Lasers and Land Mines

Wall Street Journal, 08 September 1997

Ronald Reagan’s arms buildup put and end to the massive Soviet threat, but no one has bothered to tell the Energizer bunnies of arms control. They keep on going, toiling to break the “mad momentum” of the “arms race.” Just now they’re focused on lasers and land mines, and it’s clearer than ever that their true agenda is not an arms race, but unilateral impositions on the United States.

As usual, President Clinton’s natural instinct is to try to have it both ways — to throw a bone both to those who want to disarm and those whose first priority is national security. Consider his last-minute change of heart about U.S. participation in the international solidarity session on land mines currently under way in Oslo. The Pentagon strenuously opposes a universal ban, which is the stated purpose of the conference, yet Mr. Clinton decided to send a delegation anyway. Predictably, the evisceration of the Americans has turned out to be the prime sport of the assembled do-gooders.

The plight of mine victims heightened at Diana’s funeral pageant adds to the emotional case; Hillary Clinton urged admirers of Diana Saturday to come out against land mines. If it comes down to a choice between the Princess and the Pentagon, don’t bet on Mr. Clinton to make the right decision.

No one seriously claims any ban could be comprehensive, enforceable or verifiable; two of the biggest producers — Russia and China — aren’t even taking part in the talks. And when it comes to demonstrating humanitarian concern for the victims of land mines, no country has done more than the U.S., which unilaterally made the decision to deploy “smart,” self-destructing, mines and which has given $125 million to help war-torn countries de-mine. In Oslo, the U.S. has dared to ask for exceptions crucial to national security: on the battlefield, where it wants to be able to use smart mines to protect tanks and troops, and at the DMZ on the Korean Peninsula, where two-thirds of the world’s largest army is within walking distance of Seoul. In either eventuality the potential victims would be the enemy, not civilians.

The next war won’t be lost or won over land mines, but it might be over satellite technology — which is why the proposed Army test of a powerful laser is so important. The Army wants to try out its high-power “Miracl” laser, housed at White Sands, N.M., by shooting at a satellite that the Air Force no longer needs. It would be the first time the U.S. tested a ground-based laser against a space-based target. The test is possible because the Republican Congress let a Congressional ban expire in 1995. It is currently under review by the Defense Department.

So far the sole opponents of the test appear to be some antique arms-control zealots rounded up in William Broad’s front-page article in the New York Times last week. By crying “Stars Wars!” and warning about the “militarization of space,” they apparently are bent on reviving the long-running anti-satellite — ASAT — debate of the ’80s.

The world has of course changed considerably since then and so has space. Today, satellites increasingly are tools for ordinary people in ordinary life, and also pivotal military assets. In modern warfare, as Desert Storm taught, the images obtained in space are crucial; the contender that “sees” better has a huge advantage. More and more nations have launched their own satellites and are acquiring the ability to interfere with others’ satellites. Like it or not, space is already a critical theater of military operations.

The military wants an anti-satellite weapon in part to stop enemies with orbital cameras from spying on American troops and weapons during combat. It also wants to protect its own satellites, whose vulnerability to attack was brought home in January during the Army’s Winter Wargames at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. There, the “enemy’s” opening move was to take out many commercial satellites and the GPS satellites that are the military’s eyes. Space Game, an exercise held in June in Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, again highlighted the military’s limited ability to protect American satellites.

There is no treaty barring the U.S. from testing ASATs, but there’s already talk of why we “need” one. We could see how this might prove attractive to a President whose defense policy seems based on the assumption that any treaty is better than no treaty — witness his dedication to the Chemical Weapons, Start and ABM treaties. The GOP Senate might at most delay but in the end will rubber-stamp anything called a treaty, letting the President make law by negotiating what he could never legislate.

What the United States truly needs is a fresh security strategy based on a determination that rather than run after the mirage of arms control, it should keep itself strong because that’s what will protect its national interest. In the era of a single superpower, that’s also what will promote world peace.