GIVING AWAY THE STORE? THE EMERGING ANTI-THEATER BALLISTIC MISSILE TREATY

(Washington, D.C.): Since November 1993, the Clinton
Administration has been engaged in negotiations with
Russia of enormous strategic import. Their purported
purpose is to “clear the way” for development
and deployment of effective theater missile defenses
(TMDs) — i.e., weapons designed to protect against
attacks by shorter-to-medium-range ballistic missiles.
This is supposed to be accomplished by
“clarifying” the extent to which limits imposed
on strategic missile defenses by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty impinge upon such TMDs.

In practice, however, these negotiations — which have
been conducted both inside and outside of the
Geneva-based Standing Consultative Commission and
bilaterally with Moscow, as well as multilaterally with
two other Soviet successor states (Ukraine and Belarus)
— are giving rise to something very different: an
array of brand new constraints upon theater missile
defenses that so radically expands the scope of the ABM
Treaty as, in effect, to ban virtually all promising
technologies for defending against attacks by missiles of
all ranges. Such a development is made the more
remarkable because the Administration — like many
Members of Congress from both parties — has professed a
strong commitment to the prompt fielding of effective
theater missile defenses.⁽¹⁾

Summit Strategy

And yet, all other things being equal, the
Administration will probably decide within the next few
days to take two momentous steps:

First, it will adopt new negotiating
positions that will — when combined
with positions already tabled or agreed upon —
establish draconian new limitations on TMD. The
effect will be to constrain the development,
testing and/or fielding of virtually every
technical approach that might produce the kind of
wide-area/regional defenses the Administration
ostensibly finds so valuable. And,

Second, it will try to incorporate language
into the joint summit communique
committing Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, and
their subordinates, to the goal of completing
these TMD negotiations by the end of the upcoming
round of the Standing Consultative Commission
(SCC). The next round is currently scheduled to
start on October 10th and would ordinarily wrap
up before the end of the year.

Killing Off TMD

The following are among the major impediments
to acquiring effective TMD that have already been
accepted by the Clinton Administration:

A so-called “interim” limit of
3 kilometers/second on the intercept capabilities
of sea-based defenses. This will
preclude the Navy’s extremely promising Upper
Tier system which has a 4.5 km/sec capability).

Limits on the volume, velocity and range
of air-based TMD systems and a
prohibition on their deployment aboard long-range
heavy bombers. These constraints will
effectively preclude the Air Force’s Boost-Phase
Defense system.

A prohibition on nuclear-tipped theater
missile defenses. (The Russians have
categorically rejected this provision, however,
as it would interfere with their ongoing
deployment of TMD systems.)

A prohibition on space-based TMD
interceptors and missiles. This
provision forecloses permanently the most highly
leveraged and cost-effective way to provide
global defenses against theater missile attack.

‘In the Name of the President…’

As it prepares to instruct the acting U.S. SCC
Commissioner for his next round of negotiations, the
interagency process is considering three options (agency
positions are due by COB September 21st):

Make no further concessions.
The uniformed military and Deputy Secretary of
Defense Deutch reportedly have concluded that too
many concessions have already been made. Whether
either will muster the courage to insist that the
damage already done be rectified or even simply
propose that no further wounds be self-inflicted
remains to be seen.
Accept the Russian position
setting a 3 km/sec ceiling across the board on
all theater missile defense interceptors. This
option of outright capitulation is, of course, a
strawman — designed at this point to make the
third “compromise” position appear more
reasonable. Or
Adopt some further restraints in the
hope of appeasing the Russians — without
appearing to throw in the towel on TMD entirely.
Among the further missile defenses under active
consideration are:

Range limitations on sea-based
TMD systems. This would
exacerbate the deleterious impact of
already accepted velocity limits on the
AEGIS-based Upper Tier option.

A 3 km/sec limit on the
interception capability of land-based TMD.
This would seriously impinge upon the
Army’s Theater High Altitude Area Defense
(THAAD) system’s growth options. (The
baseline system is already at 2.6
km/sec.)

