Memo to ‘W’: You Can’t Get to a Missile Defense Via the A.B.M. Treaty

(Washington, D.C.): Up in Maine, where the Bush family has long vacationed, there is an
old
joke about a native who is asked by a city fella to give him directions to another town. After a
number of abortive efforts, the “Down Easter” shakes his head and says regretfully, “You can’t
rightly get there from here.”

The same might be said of Texas Governor and Republican presidential candidate George W.
Bush’s recent, welcome commitment — made first in his address to the Citadel in September and
substantially repeated in news interviews yesterday — that “At the earliest possible
date, my
administration will deploy anti-ballistic missile systems, both theater and national, to guard
against attack and blackmail.” This campaign pledge contrasts sharply with the
adamant
refusal of the Clinton-Gore Administration to make a commitment to deploy robust defenses
against long-range missile attack.

Not only has Mr. Clinton refused to deploy defenses in the face of the considerable and
growing
danger of such an attack — a danger that has been documented by the independent, blue-ribbon
and bipartisan Rumsfeld Commission and, more recently, by his own CIA. Even as he signed
legislation in August making it the declared “policy of the U.S. government to deploy effective
limited national missile defenses as soon as technologically possible,” he announced that he had
no intention of committing to deploy such defenses until mid-2000, at the earliest.

Bush’s Problematic Caveat

The problem with realizing Governor Bush’s professed determination to put in place
anti-missile
protection is that he was advised to include the following caveat in his remarks to the cadets at
the Citadel: “To make this possible, we will offer Russia the necessary amendments to the
Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty – an artifact of Cold War confrontation.” In comments on NBC’s
“Today Show” yesterday, moreover, Gov. Bush said: “I think we need to give Russia time to
agree to amend the Treaty.” Unfortunately, you can’t rightly get to the deployment of U.S.
missile defenses by negotiating with the Russians changes to the ABM Treaty.

To be sure, Gov. Bush went on to add in his Citadel speech: “If Russia refuses the changes
we
propose, we will give prompt notice, under the provisions of the Treaty, that we can no longer be
a party to it. I will have a solemn obligation to protect the American people and our allies, not to
protect arms control agreements signed almost 30 years ago.” And on the Today Show, he
followed his statement about giving the Russians “time to agree to amend” the ABM Treaty with
the pronouncement “Otherwise, we ought to abrogate the Treaty.”

It bears recalling that a President named George Bush signed legislation in 1992 that
authorized
the deployment of an initial missile defense site by 1996 and, if necessary, withdrawal from the
ABM Treaty if the Russians refused to negotiate changes to it. Today, seven years
later — and
three years after that deadline — the Nation still lacks the means to intercept even a single
ballistic missile aimed at its territory. And it is still negotiating with the Kremlin “the necessary
amendments to the ABM Treaty.”

Bad Advice?

Since the Governor is reportedly receiving advice from, among others, senior members of his
father’s security policy team — notably, former Secretary of State James Baker
III, former
National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and the USSR/Russia specialist on the
Bush NSC,
Condoleezza Rice — one might have thought this sorry history would have
been brought to his
attention. At a minimum, those who presided over strategic arms control negotiations with
Moscow from 1989 through 1992, let alone anyone who claims to have followed U.S.-Russian
relations over the past seven years, should not be encouraging “W” to believe, let alone to
declare, that “Both sides know that we live in a different world from 1972, when that treaty was
signed.”

The fact is that, although Boris Yeltsin in 1992 expressed some interest in collaboration on a
“global protection system” against the ballistic missile threat, when the George H.W. Bush
Administration failed to capitalize on that opening, the Russian government quickly reverted to
form. It has, ever since, been in denial about changes in the strategic environment that would
justify ending the posture of “assured vulnerability” to missile attack imposed by the ABM
Treaty. And it has used every available public forum and negotiating setting to inveigh against
such changes.

Don’t Compound the Clinton-Gore Administration’s Mistake

Matters have, of course, been made worse by the Clinton-Gore team’s insistence that the
Russians are entitled to veto any U.S. deployment of missile defenses. As Deputy
Secretary of
State Strobe Talbott — a man whose Moscow-centric thinking about strategic matters in
general
and arms control in particular is as much an “artifact of the Cold War” as the ABM Treaty to
which he remains committed — put it in September after concluding a round of negotiations with
the Kremlin on missile defense:

“Is it possible to combine the importance of preserving the ABM Treaty with the new
reality of proliferation of technologies for the manufacture of ballistic missiles? I
think, along with President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright and Defense
Secretary Cohen, that the answer to this question is ‘yes.’ This can be done in a way
that would not just preserve but enhance Russia’s security. But, like other issues we
discussed, the decision rests with Russia.”

As long as U.S. leaders believe, in Gov. Bush’s words, that it is necessary for this
country
to offer — and the Russians to accept — the “necessary amendments to the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty” before it will be “possible” to deploy effective national missile defenses,
chances are that “the decision” for the United States to do so will continue to “rest with
Russia.”

