MISSILE DEFENSE IS BACK

Srdja Trifkovic

December 21, 2002

On Monday, December 16, President George W. Bush ordered the deployment of a new anti-missile system which is supposedly meant to meet the emerging threat from rogue nations armed with ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. "The United States will take every necessary measure to protect our citizens against what is perhaps the gravest danger of all: the catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them," the President declared.

Mr. Bush's decision marks another important step on the road first charted by President Reagan with his vision of a space-based missile shield almost two decades ago. Almost a year ago Mr. Bush laid the legal ground for the project by withdrawing from the ABM treaty signed in 1972 with the Soviet Union that banned such systems. The "son of Star Wars" will now develop from the nucleus of ten land-based interceptors at Fort Greely in Alaska and California to be operational by 2004 and a sea-based anti-missile system that will be installed on Aegis warships. The system is designed to use radar to detect missiles being fired at the US and then use its own missiles to shoot them down before they strike—like a bullet shooting a bullet.

Mr. Bush said in his announcement that the attacks on New York and Washington were proof that the US faced "unprecedented threats" and that missile defense was therefore vital. On this important point the President is wrong. Terrorist attacks indicate the limitations and ultimate uselessness of antimissile defense in the new security environment. When Reagan's "Star Wars" was on the agenda the Soviet Union's nuclear capabilities posed a very real threat. Fifteen months after 9-11 there is no credible scenario of a "rogue" attack on the United States. Banding terrorism and rogue states' rockets together is undoubtedly useful from the point of view of domestic politics—the public has been sold the concept of missile defense on those very grounds—but the technique is disingenuous. Very different defenses are needed against terrorist attacks on one side and "rogue state" missile attacks on the other. The former are likely, even imminent, in the years to come; the latter are and have always been extremely unlikely.

Funding allocated to the anti-missile umbrella would be therefore better spent in the war against terrorists who may threaten us with non-conventional means. A mega-billion-dollar antimissile shield will do nothing to protect American cities from dirty bombs, anthrax, chemical or biological agents released in a subway, or hijacked planes, or "weapons of mass destruction" smuggled across a virtually uncontrollable southern border and detonated from within the country. Ironically it may render such attacks more likely, by forcing any possible aggressor to consider alternatives to the method of delivery that leaves a clear thermal "signature" that may be countered by the antimissile shield and that is certain to invite lethal retaliation.

Mr. Bush did not mention it, but many experts remain unsure of the proposed system's technical feasibility. Its flaws were reiterated in early December when a test of the interceptor missiles to be installed at Fort Greely failed. The interceptor weapon, an "exo-atmospheric kill vehicle" was supposed to destroy a Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile but failed to separate from its booster rocket. This was only the latest in a string of failures: three out of eight similar tests since 1999 have failed. Furthermore, according to a 2000 report by an independent Pentagon panel, it is uncertain whether interceptors can distinguish between armed warheads and decoys. The panel, headed by retired Gen. Larry Welch, former Air Force chief of staff, questioned the maturity of the technology, stressing the problem of dummy decoys launched with attacking missiles. The report warned against any fast-track deployment of a yet-unproved system, saying the timetable for constructing a working system in five years was unrealistic. But the Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. Craig Quigley said at the time, "We have confidence that we will successfully be able to integrate various technologies and come up with a system that ... can discriminate against the projected threat that a rogue nation might possess in the year 2005, which is our target to deploy." No technological breakthrough has taken place since that day, Quigkey's claim was an assertion of faith devoid of substance then and it remains so today, but the project went ahead nevertheless.

From the outset missile defense shield was a flawed project that threatened to jeopardize America's relations with Russia, China, and even some European allies, without enhancing the U.S. security. This burden is particularly unwelcome at a time when the common front against militant Islam is a matter of existential urgency; not acting in concert against it is the form of "mutual assured destruction" that Cold War game-players had never envisioned.

The reactions have been muted but clearly negative. Moscow expressed regret over the decision: the Russian Foreign Ministry said the project "can lead only to the weakening of strategic stability, a new senseless arms race in the world, including the spread of weapons of mass destruction, and diverting resources to counter today's real challenges and threats, above all, international terrorism." China expressed concern that the deployment could "undermine the security and stability of the world." Such statements reflect the views by Presidents Jiang Zemin of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia who declared in a joint statement back in July 2000 that "the American plan is a source of enormous concern" aimed at "achieving unilateral superiority in military and security matters."

The antimissile defense system's assumptions are technically flawed and politically paranoid. In practical terms America's true safety is not in anti-missile missiles, but in tightly controlled borders, deportation of illegal immigrants, immediate indefinite moratorium on all Islamic immigration, and a well-equipped military capable of defending its territory and its clearly defined national interests. In fundamental terms the missile defense philosophy as currently conceived assumes the desirability of the global hegemony as the basis of U.S. foreign policy. The 1999 Rumsfeld Report that provided the basis for the National Missile Defense project under Clinton unwittingly supported that view when it stated that the system was needed because "a number of countries with regional ambitions do not welcome the U.S. role as a stabilizing power in their regions and... they want to place restraints on the U.S. capability to project power or influence into their regions."

The global-hegemonist demand for the physical ability to counter and defeat any regional power wishing to impose any "restraints" on American projection of power was fully developed into state policy last September, when President Bush announced the new National Security Strategy. It spells out a commitment to maintain open-ended US military superiority "beyond challenge" in nuclear and conventional capacity, across the globe and in space, and even against as yet unrecognized future threats. It defines two main categories of enemies: "rogue states" (and their terrorist clients) and "potentially hostile powers." Both warrant pre-emptive strikes "by direct and continuous action using all the elements of national and international power."

Here we reach the core problem of the issue: the missile shield "philosophy" assumes the desirability of the limitless global hegemony ("U.S. as a stabilizing power in their regions") as the unquestionable basis of U.S. foreign policy. An attack on the NMD and on the flawed or fraudulent arguments invoked in its support therefore has to be an attack on the grandomaniacal concept of permanent and unrestrained projection of power everywhere in the world. This concept is, and has always been, the main threat to American security: the main threat to America comes from the policy of global hegemony pursued from Washington. Designating "threats to national security" must follow the clear determination of a country's national interests. If those interests are assumed to include the ability to project power everywhere and all the time, then indeed the threat is also unlimited and permanent. An effective missile defense system, even if it could be designed, would be desirable only if global hegemony were to be abandoned in favor of a foreign policy based on quantifiable, rationally defined national interest.

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