, as well as “our friends and allies and deployed forces
overseas” from ballistic missile attack.
According to the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, the initial missile
defense system will have “limited capability” and will build on the
facility at Ft. Greely, Alaska, which was previously designated as a site
for testing purposes. Five interceptors have already been installed, and
exercises have begun in order to make the system capable of going on alert
by the end of 2004. Another 10 interceptors could be added in 2005. The
Pentagon says it will be employing an “evolutionary approach to the
development of missile defenses over time,” and it envisions a layered
system comprising ground-based and sea-based interceptors alongside
upgraded versions of the short-range Patriot missile. However, necessary
radar and satellite networks are not complete, and the actual interceptors
have not been tested with the overall system.
In the eight highly scripted intercept tests of the ground-based system,
it has failed three times. The most recent test by the Missile Defense
Agency in December 2002 was one of those failures. In a recent re****t,
Technical Realities, the Union of Concerned Scientists argues that the
system to be deployed in late 2004 “will have no demonstrated defensive
capability and will be ineffective against a real attack by long-range
ballistic missiles.” The re****t goes on to note that the Bush
administration’s “claims that the system will be reliable and highly
effective are irresponsible exaggerations.”
Even before the added spending proposed by the Bush administration is
taken into account, missile defense is already one of the most expensive
military programs in history. The Pentagon has spent close to $100 billion
on missile defense projects since President Reagan’s 1983 “Star
Wars” speech. The last budget submitted by the Clinton administration
allocated $4.8 billion for missile defense, and President Bush has
requested $10.2 billion for the project in his 2005 fiscal year budget.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says that the Pentagon
estimates it will need $53 billion between fiscal years 2004 and 2009 to
continue development and testing of ballistic missile defenses. Yet,
despite the huge investment in missile defense over the past two decades,
the Pentagon has been unable to field a workable system.
Acknowledging that the system will only be able to deal with an
“unsophisticated threat”—one or two incoming ballistic missiles
without effective decoys or countermeasures—from a foe like North Korea,
Rumsfeld maintains that it’s “better than nothing.” But is it? The
administration’s increasing sup****t for missile defense, while
dismantling the international arms control regime by withdrawing from the
1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and advancing a new nuclear war
fighting doctrine, could create a more dangerous global security
environment.
Mohamed El-Baradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy
Agency, recently pointed out one of the most difficult challenges in
tackling nuclear proliferation: the ongoing hypocrisy in global nuclear
policy by which “it is morally reprehensible for some countries to
pursue nuclear weapons but morally acceptable for others to rely on
them.” If recommendations from the Bush administration’s Nuclear
Posture Review are adopted, nuclear weapons could morph from a tool of
deterrence and a weapon of last resort into a central, usable component of
the U.S. antiterror arsenal.
Problems with Current U.S. Policy
Key Problems
* The threats that a missile defense system is meant to address
have been greatly exaggerated.
* The Bush administration is ru****ng to deploy a missile defense
system before it has been sufficiently tested.
* The resurgence of Star Wars has been politically driven, spurred
on by the missile defense lobby, which is thoroughly entrenched in the
Bush administration.
Before September 11, 2001, missile defense consumed the Bush
administration. In his speech at the National Defense University four
months before the Sept. 11 attacks, Bush said, “today’s most urgent
threat stems not from thousands of ballistic missiles in the Soviet hands
but from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states, states
for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life.” Deploying a missile
defense system was the Bush administration’s No. 1 priority.
In addition to doubling funding for missile defense, the president sent
several high-ranking officials across the globe, not to discuss terrorism,
but to seek international sup****t and backing for his missile defense
scheme. As Joe Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace recently observed, missile defense “had an almost religious
power” for administration neoconservatives, “evoking the Reagan legacy
and this belief that creating an effective defense against ballistic
missiles was largely the function of political will.” Cirincione
concludes that one of the major reasons that the United States was so
unprepared for terrorist attacks is because the threat assessment favored
by conservatives pointed policymakers in the wrong direction.
