Moment of Truth: Senate to Decide Today Whether To Deploy Missile Defenses As Soon As Possible

(Washington, D.C.): This afternoon, the United States Senate is slated to cast what may
prove to
be one of the most momentous votes of the 106^th Congress: With the removal of
parliamentary
roadblocks that prevented action twice before on legislation that would make it the policy of the
U.S. government to deploy effective, limited national missile defenses as soon as technologically
possible, a clear majority now seems likely to approve the National Missile Defense Act
of
1999 (S.257) which would do just that.

In several hours of debate yesterday, opponents of this initiative argued what seemed a
half-hearted and certainly unconvincing case against deploying anti-missile systems to protect the
American people as soon as technology will permit. Even Senator Carl Levin
(D-MI), the
Clinton Administration’s principal Senate champion in resisting this bipartisan legislation
co-sponsored by Senators Thad Cochran (R-MS) and Daniel
Inouye (D-HI), felt constrained to
profess a commitment to protecting the American people and to deploying effective missile
defenses just as soon as they were available — a reflection, at least in part, of the impossibility of
further arguing (as Sen. Levin long has) that there is no threat that warrants such defenses.

What’s Left of the Opponents’ Arguments

Reduced to its essence, the opponents’ case now seems to rest on three untenable
propositions:

• “It Would Cost Too Much to Defend the American People.” As
  best-selling author Mark
  Helprin caustically observed in the 22 February 1999 edition of National Review
  which was
  largely devoted to the missile defense issue, “We spend three times what we spend on
  strategic defense on cookies and crackers, six times as much on sausages and prepared
  meats and ten times as much on lottery tickets.”

Obviously, the cost of providing a missile defense pales beside the cost of losing even a
single American city. Does anyone actually believe that if — God forbid — that
were to occur, we would still be haggling about the cost of anti-missile systems?
It is unconscionable that we are now doing so when, by spending what it takes, we
might prevent such a loss from eventuating.

It is particularly outrageous to allow false economies further to stymie the
decision to deploy missile defenses insofar as there is an approach that could
begin to provide protection for the American people for a fraction of what
the Clinton Administration claims it is willing to spend in the next few years
(i.e., $6.6 billion). According to a newly released study prepared by a blue-ribbon
Commission on Missile Defense sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, 1 the
United States could begin to field an effective, limited world-wide missile
defense at sea for between $2-3 billion within the next four years. This is
possible thanks to the roughly $50 billion investment that the Nation has already
made in the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system. Even the Pentagon has had
to acknowledge that such an approach is technically feasible and that the costs are
nowhere near the $19 billion suggested in a news report published last month in
the Washington Post. 2

• “The U.S. Military Doesn’t Want Early Action on Missile Defense.” This
  is too ridiculous
  a statement to be treated seriously. The fact is that the U.S. military very much want
  a near-term missile defense — both to protect vulnerable forces overseas and the country they are
  sworn to defend. It’s just that their senior leaders have a hard time saying so in light of the
  armed services’ desperate funding shortfalls. At the low budget levels the Clinton
  Administration has provided the Pentagon — including this year’s modest “plus-up” 3 — the
  armed forces have insufficient resources to meet their current missions, let alone take
  on new
  ones like missile defense.

This problem is enormously compounded by the Clinton Administration’s refusal to
consider deployments of effective anti-missile systems via means other than one or
two
ground-based sites — a far more costly, and far less effective manner of defending
America than would be possible with the AEGIS Option. What is more, the AEGIS
Option would have the inherent capability to provide protection to U.S. forces and
allies overseas, as well as for the American people here at home. This sort of flexible,
affordable and near-term system would enormously appeal to the U.S. military if only
they are allowed to pursue it.

• “Protecting the A.B.M. Treaty is More Important than Protecting the
  American
  People.” The last refuge of the die-hard opponents of missile defense is the 1972
  Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an accord signed with the Soviet Union under strategic
  circumstances
  so different from today’s as to be wholly unrecognizable. They claim that the United States
  has legal obligations under this treaty that prevent it from building missile defenses.

In fact, rigorous legal analysis belies this claim. A study recently completed for the
Center for Security Policy by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas
J. Feith and former Justice Department attorney George Miron,
clearly establishes
that the ABM Treaty lapsed under international law when the other party, the
Soviet Union, became extinct. 4

Even if the ABM Treaty were somehow still legally binding, the United States
would have the right to withdraw from its restraints on six-month’s notice if its
“supreme interests” were jeopardized. If this term in the Treaty’s Article XV had
any meaning at all, it contemplated just the sorts of strategic circumstances the
United States confronts today in a world in which Moscow no longer has a
monopoly on threats to this country and its people.

It is worth noting, moreover, that taking such a step is exceedingly unlikely to
trigger a new arms race with Russia — the threat usually bandied about by the
ABM Treaty’s devotees — given the Kremlin’s dire economic straits. These
conditions make retaining Russia’s present level of strategic forces, let alone
modernizing and greatly increasing their numbers, a virtual impossibility.

The Bottom Line

There are, in short, no longer any compelling arguments for further delaying the decision to
deploy missile defenses. It is past time for a commitment to such a deployment to become the
policy of the U.S. government. The leaders of the Senate and House of Representatives (which is
expected on Thursday to act favorably on a slightly different version of S.257 following an
unusual closed session featuring former Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld) 5 deserve
credit for their efforts to overcome the Clinton Administration’s opposition to such a necessary
policy change — and for their determination not only to proclaim it but promptly to begin its
implementation.

1 The Heritage Foundation’s study can be accessed via the World
Wide Web at the following
address: www.heritage.org/missile_defense.

2 According to an item in the Post yesterday, Lieutenant
General Lester Lyles, the director of the
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization asked Sen. Robert Smith (R-NH), chairman of the Senate
Armed Services Committee’s Strategic Forces Subcommittee, for permission to rescind a
statement using the inflated estimate of the costs of the AEGIS Option. Importantly, the
feasibility of U.S. hit-to-kill missile defense technology has just been demonstrated once again by
the Patriot PAC-3 anti-missile system in a test on Monday at the White Sands test range.

3 See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Despite Purported Addition of ‘Out-Year’ Dollars,
Clinton Still Balks at Deployment of Needed Missile Defenses ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_05″>No. 99-D 05, 8 January 1999).

4 The findings of the Feith-Miron study have also been confirmed by
a legal memorandum
prepared last year for the Heritage Foundation by the law firm of Hunton and Williams. See
Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No Veto Over Defending
U.S. (No. 99-P 11, 22 January
1999).

5 The unanimous conclusion of Secretary Rumsfeld’s bipartisan
commission on the ballistic
missile threat deserves credit with having set the stage for this week’s congressional action and,
hopefully, for galvanizing the country into action before anti-missile defenses are
needed. See
Wall Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld Commission Warning On Missile Threat;
Reiterates Call
for Aegis Option in Response (No. 98-P
134, 16 July 1998).