CAN WE COUNT ON MISSILE DEFENSE?

• Author: EISENDRATH, CRAIG

"Although the threat to the U.S. should not be ignored, it does not justify the rush to deployment of national missile defense systems."

ON MAY 1, 2001, George W. Bush made his first presidential address on global issues, announcing that the U.S. "must move beyond the constraints of the 30-year-old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty" and deploy an extensive and expensive shield against nuclear missiles. In doing so, the President withdrew the nation's support from principles that have governed the world's nuclear balance for the past three decades. His arguments included support for a wide variety of missile defense systems, including "technologies that might involve land-based and sea-based capabilities to intercept missiles in midcourse or after they reenter the atmosphere." He highlighted the "substantial advantages of intercepting missiles early in their flight, especially in the boost phase," and referred to "promising options for advanced sensors and interceptors that may provide this capability."

The strenuous objections to national missile defense by America's friends and potential enemies, which may delay the programs, and severe technical problems leave time for genuine debate of a strategic system which, if deployed, will leave the U.S. and the world considerably less secure than it was before.

When analyzed carefully, it will be seen that the Bush round is simply the last of a series of futile attempts to deploy national missile defense; the threat it is supposed to meet has been systematically exaggerated; none of the approaches to missile defense being considered works or is likely to work in the foreseeable future; and deployment will lead to a new arms race, and will likely tear up the fabric of arms control agreements that have improved global security for more than three decades. The cost of missile defense programs, estimated in excess of $115,000,000,000, will pull funds away from military housing, health care, readiness, and the transformation of the armed forces.

National missile defense reflects an outmoded worldview that fosters a unilateral foreign policy. Moreover, military and diplomatic policies are available which can deliver at a fraction of the cost the results national missile defense is supposed to provide.

National missile defense was first proposed to counter a possible massive nuclear strike by the Soviet Union. A nuclear exchange with our principal Cold War rival, with its prospect of 100,000,000 deaths, was the nightmare scenario that haunted the first planners of an anti-ballistic missile defense system as they began their work in the early 1960s.

The more scientists and technicians worked on such a system, however, the less feasible it seemed. Prototypes flunked test after test, or passed tests which so greatly simplified their task that success meant little or nothing. It would always be possible for the Soviets in a real situation to overwhelm the system by launching too many incoming missiles, and it would always be possible for the incoming missiles to avoid being hit by confusing the defending missiles with chaff (essentially small pieces of wire or aluminum) and decoys. Finally, the cost of meeting an offensive challenge would be many times higher than that of the offensive challenge itself.

After more than a decade of research, both sides recognized the futility of going on with a missile defense system neither side could successfully develop. Pentagon planners also realized that the massive amount of dollars spent on a missile defense system which wouldn't work would drain money away from others the military needed to guarantee U.S. security and protect forces in the field.

Finally, the truth became inescapable. In 1972, Pres. Richard Nixon and Soviet Leader Leonid Brezhnev agreed to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that forbade both sides from deploying a national missile defense system and restricted the testing that might make such a system possible. The treaty, which did allow the limited deployment of missile defenses, saw the U.S. install such a system in Grand Forks, N.D., at a cost of $6,000,000,000, only to dismantle it immediately when it became clear it would be ineffective. The Soviets also deployed a limited missile defense system around Moscow, called Galosh, discounted as ineffective by U.S. analysts.

One of the arguments that led to Senate approval, with only two dissenting votes, of the ABM treaty, in addition to the fact that antimissile defense didn't work, was the fear that such a system would provoke the Soviet Union to stoke up the arms race, without increasing U.S. security. In other words, America would be worse off with the system than without it. A national missile defense system was like a cap pistol; the other side, thinking it was real, might shoot an actual gun first.

Despite passage of the ABM treaty, the Reagan Administration took up the cause again in the 1980s, driven, in part, by scientist Edward Teller's and the Livermore Laboratory's overoptimistic claims for a new, nuclear bomb-driven X-ray laser. The rationale for a national missile defense system was more political than strategic. As Pres. Ronald Reagan knew, a generation of Americans had grown up under the shadow of a possible nuclear war. The doctrine of what had become known as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) could be seen as carrying a high moral price. If we could rely on defense, however, we could escape catastrophe without guilt. In addition, a strong nuclear freeze movement put pressure on Reagan to come up with an alternative to MAD. Once he proposed his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), or "Star Wars" his approval ratings shot up.

Ultimately, the Reagan Administration spent tens of billions of dollars on the development of missile defense the vast majority of scientists knew couldn't work and was banned by treaty. While Reagan promised a "nuclear shield" that would achieve an "ultimate security" for the American people, such a system was never even conceivable. Nor was one feasible that would be limited to protecting the ability of U.S. land-based missiles to survive and retaliate against a Soviet first strike. The initial emphasis on the X-ray laser was quietly dropped in 1984, when it became clear the concept was not viable, although the public was not told, and other options were explored, with equally dismal results. No system was ever found to be technically feasible, and none was deployed. Periodic statements by the Union of Concerned Scientists and other bodies made clear the opinion of the nation's scientists that SDI was not scientifically feasible, was a waste of money, and was a spur to the arms race.

(The SDI endeavor was not without benefit, though. The USSR, trying to keep pace with American outlays, poured billions down similar sinkholes, helping to drive the Soviet Union to dissolution as its economy buckled under the weight of such competition.)

Although George H.W. Bush had disapproved of SDI as vice-president, in his 1988 presidential campaign he came out for full deployment and reinterpreting the ABM treaty. High projected costs, however, led him to abandon the idea of a full nuclear missile defense (NMD) system, and to propose a limited Global Protection Against Accidental Launch System. Bush also called for the development of theater missile defense programs against shorter-range missiles.

Waning appropriations were boosted by claims of success, advanced strenuously by then-Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney, of the U.S. Patriot missile during the Gulf War. These claims were later reduced by the General Accounting Office (GAO) to state that Patriots hit just nine percent of the Scud warheads, and possibly none. Nevertheless, claims for the success of the Patriot have continued to fuel support for NMD.

Once again, a new anti-missile technology drove appropriations--autonomous, small-kill vehicles lifted into outer space which would engage intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). Called Brilliant Pebbles, this system, like the X-ray laser, was advanced by Livermore Laboratory. Skyrocketing costs-an estimated $85,000,000,000--poor performance, and the clear threat the system posed to the ABM treaty, including strenuous Russian objections, doomed it, and appropriations decreased. By the end of George H.W. Bush's administration, more than $100,000,000,000 had been spent on anti-missile research, making it the largest weapons research project in history, with virtually nothing to show for it.

Following the 1994 Contract with America, when the Republican Congress attempted to mandate a national missile defense by 1993, Pres. Bill Clinton vetoed the bill. In 1996, he sought to co-opt the issue by devising a Three-Plus-Three program, supporting development of a national missile defense system over three years and designating 2000 as the year in which a decision would be made whether to deploy the system over the following three years. The system--which could be deployed by 2003--would consist of 20 ground-based interceptors that, if they worked, could block missiles launched by "rogue states" or accidental launches by Russia and China.

The option proposed by Clinton was a limited land-based system designed to impact incoming...