A 1998 re****t of a congressionally mandated panel chaired by Donald
Rumsfeld dramatically altered the debate on missile defense and the
ballistic missile threat facing the United States. The Rumsfeld
Commission’s key finding was the assertion that “rogue states” like
North Korea or Iraq could acquire ballistic missiles within “five years
of a decision to do so,” not the 10-15 years suggested by previous U.S.
intelligence estimates.
The re****t painted a worst-case scenario by ignoring obstacles that poor
countries face in trying to obtain a long-range ballistic capability while
playing up factors that might increase their chances of getting usable
ballistic missiles in a shorter time frame. According to commission
members, the five-year estimate was based in part on briefings from
missile engineers at major U.S. defense contractors, including Lockheed
Martin and Boeing—hardly unbiased sources, given the billions in profits
that their firms stood to gain from building a missile defense system.
Many commission members also had connections to the defense industry or to
missile defense advocacy organizations such as the Center for Security
Policy.
With Rumsfeld heading the Pentagon, it’s no surprise that missile
defense is high on the agenda. However, even the December 2001 National
Intelligence Estimate notes that “U.S. territory is more likely to be
attacked” with weapons of mass destruction by countries or terrorist
groups using “****ps, trucks, airplanes or other means” than by a
long-range ballistic missile. Those delivery systems are “less expensive
than developing and producing ICBMs,” and, unlike missiles, nonmissile
systems “can be overtly developed and employed” with the source being
“masked in an attempt to evade retaliation.” They can also be deployed
in ways that will evade missile defenses, rendering these systems
irrelevant.
Beyond the issue of whether or not the rogue state threat warrants an
elaborate and costly missile defense ****eld, the proposed system has yet
to show that it can effectively defend the United States against a
ballistic missile attack. Despite a handful of “hits” in highly
scripted tests of the ground-based and sea-based elements of a prospective
missile defense program, serious technical challenges remain.
Tests of the ground-based interceptor continue to use a transponder to
guide the kill vehicle to within 400 yards of the mock warhead, an
unrealistic “prop” that would obviously not be available in the event
of an actual ballistic missile attack. Major components of the final
system, ranging from the booster rocket to the proposed X-band radar, are
either behind schedule or have yet to be developed. The Pentagon’s
Missile Defense Agency has demonstrated no capability to distinguish
realistic decoys from warheads in the weightless environment of space, an
essential requirement for the success of the ground- and sea-based
elements of the system. A GAO re****t released in April 2004 notes,
“testing in 2003 did little to demonstrate the predicted effectiveness
of the system’s capability to defeat ballistic missiles as an integrated
system.” The re****t continues, “none of the components of the
defensive capability have yet to be flight tested in their fielded
configuration.”
The Bush administration’s exaggerated assessment of the ballistic
missile threat and its unjustified optimism about the capabilities of its
proposed missile defense system might be explained by an undue reliance on
former cor****ate officials and conservative missile defense boosters in
the formation of White House strategic policy. In fact, a domestic “axis
of influence”—a small circle of conservative think-tanks, cor****ate
officials, and hard-line veterans of the Pentagon and the uniformed
military that have been pu****ng missile defense for years—is playing an
unprecedented role in crafting U.S. security policy in the Bush
administration. Thirty-two key appointees of the administration are former
executives, consultants, or major shareholders of top defense contractors.
In addition, 22 former advisory board members or close associates of the
Center for Security Policy, an energetic missile defense advocacy group
funded in part by missile defense contractors, have been appointed to key
policymaking posts in the Bush administration.
Toward a New Foreign Policy
Key Recommendations
* Instead of focusing primarily on military and technical means to
deal with weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration should
increase funding for nonproliferation programs.
* Not only should Wa****ngton redouble its diplomatic efforts to
bargain away nascent nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea, it should
do so in Pakistan, India, and Israel, too.
* The ultimate goal of U.S. nuclear strategy should be the
abolition of nuclear weapons, and the United States must lead by example.
