Patriots to Korea: Is that all there is?

BY: Frank Gaffney Jr.
The Washington Times, January 28, 1994

President Clinton’s reported willingness to respond favorably to the request for reinforcements
from a military commander in a dangerously exposed position is laudable.

If he actually does approve Gen. Gary Luck’s petition for the swift deployment of up to 256
Patriot anti-missiles interceptors to defend U.S. forces and critical South Korean assets against
missile strikes from North Korea, he may avoid the political bloodletting that accompanied his
administration’s earlier refusal to authorize armored reinforcements sought by the American
commander in Somalia last fall.

More importantly, if he accompanies this long overdue step with other appropriate military
redeployments reportedly sought by Gen. Luck, Mr. Clinton would gain a “two-fer”: He would
simultaneously shore up the U.S.-South Korean deterrent posture vis-a-vis Pyongyang and afford
himself options for dealing with Kim Il-sung’s nuclear weapons program — and other threatening
activities — that are not otherwise currently available.

Among the other, specific measures that should urgently be taken are:

• Immediate augmenting of the 36,000 U.S. troops permanently stationed in South Korea
  including airborne, naval and air force elements. The purpose would be both to demonstrate
  unmistakable U.S. resolve and to improve the South’s capacity to deter aggression in the
  near-term.
• In this connection, ships equipped with nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missiles should
  be ostentatiously deployed within striking distance of North Korean targets.
• Notice should also be served that further North Korean defiance will result in the basing of
  nuclear-capable aircraft and their weapons in South Korea.
• Rescinding past commitments concerning the suspension of joint U.S.-South Korean
  exercises. In fact, it should be made clear that the certain consequence of continued North
  Korean nuclear activity will result in intensified bilateral military cooperation.

Welcome as it is, the apparent administration decision to deploy Patriots to South Korea raises
a trenchant question, however. Why is it that these 30-year-old missiles — whose performance in
the Persian Gulf was, while heroic, not terribly effective — remain, as Defense Undersecretary
Frank Wisner put it yesterday “Our first line of defense in the event of short-range-missile attack
… our best line of defense”? (In fact, he could have added, it’s our only line of defense against
that or any other kind of missile attack.)

Regrettably, the answer lies not in technological limitations or in budgetary constraints.
Instead, it is to be found in the ideological opposition to effective missile defenses that the Clinton
administration and many members of Congress still cling to — even after Desert Storm and in the
face of emerging missile proliferation from Pyongyang to Damascus. This opposition can be
found in:

• Administration programmatic and budgetary evisceration of what remained of the Strategic
  Defense Initiative, eliminating any possibility that the United States’ present, absolute vulnerability
  to missile attack will be ended in the foreseeable future.
• Its defunding of the most promising option for providing worldwide theater missile defense —
  upgrading of existing naval radar and air defense missile systems to give them wide area
  anti-missile defense capabilities.
• Its interference with the development of an alternative, ground-based theater missile defense
  system known as THAAD out of misplaced deference to the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
  Treaty.
• Its determination to pump new life into that benighted accord. The Clinton team seeks to
  accomplish this nefarious objective by renegotiating the ABM Treaty’s terms — ostensibly for the
  purpose of facilitating development of the THAAD — but in such a way as to make it more
  difficult, not less, to depart from this increasingly absurd and irresponsibly confining agreement.
  (The latter objective would be accomplished by multilateralizing the ABM Treaty through the
  invitation to other Soviet successor states to become signatories.)

The reinforcement of South Korea is long overdue and urgently required. The Clinton
administration should respond to Gen. Luck’s requests for additional firepower at once and
otherwise to demonstrate the reality and durability of American power in the region.

The deployment of Patriot missiles to South Korea must constitute as well the starting point for
a rigorous re-examination — also long overdue — of the assumptions that continue to animate U.S.
security policy with respect to defending this country and its allies against missile attack. It is
simply unacceptable that the nation’s only option for dealing with this real and growing threat is
the exceedingly limited Patriot system.

Other options are technologically available, eminently affordable and can be brought on line,
provided the national will exists to do so, within a relatively short time. Failure to pursue these
options and to rely upon the fiction of the ABM Treaty to protect U.S. interests and allies is
nothing less than recklessly irresponsible.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the director of the Center for Security Policy, the host of public
television’s “The World This Week” and a columnist for The Washington Times.