Unhappy Birthday: Twenty-Five Years of the A.B.M. Treaty is Enough; Sen. Kyl Points Way to Begin Defending America

(Washington, D.C.): Next Monday, 26
May, will be the 25^th
anniversary of the signing of the
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Far
from a cause for celebration, this
birthday should be an occasion for solemn
reflection: It is nothing short of a miracle
that the abject vulnerability to missile
attack to which this treaty has consigned
the United States has not resulted in the
accidental or purposeful destruction of
an American city and its people. It
would be folly to believe that U.S. luck
will continue to hold indefinitely;
urgent steps must, accordingly, be taken
to provide the sort of active defenses
prohibited by the ABM Treaty.

The Problem

After all, China
threatened Los Angeles in the course last
year of its campaign of intimidation
against Taiwan. That threat will become
all the more credible if, as today’s Washington
Times reports, a new DF-31 Chinese
mobile ICBM — one that will have the
capability to deliver multiple warheads
to Alaska, Hawaii and the West Coast of
the United States — is nearly ready for
flight testing.

Meanwhile, Russian missiles
are reportedly being switched without
authorization to “combat
alert” status — a critical step
closer to an accidental or unauthorized
launch. Such episodes have apparently
resulted from power supplies being shut
off due to the Strategic Rocket Forces’
failure to pay its bills and other
problems (for example, troops
cannibalizing wiring associated with
nuclear command and control systems to
steal and sell the precious materials
used in such equipment). Evidently, Moscow
believes it more important to fund
strategic force modernization than
compensate its troops or pay for the safe
operation of deployed weapons.

Finally, China, Russia and North
Korea are among those actively
engaged in transferring long-range
missile technology to other states,
including some of the most dangerous
nations on the planet. For example,
yesterday’s Washington Times
revealed that three Russian firms have
signed contracts with Iran‘s
Defense Industries Organization to help
produce liquid-fueled ballistic missiles
in direct violation of its obligations
under the Missile Technology Control
Regime.

As Rep. Curt Weldon
(R-PA), chairman of the House National
Security Committee’s Military Research
and Development Subcommittee and a
congressional champion of missile
defenses, put it in an op.ed. article in
the 21 May 1997 edition of The Hill:

“The judgment [contained in
a recent National Intelligence
Estimate that no rogue state will
obtain ballistic missile
capabilities in the next 15
years] rests on the assessment
that rogue nations will develop
ballistic missile capabilities of
their own. It does not take into
account the likelihood of [such]
nations purchasing either entire
ballistic missiles or ballistic
missile technology from other
countries….

“And believe me, there are
plenty of rogue nations who would
rather buy the technology
outright than spend years
developing it on their own.
Already, we have seen countless
occurrences of missile
technology, despite arms-control
treaties, being transferred from
both China and Russia to rogue
nations. Most recently, a CIA
document labeled ‘top secret’ was
leaked to the press that details
the transfer of short-range
ballistic missiles from the
Ukraine to Libya in a deal
estimated to be worth over $500
million.”

What Is To Be Done?

In recent days, Senator Jon
Kyl (R-AZ) — a man who has
established himself as one of the
Congress’ leading authorities on national
security matters in general and missile
defense issues in particular — has
publicly called for the immediate
adoption of a new, near-term and
affordable approach to defending the
United States and its forces and allies
overseas against the threat of missile
attack: sea-based global missile
defenses.

In a major address to the New Atlantic
Initiative’s Congress of Phoenix last
weekend and in an op.ed. in yesterday’s Wall
Street Journal href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_72at”>(see the attached),
Sen. Kyl argued that such an option is at
hand. Thanks to the nearly $50 billion
investment the Nation has made in the
Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system, the
United States has already acquired most
of the infrastructure required to offer
competent wide-area defense against
theater missile attack and to
begin providing limited protection to the
American people from longer-range missile
threats.

With a further investment of perhaps
as little as $2-3 billion over the next
five years,⁽¹⁾
650 interceptor missiles could be
modified and placed aboard 22 AEGIS
cruisers with the first
anti-missile-capable ship coming on-line
in as little as three years’ time. This
would represent a far greater return on
investment — producing far more quickly
and cheaply anti-missile capabilities
that would be available to deal far more
flexibly and robustly with a range of
ballistic missile threats — than the
so-called Three-Plus-Three option being
touted by the Clinton Administration.

End the Treaty That
Prohibits Sea-based Missile Defenses

As Sen. Kyl notes, there is only one
argument the Clinton Administration can
offer against the AEGIS option: “The
1972 U.S.-USSR Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty prohibits sea-based anti-missile
protection for the American people
(‘strategic’ defenses). And President
Clinton — who insists that this treaty
is ‘the cornerstone of strategic
stability’ — is trying to expand its
scope in ways that will even
inhibit, and possibly preclude, the
availability of effective naval missile
defenses for our forces and allies abroad
(‘theater’ defenses).”

Importantly, however, Sen. Kyl
observes that:

“Last week, the United
States Senate signaled that it is
prepared, finally, to challenge
Mr. Clinton’s determined
subordination of missile defenses
to a clearly outdated arms
control treaty. My colleagues and
I voted unanimously to require
the submission for our advice and
consent of a Memorandum of
Understanding (MOU) intended to
designate Russia, Ukraine,
Kazakhstan and Belarus as
successors to our original ABM
Treaty partner, the defunct
Soviet Union. In so doing, we
have set the stage for
what may be the most important
national security debate in a
generation.

“After all, if the
Senate rejects ratification of
the multilateralization MOU,
there will be no recognized
successor to the nation that
disappeared nearly eight years
ago. It seems a pretty
straightforward proposition: No
treaty partner, no treaty. And in
the absence of the ABM Treaty,
there would no longer be a legal
basis for preventing the U.S.
from protecting against a danger
that is dramatically different
that of 1972 — a
bipolar world in which the Soviet
Union had a monopoly on ballistic
missile threats to America and
its allies.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy applauds Sen.
Kyl, the 1994 recipient of the Center’s
prestigious “Keeper of the
Flame” Award, for his continuing and
extraordinary leadership in the Senate.
It has long believed that an affordable,
flexible and near-term sea-based missile
defense represented the best, initial
alternative to the American vulnerability
to missile attack imposed by the ABM
Treaty. Such an alternative can, and
should, be a further catalyst to Senate
rejection of the Memorandum of
Understanding on multilateralization of
the ABM Treaty when it is submitted for
that institution’s advice and consent.

The Center believes that the
convergence of growing political support
for the AEGIS option on the one hand and
the now-looming prospect that 34 Senators
may be able effectively to terminate the
ABM Treaty on the other creates the
ideal way in which to observe the 25^th
anniversary of its signing — namely, by
acting to ensure that this birthday will
prove to be the last for an
obsolete and increasingly dangerous
accord.

– 30 –

1. Even the
Congressional Budget Office, which has
consistently sought the largest numbers
imaginable to induce sticker-shock over
missile defense options, believes this
upgrade of an existing AEGIS capability
can be achieved for approximately $5
billion.