The missile defense program promises little in terms of increasing real
security due to technical problems in the program and because the primary
security threats facing the United States stem from sources other than
ballistic missiles. Sup****t for a vigorous and verifiable arms control and
disarmament regime would contribute much more to improving the security of
U.S. citizens.
It is true that President Bush has pledged to reduce deployed U.S. nuclear
weapons. President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the
Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, which would reduce each nation’s
operationally deployed nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200
warheads. However, the cuts do not have to take effect until the
expiration date of the treaty: December 31, 2012. Moreover, there are
minimal accounting and verification measures within the treaty. Besides
granting 10 years to make the reductions, the treaty allows both sides to
keep thousands of their withdrawn warheads in reserve rather than
destroying them, and it gives either party the right to withdraw from the
agreement on just 90 days notice. Additionally, the arms accord does
nothing to secure or destroy Russia’s warheads or stocks of highly
enriched uranium and plutonium.
Shortly before Bush’s inauguration, a bipartisan task force chaired by
former Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker and former White House Counsel
Lloyd Cutler re****ted that “the most urgent national security threat to
the U.S. today is the danger that weapons of mass destruction or
weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and sold to terrorists
or hostile nation-states and used against American troops abroad or
citizens at home.” The task force recommended the development of a
$3-billion-per-year, long-term plan to safeguard, destroy, or neutralize
Russian nuclear materials. Total current funding for all nonproliferation
programs—international and national—is less than $2 billion.
Despite White House overtures “to expand our efforts to keep weapons
from the Cold War and other dangerous materials out of the wrong hands”
through the Nunn-Lugar program, Bush’s 2005 nonproliferation budget
request is actually $41.8 million less than last year’s spending. The
Natural Resources Defense Council’s re****t Weaponeers of Waste finds
that under President Bush, the United States is spending twelve times more
on nuclear weapons research and production than on nonproliferation
efforts that would retrieve, secure, and dispose of nuclear weapons
materials worldwide.
In preparation for the 2005 review conference of the Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), United Nations members met this past
spring to discuss the progress made and the challenges ahead in their
commitment “to pursue negotiations in good faith” toward a nuclear
weapons-free world. Unfortunately, a nuclear weapons-free world doesn’t
appear to be on the U.S. agenda.
In his statement presented to the UN, John Bolton, U.S. undersecretary for
Arms Control and International Security, claimed, “the central bargain
of the NPT is that if non-nuclear weapons states renounce the pursuit of
nuclear weapons, they may gain assistance in developing civilian nuclear
power.” Bolton was quick to point out that Iran, Iraq, and Libya have
all been in violation of their treaty obligations and that North Korea has
pulled out of the treaty altogether, calling it “a crisis of NPT
noncompliance.” However, the greater “bargain” within the treaty is
the understanding that the non-nuclear weapons states give up their quest
for nuclear weapons on the condition that nuclear weapons states work
toward nuclear disarmament.
Although Bolton condemns particular treaty members for not complying with
the nonproliferation objectives, he gives no mention of the failings of
the Bush administration to follow through with its treaty obligations. Nor
does he point to the nuclear nations that are entirely outside of the
treaty: Israel, India, and Pakistan. Instead of demanding inspections,
threatening sanctions, or warning of an all-out attack, Wa****ngton rewards
those nations with arms sales and military assistance, perpetuating the
nuclear double standard.
Iraq has no nuclear weapons, as everyone now admits. Libya has been trying
to shed its rogue nation image and join the international community. It
voluntarily dismantled its nuclear weapons program and has allowed UN
International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) weapons inspectors inside the
country. Iran has permitted more inspections of its facilities and is
preparing to give the IAEA a full declaration of its nuclear program. And
six-party talks with North Korea are ongoing. Clearly, more needs to
happen with each of these nations to ensure that they are serious about
relinqui****ng their nuclear pursuits, but progress is being made one step
at a time.