Moscow Rules

The Russians, after all, take deserved pride in their negotiating prowess. It is — as the
Communists are wont to say — “no accident, comrade” that their national sport is chess. Anyone
who has been involved in arms control talks with the Kremlin can attest that they are extremely
adept at accomplishing with obstructionism and stalling tactics what they might otherwise be
denied.

It is a safe bet that, were “W” to become President and implement his stated plan, the
Russians
would not “refuse” to begin negotiations about changing the ABM Treaty. Indeed, Messrs.
Yelstin and Clinton agreed to do that last Spring, spawning the process Mr. Talbott is now using
to perpetuate Russia’s veto over U.S. anti-missile deployments. Once started, however,
the
Russians will employ various strategems — from time-consuming diplomatic maneuvers to
substantive posturing to external public relations efforts and other pressure tactics,
including outright threats — to deter Washington from ever declaring the talks to have
reached an impasse.

An Alternative Strategy

Governor Bush — and any other aspirant to the presidency who is genuinely committed to
“promptly” defending America against the intensifying threat of missile attack — would be
well-advised to adopt a different approach. Upon occupying the Oval Office, the next
President
should inform Moscow and the rest of the world that the United States will begin deploying
effective anti-missile systems on July 21, 2001, six-months to the day after the
inauguration.
If the Russians wish during that period to discuss any concerns they might have or perhaps
fashion a new modus vivendi (literally) based on assured defense, rather
than assured
vulnerability, all the better. But those discussions will not be allowed to delay or prevent the
preparations for deployment of American anti-missile systems and the fastest possible realization
of that goal.

As a practical matter, this deployment will have to begin with the adaptation of the
U.S.
Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system so as to give it the capability to intercept
long-range
ballistic missiles. Of course, even if the necessary Manhattan Project-style effort is mounted to
achieve this evolution of a proven and widely deployed system, it is unlikely that the first cruiser
will be fully missile defense-capable in six-months time. Still, by tying into the roughly $50
billion already invested in Aegis ships, missiles, sensors and communications systems, the
Nation could far more quickly secure effective missile defenses at sea than via any other
deployment option and, with the right priority, may be able to begin limited operations shortly
after that deadline. The model here should be doing what we can with what is available — in
much the same way as the urgent deployment of slightly modified Patriot air defense missiles at
the outset of Operation Desert Shield proved of political and strategic value far in excess of their
limited anti-missile capability.

In fact, a commission sponsored by the Heritage Foundation noted earlier this year that a
further
investment of between $2-3 billion would permit twenty-two cruisers to be equipped in roughly
three years time with as many as 650 SM-3 anti-missile missiles — the first of which was
successfully flight tested in August — and the other necessary upgrades. Six months after the
go-ahead, a well-structured program could begin to conduct development, testing and
deployment
activity not permitted by the 1972 ABM Treaty.

As it happens, giving the Russians and the world six-months notice of our intentions would
coincide with the period that the ABM stipulates for a permitted withdrawal from its restrictions.
But the next President should not dignify that treaty by making direct
reference to it in
providing such notice. After all, legal analysis — notably, that performed earlier this year by
former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith and former Justice Department
official George Miron ¹ — makes it clear that,
under international law, the ABM Treaty
lapsed when the other party, the Soviet Union, became extinct.

Consequently, the United States is not legally bound either to observe that accord’s
limitations or
to extricate itself from them pursuant to the Treaty’s Article XV withdrawal clause.
Neither
Governor Bush nor anyone else committed to deploying missile defenses should
unintentionally breathe new life into a defunct treaty since doing so can only make it more
difficult — if not impossible — to realize that goal.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is clear: Given America’s yawning vulnerability to missile attack, the
United
States will have an anti-missile defense. The only question is, will we have one before we need
it — or after? If Mr. Bush and other candidates for the White House hope to ensure that it is the
former, they must chart a course that will actually get such defenses deployed “as soon as
possible.” And you can’t get there via the route of renegotiating the ABM Treaty with the
Russians.

Neither should serious thought be given to trying to sweeten the deal by offering the
Russians access to U.S. missile defense technology. It is, in particular, a loser to
suggest as
Gov. Bush did yesterday in an interview with the Associated Press: “We would be willing to
share [anti-missile] technology so long as [the Russian] make a pledge against the spread of
weapons technology.” The United States should be willing to share the protection
its global anti-missile system provides, but not the state-of-the-art technology it is spending
billions of dollars
to develop — certainly not with a nation, like Russia, that has deployed its own territorial defense
against missile attack, in violation of the ABM Treaty, ²
and is widely proliferating weapons of
mass destruction, ballistic missile and other threatening military technology in violation of
myriad international and treaty obligations.

¹ See the Center’s Press Release entitled
Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No Veto Over
Defending U.S. (No. 99-P 11, 22 January 1999).

² See See The ABM Treaty Charade: A Study in
Elite Illusion and Delusion by William T.
Lee, Council for Social & Economic Studies, Washington, D.C., 1997.