Et Tu, John, Bill And Dick? Bush Plan For Global Defense Plan Imperiled By Senate Allies

(Washington, D.C.): To the delight of those determined to preserve an outdated and increasingly dangerous treaty — which precludes the United States from having effective defenses against ballistic missile attack — three top Republican senators yesterday abandoned President Bush and their own past support for urgent development of the only system capable of providing affordable, near-term, global protection: the space-based Brilliant Pebbles program.

Republican Senators John Warner (VA), William Cohen (ME), and Richard Lugar (IN) broke ranks with President Bush last week in a letter that criticized him for seeking rapid development of space-based defenses, urged him to pursue a far less competent ground-based alternative and called for continued adherence to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Evidently, the senators’ betrayal of the President was animated by a perception that such a ground-based system — and modifications to the ABM Treaty necessary to permit its deployment — would be acceptable to a majority in the Congress, whereas a more effective system incompatible with that treaty would not.

Unfortunately — for reasons described in an article (a copy of which is attached) published in the Washington Times last Monday by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., the Center’s director — such a "go-with-the-flow" approach to strategic defense is unlikely to produce any meaningful reduction in the United States’ present, total vulnerability to ballistic missile attack. As Gaffney noted:

"…Some of those in the Senate who support a real SDI are under the illusion that (a ground-based only defensive system] merits support. The theory is that it would at least permit some strategic defenses to be deployed and would put to rest the notion that the ABM Treaty must remain immutable in perpetuity.

 

"It is absolutely predictable, however, that — as the high costs and significant operational limitations of such stand-alone ground-based systems become known — political support for a limited deployment of this type will evaporate, probably long before anything useful is deployed. In the end, a renegotiation of the ABM Treaty along such lines may do little more than legitimize the massive anti-ballistic missile capabilities inherent in the large numbers of Soviet radars and interceptors ostensibly fielded for early warning and anti-aircraft purposes."

 

The Center for Security Policy strongly urges President Bush to stay the course by rejecting calls for redirecting SDI into a strategic, technological and political cul de sac. It hopes that the President will exhibit at least as much tenacity and conviction in insisting that the U.S. and its allies be effectively defended against ballistic missile attack as he has recently shown in rebuffing legislators’ views on Most Favored Nation status for China, conditioning of aid to the Soviet Union and civil rights legislation.