Despite this progress and the fact that the Iraq War has revealed the
accuracy of the IAEA’s inspections regime, the Bush administration
remains committed to pursuing missile defense at the expense of
multilateral arms control and disarmament. President Bush recently said
that those opposing missile defense “don’t understand the threats of
the 21st century.” “They’re living in the past. We’re living in
the future,” he told a crowd of Boeing employees in Pennsylvania.
However, deploying a missile defense system dreamt up more than two
decades ago simply shows that Wa****ngton has not learned from the past.
This is the challenge facing architects of a security policy adequate to
the needs of the 21st century. Increasing funding for nonproliferation
programs, getting U.S. nuclear weapons reductions back on track, and
focusing on diplomatic disarmament efforts will provide real, lasting
security.
[Michelle Ciarrocca is a research associate at the World Policy Institute
and writes regularly for Foreign Policy in Focus.]
Resources for More Information
Organizations
Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation 322 Fourth St. NE
Wa****ngton, DC 20002
Voice: (202) 546-0795
Fax: (202) 546-5142
Email: cacnp at armscontrolcenter.org Website:
http://www.armscontrolcenter.org/
Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW
Wa****ngton, DC 20036-2109
Voice: (202) 332-0600
Fax: (202-462-4559
Email: info at cdi.org
Website: http://www.cdi.org/
Union of Concerned Scientists
Global Security Program
1707 H St. NW, Suite 600
Wa****ngton, DC 20006-3962
Voice: (202) 223-6133
Fax: (202) 223-6162
Email: globalsecurity at ucsusa.org
Website: http://www.ucsusa.org/
World Policy Institute
66 Fifth Ave., 9th Floor
New York, NY 10011
Voice: (212) 229-5808
Fax: (212) 229-5579
Email: hartung at newschool.edu
Website: http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/
Websites
Arms Control Association
http://www.armscontrol.org/
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Non-Proliferation Project
http://www.ProliferationNews.org/
GlobalSecurity.org
http://www.globalsecurity.org/
Missile Defense Agency
http://www.acq.osd.mil/mda/mdalink/html/mdalink.html
Publications
Briefing Book on Ballistic Missile Defense (Center for Arms Control and
Non-Proliferation, May 2004), available at
<http://64.177.207.201/static/nmd/pdf/briefing_book_nmd_2004.pdf>.
William Hartung and Michelle Ciarrocca, Axis of Influence: Behind the Bush
Administration’s Missile Defense Revival (World Policy Institute, July
2002), available at
<http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/re****ts/axisofinfluence.html>.
Missile Defense: Actions Are Needed to Enhance Testing and Accountability
(United States General Accounting Office, April 2004), available at
<http://www.gao.gov/cgi-bin/getrpt?GAO-04-409>.
Office of the Director, Operational Test & Evaluation, Annual Re****t FY
2003 (Department of Defense, February 2004), available at
<http://64.177.207.201/static/budget/pdf/fy03_DOTE_Annual_Re****t.pdf>.
Christopher E. Paine, Weaponeers of Waste (Natural Resources Defense
Council, April 2004), available at
<http://www.nrdc.org/nuclear/weaponeers/weaponeers.pdf>.
http://tania.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/Week-of-Mon-20041018/007780.html
- --
================================================================
NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems
Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us
339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org
List Archives: http://tania.blythe-systems.com/pipermail/nytr/
Public Key: http://www.blythe.org/~nyt/pub-key-ny_transfer.asc
================================================================
..
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.2.1 (GNU/Linux)
iQCVAwUBQXVa+kamV5Um0R3tAQJhfQP+Mu8CnKLncIDtXxVds3iKMpo2yk2FA0Dy
u3AkQFGI8Y+E371GFQzk02hIYBtuWsi0xWZYxCdueum5WXc/wSiJfUtEM35ZTm1g
n2PWFcismXeXy1cx6EthTWIEBqmye+x16RaTVMVms1K5YPbfVjci8kzs0jSuG2Z/
iFum57JzFHA=
=4KZk
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----
|