Prohibit testing of TMD systems
during certain phases of the incoming
target’s flight. This would
preclude use of the Air Force airborne
Boost-Phase Interceptor in any other
phase of ballistic missile flight —
including for such high priority missions
as destroying chemical and biological
warheads at every possible point prior to
release in the atmosphere.

Solicit from Russia further ideas
for limitations — for example,
limits on various space-based sensors
(e.g., long wavelength infrared
technologies useful for performing cold
body, mid-course tracking of strategic
missiles; active sensors like laser
radars; or ultra-violet visible
wavelength systems, such as those used in
the extraordinarily important Brilliant
Eyes low-earth-altitude, highly
distributed satellite systems). This
invites a Kremlin veto over U.S. TMD
programs akin to that it already enjoys
over steps to defend this country against
long-range missile strikes.

Giving Moscow a Veto

The Clinton Administration has quite deliberately set
about helping Moscow obtain a veto through one other
device as well: multilateralizing the ABM Treaty
by expanding the number of its signatories.
There are serious questions under international law about
whether the United States should continue to be bound by
an agreement when one of the original parties — the
Soviet Union — no longer exists. These questions ought
to be addressed and debated publicly before any actions
are taken, in President Clinton’s words, to
“strengthen the ABM Treaty” by massively
expanding its scope.

What is more, in an 8 December 1993 press conference,
Spurgeon Keeney, president of the Arms Control
Association — an organization that determinedly ignores
the strategic, technological and legal reasons for
reassessing he ABM Treaty’s value in the post-Cold War
world, revealed the very deliberate method to the
Clinton Administration’s multilateralization madness:

“…The Administration interprets [the offer
to multilateralize the Treaty] as a very positive
move, and that is they argue, the Administration
does, that this will make it quite difficult
to ever amend the ABM Treaty in the future.
So if there were ever an effort by a succeeding
administration to try to do what the Reagan-Bush
Administration wanted to do to the ABM Treaty, with
many partners to the ABM Treaty in the future, those
kinds of amendments would be very unlikely to be
carried through.

“Actually the U.S. Defense Department for
that reason opposed multilateralization within the
U.S. councils — the U.S. government councils.
Eventually, though, they were overruled.”

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that every
effort should be made to ensure that the ABM treaty is not
modified in any way that will make it still more
difficult to defend the American people, their forces and
allies overseas. In this regard, the Center
salutes several congressional members of its Board of
Advisors — notably, Reps. Henry Hyde
(R-IL) and Bob Livingston (R-LA) — who
joined forces on 19 September with key Democrats like Reps.
John Murtha (of Pennsylvania who chairs the
House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee), Dave
McCurdy of Oklahoma and Norm Sisisky of
Virginia and 27 other representatives in sending a shot
across President Clinton’s bow: They wrote Mr. Clinton
strongly dissenting from his recent moves to restrict
TMD. And noting President Yeltsin‘s
January 1992 statement that “We’re prepared
to design jointly, produce jointly and use jointly a global
security system to replace the SDI system,”
the legislators urged President Clinton to use the
upcoming summit with Mr. Yeltsin, instead, as a vehicle
for expanding the opportunities to build and deploy
missile defenses — not as a catalyst for compounding the
Nation’s present vulnerability.

If the Clinton Administration nonetheless continues
down the latter track, the results of its negotiations
must be submitted for the formal advice and consent of
two-thirds of the Senate — as required pursuant to the
Constitution’s treaty-making provisions. The Center also
notes with satisfaction the successful inclusion in the
FY1995 Defense authorization bill of a statutory
requirement that “substantial changes” to the
ABM Treaty must receive Senate advice
and consent. Clearly, the changes that are
mutating the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty into a
multilateralized anti-theater ballistic missile
agreement qualify as both “substantial” and
unacceptable.

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1. For example, in May 1994, the
Clinton Administration issued a report concerning
“Nonproliferation and Counterproliferation
Activities and Programs” in which it identified
wide-area/regional defenses — particularly those
with boost-phase intercept capability — as among
the highest priority shortfalls in U.S. operational
capabilities. Indeed, in his transmittal letter to the
Congress, Deputy Secretary of Defense John Deutch
highlighted such defenses as one of fourteen technologies
having “the greatest potential for making a
contribution to our proliferation technology
efforts.”