Newsweek declares the missile defense debate Over’

Newsweek Magazine’s on-line service circulated this week a fascinating assessment of the missile defense debate by one of its most astute reporters, John Barry. His conclusion: "America is going to build a national missile defense" — and everybody who thinks otherwise better think again.

The following highlights of Mr. Barry’s analysis are particularly thoughtful. They add to the sense of inevitability about defending America, as well as her forces and allies overseas, that owes much to the "Rumsfeld effect" — the signal of serious determination conveyed by President Bush’s appointment of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. When combined with poll data released earlier this week by McLaughlin and Associates that confirms anew the overwhelming, bipartisan popular support for U.S. missile defenses (see "The American ‘Mainstream’ Wants a U.S. Missile Defense; Guess That Makes its Opponents ‘Extremists,’" No. 01-D 11, 31 Jan. 2001), it is clear that the question is not if, but when, anti-missile systems are put into place. With proper presidential leadership, a can-do spirit and attendant budgetary priority and an innovative approach to shortening the time- lines to deployment (i.e., by modifying existing Navy Aegis fleet air defense ships to perform this new mission), the United States and her friends will not only be protected, but begin to be protected far more rapidly than many now think possible.

Excerpts of:

Looking Forward To NMD: America will definitely build a national missile defense. Here’s why – and what it means

By John Barry

Newsweek, 29 January 2001

World leaders – from Russian President Vladimir Putin to British Prime Minister Tony Blair – talk as if the issue is still unresolved. They act as if their arguments in Putin’s case, threats – could still have an impact. But it isn’t so. The political debate within the United States is over. Finis. America is going to build a national missile defense.

Sure, there will be shouting and even a few demonstrations by what passes for the left in the United States. The old-style arms control community will protest the abandonment of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty and prophesy a new arms race. The New York Times will follow received opinion in New York and denounce the decision. But nobody in Washington will pay the least attention. Al Gore’s lame "me too" stance on missile defense in the election campaign recognized the political reality of the matter – which is that America’s decision to deploy defenses was really made on August 31, 1998.

That was the day that North Korea test launched a Taepo Dong-1 missile which — to the surprise of America’s spooks — turned out to have a third stage. Though it didn’t succeed in launching a small satellite into orbit, as North Korea had hoped, that third stage meant that, theoretically at any rate, the Taepo Dong now had intercontinental range.

Only six weeks before, a bipartisan panel of defense heavyweights, chaired by a former defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, had concluded that hostile nations were working hard to develop missiles with which to threaten the U.S. and that the intelligence services were failing to keep abreast of their efforts.

The Taepo Dong third stage was thunderous proof of Rumsfeld’s verdict. Overnight, the politics of missile defense were transformed. Sceptics could, and did, claim that the Rumsfeld Commission had made "worst case" assumptions about other nations’ missile programs, whereas the intelligence community had been circulating "most likely" scenarios. But if North Korea — bankrupt, primitive, starving, isolated, paranoid North Korea — could develop something close to an ICBM, the world really was a more threatening place than it had seemed. America’s 35-year debate about the need for missile defenses was suddenly over.

So when President George W Bush and his new defense secretary, the same Donald Rumsfeld, reiterate — as both did this past week — that the U.S. is going to deploy missile defenses, listen up. They mean it.

What remains to be decided are the second-order questions: timeframe, technology, and cost. These are questions America will settle largely for itself. But what also has to be thrashed out – and here the rest of the world can and will have a voice – is the strategic context within which those defenses are deployed.

And that is why the new Administration is banging the drum so loudly so early. Behind the braggadocio is a clear-headed game-plan. President Bush’s advisers have persuaded him that Russia, China and Europe will not even start to negotiate seriously about a new strategic nuclear order – the new framework for deterrence which Bush & Co. believe is needed – unless and until the world accepts that the United States is going ahead with missile defenses no matter what.

This judgement draws heavily on the national security team’s personal experiences of the team. The National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, was a mid-level bureaucrat for the outfit she now runs under the first President Bush in 1990, and worked on the then-thorny issue of German reunification. Bush pushed for a Germany whole, free and integrated into NATO from the outset. He got it. Rice has since written that she took this as a lesson to "choose goals that are optimal, even if they seem at the time politically infeasible." Rumsfeld and the new Secretary of State Colin Powell have both negotiated strategic arms agreements. Both have concluded – as have many others over the years – that the Russians will accept a deal only when they become convinced that America is ready to walk away from the table.

The frustrations of the Clinton Administration have only reinforced these views. By 1996, President Clinton had come — grudgingly and under Republican pressure — to accept the case for defense. But Clinton wanted to negotiate a deal with Moscow that through minimal amendments to the ABM treaty would allow a minimal defensive system to protect against a minimal threat. Years of intensive discussions with Moscow to this end got nowhere, even though Russian generals were privately telling their U.S. counterparts that Russia herself was worried by the prospect of missile proliferation around its southern rim.

The incoming Bush Administration does not intend to walk the same path. Instead, the new Administration’s strategy is to go ahead with the development of missile defenses and invite the Russians and the Europeans to make constructive proposals on how best to integrate these into a new strategic framework. They have, of course, their own ideas what that could be. The Bush Administration is willing to think about moving from strategic arms agreements that limit offensive weapons and ban defensive ones to a new set of mix-and-match totals where offensive and defensive capabilities are somehow reckoned together. They are more willing than Clinton was to think about taking U.S. missile forces off alert status, and they are open to other suggestions for reducing nuclear risk. They would contemplate sharing intelligence, and welcome joint efforts to counter proliferation. They may reduce the size of the U.S. strategic arsenal unilaterally, urging Russia to follow suit but not insisting on it.

The message will be: If Moscow wants to join with the U.S. in these endeavors, fine. If not, that’s Moscow’s choice. Underlying this approach are two fundamental judgements. The first is that, at this point in history, the United States holds all the high cards. The second is that there is no need for haste.

Take Russia. The Russian nuclear submarine fleet rusts at its moorings. By U.S. calculations, Russia’s strategic missiles are so antique that by 2010 or shortly thereafter Russia will likely deploy only 500-800 warheads. So Putin can spend billions of rubles he cannot afford on a new generation of strategic missiles. Or he can do a deal.

Take Beijing. China’s leaders threaten "a spiralling arms race" if the U.S. deploys missile defenses. But to what end? Traditional state-to-state deterrence theory suggests that such a buildup would cost a lot economically while buying nothing of strategic value. China would not lose a deterrent if America installed a missile defense because China does not really have a deterrent against America today, presumably because it doesn’t really think it needs one. The fact that China’s current nuclear arsenal consists of aging, static, highly vulnerable, liquid fuelled ICBMs is proof of that. Why then, Bush’s advisers ask, should Beijing choose to waste resources on a fruitless enterprise ?

Take rogue states. The virtue of missile defenses — or so the Bush team’s thinking runs — is that defenses increase the price of admission to the strategic club. Take Iraq. As the sanctions on Iraq erode, Saddam Hussein will almost certainly be able to afford a clandestine program to develop a handful of missiles with ranges sufficient to hit European capitals. If he can develop even one with a range to hit the United States, Saddam has the tools for a strategy of blackmail. Defenses, even limited defenses, thwart that scenario — though only if both sides have faith in their ability to stop the incoming missile.