Hail to the Chief! Bush withdraws from the ABM Treaty and commitment to deploy defenses ASAP
Second Successful Navy Intercept shows the Way Ahead

(Washington, D.C.): To his lasting credit, President Bush formally completed yesterday a
process he began six-months ago — ending U.S. adherence to the flawed and increasingly
dangerous 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. In a statement issued yesterday afternoon
by the White House, Mr. Bush declared, in part:

With the Treaty now behind us, our task is to develop and deploy effective defenses
against limited missile attacks. As the events of September 11 made clear, we no
longer live in the Cold War world for which the ABM Treaty was designed. We now
face new threats from terrorists who seek to destroy our civilization by any means
available to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and long-range
missiles. Defending the American people against these threats is my highest
priority as Commander-in-Chief.

Read His Lips

In his statement, the President went on to provide the direction needed to those responsible
for
executing the Nation’s missile defense program when he declared: “I am committed to
deploying a missile defense system as soon as possible to protect the
American people and our
deployed forces against the growing missile threats we face.”

There can, therefore, be no doubt that the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is
obliged
to lay out and begin to implement at once a far more aggressive program so as to put into place
anti-missile systems “as soon as possible.” This would encompass not only activities heretofore
impermissible under the ABM Treaty. It should also include initiatives that either were not
contemplated or were previously given unduly low priority by the MDA, the Defense
Department’s Acquisition organization and/or armed services or the Congress.

First, From the Sea

It is especially exciting that, on the very day the President gave this broad and
urgent new
mandate to the MDA — and the latitude to implement it, the U.S. Navy conducted the
second successful intercept from an operational ship of the line against a simulated longer-range
ballistic missile warhead. The Center for Security Policy has long believed that such a
sea-based missile defense system, first recommended by a blue-ribbon commission sponsored by
the Heritage Foundation in 1995, would represent the most flexible, least costly and most
militarily effective way to provide early protection to America’s people, deployed forces and
allies.

If President Bush is to realize before the end of his first term the vision of an
America defended — at least preliminarily — against ballistic missile attack, he will have to do
more than ensure that
the Missile Defense Agency moves out smartly on sea-based and perhaps air-based anti-missile
systems (e.g., the Air Force’s airborne lasers and perhaps placing boost-phase interceptors
aboard Predator unmanned vehicles), as well as the ground-based system in Alasks scheduled to
begin construction on Saturday. He will also have to see to it that others in the Pentagon
bureaucracy faithfully implement his direction that this no longer is simply an open-ended
research and development program. In particular, there must be no repetition of the sort of
actions taken earlier this year by Pentagon acquisition officials that resulted in the precipitous
termination, without consulting the White House or the affected military services, of
a key Navy
anti-missile program needed to defend the fleet and deployed forces ashore against shorter-range
ballistic missile threats.

Prevailing on Capitol Hill

The President must also see to it that die-hard opponents of missile defense, like Senator
Carl
Levin (D-MI) and Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) are prevented from effecting, through funding
cuts/hamstringing legislation and litigation, respectively, new impediments to the progress he
knows is so urgently needed to defend America against missile-borne, as well as other, forms of
attack. (For more on the Levin-Kucinich antics, see the attached Wall Street Journal
editorial
published in today’s editions.)

Mr. Bush took an important step on this score in his statement yesterday calling “on the
Congress to approve the full amount of the funding I have requested in my budget for
missile defense.” If legislators do not do so, the President must make clear he will
unhesitatingly act on the recommendation Secretary Rumsfeld warned of in a letter sent to the
Senate earlier this week — namely that any legislation inflicting the sorts of damage Senator
Levin recently induced a partisan majority on the Senate Armed Services Committee to endorse
deserved to be vetoed. If this message is taken to heart, and the U.S. District Court in
Washington remains unwilling to honor the foolish request for injunction on withdrawal from the
ABM Treaty sought by Rep. Kucinich et.al., the United States may just get the protection against
missile attack that it so urgently needs. With luck, it may even get it in time.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy takes great pleasure in seeing the realization of a goal for
which it
has worked since this organization’s inception in 1988. The work that lies ahead is no less
important and the Center looks forward to supporting President Bush and his national security
team in realizing “as soon as possible” the deployment of the missile defenses he has now put
within reach.