Senate Should Vote to Defend America
‘As Soon As Technologically Possible’
(Washington, D.C.): The U.S. Senate is expected shortly to vote on one of the most
important
national security issues of the day — ending America’s posture of “assured vulnerability” to
ballistic missile attack. This would be accomplished by implementation of the policy espoused by
“The American Missile Protection Act of 1998” (S. 1873). The bill would
establish for the
first time that it is the “policy of the United States to deploy as soon as technologically
possible an effective National Missile Defense (NMD) system capable of defending the
territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental,
unauthorized or deliberate).”
S. 1873 was introduced by the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee’s
Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, Sen. Thad
Cochran
(R-MS). It is the product of an extremely valuable series of hearings the Subcommittee has held
in recent months, whose findings were included in an official report entitled The
Proliferation
Primer(1) and are summarized in Sen. Cochran’s
legislation.
Importantly, S. 1873 enjoys bipartisan support — a first for a bill calling for
prompt deployment
of effective defense of the entire territory of the United States against ballistic missile attack. In
addition to Sen. Cochran’s fellow initial co-sponsor, Senator Daniel Inouye
(D-HI), Senators
Fritz Hollings (D-SC) and Daniel Akaka (D-HI) are also sponsors.
Such bipartisanship helped
secure the Cochran-Inouye bill’s approval by the Senate Armed Services Committee on 24 April
by a vote of 10-7.(2)
The Arguments for Perpetuating American Vulnerability
The seven Committee members voting in the negative — Democratic Sens. Carl
Levin of
Michigan, Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, Jeff
Bingaman of New Mexico, John Glenn of
Ohio, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Chuck Robb of
Virginia and Max Cleland of Georgia —
justified their votes for leaving the American people vulnerable against missile attack for at
least
the next six years on the following grounds:
- ‘There Is No Threat’
The Armed Services Committee minority relied heavily on the Clinton Administration’s
contention that there is no threat of missile attack on the United States that would warrant the
deployment as soon as possible of effective defensive systems.
number of assumptions that are difficult, if not impossible, to sustain on the basis of a realistic —
as opposed to ideological — view of the danger posed by proliferating ballistic
missiles.
First, there is the matter of Russia. In another context — namely, for the
purpose of urging the
unilateral “de-alerting” of America’s nuclear deterrent — friends of Messrs. Levin, Kennedy
et.al.(4) incessantly warn of the danger of an
accidental or unauthorized launch of the Kremlin’s
ballistic missile force. This danger, we are told, is increasing as a result of the unraveling of the
Russian military’s order and discipline, prompted by declining resources. The de-alerters warn
that Boris Yeltsin’s near-launch of his strategic forces a few years back (the result of
misperceptions of the firing of Norwegian scientific rocket) suggests that Moscow may actually
authorize a nuclear strike. The latter possibility in particular makes it imprudent to
rely, as the
Committee minority and the Clinton Administration do, on a reassuring assessment of Russian
nuclear command and control offered by the Commander-in-Chief of U.S. Strategic Command,
General Eugene Habiger, following on-site visits to several former Soviet facilities.
Second, the Chinese missile threat cannot be ignored. For one thing, a
senior Chinese officer
intimated in December 1995 to a former top American official that China was willing to launch a
nuclear attack on Los Angeles. More recently, it has been confirmed that U.S. intelligence
believes Chinese missiles are targeted on at least 13 major American cities
and present danger to the United States. Worse yet, U.S. defense contractors have
been
providing technology and know-how to Beijing, enabling the PRC to improve the accuracy and
reliability of its long-range ballistic missile force.(7)
Then, there are all the other countries — including, Iran, Iraq, North
Korea, Syria, India and
Pakistan — who are acquiring the technology with which indigenously to develop or otherwise to
obtain ever-more capable ballistic missile delivery systems for weapons of mass destruction. The
proposition that none of these missiles will constitute a threat to the United States presumes
certitude about how fast such efforts will bear fruit. Experience suggests that such confidence
often proves unwarranted.(8) What is more, should rogue
states chose to deploy aboard a
freighter or some other surface ship one of the medium- or even short-range ballistic missiles now
in their hands, they could conduct an attack long before intercontinental-range systems would be
available to them.
Hard Realities: Importantly, the so-called 3-plus-3
program for National Missile Defense,(9)
which the Clinton Administration and its allies on Capitol Hill prefer over the Cochran-Inouye
approach, would probably be unable to address any of these threats. After
all, the
notional 3-plus-3 system is not designed to contend with a massive Soviet-style first-strike, should
one come from Russia.(10) Even a more modest 13-or-so
missile attack from China would
probably overwhelm it. And the 3-plus-3 system’s missile interceptors based in Grand Forks,
North Dakota would be unable to stop, say, an Iraqi or Libyan ballistic missile launched
from a
ship in the Gulf of Mexico or off the southern East or West Coasts of the United States.
Even if there were reason to believe that U.S. intelligence is incapable of being
surprised about the
speed with which present capabilities become threatening and future threats emerge, the reality —
as the Armed Services Committee majority noted in its report accompanying S. 1873 — is that
in
no other area of military activity does the United States take the view that it must wait to
decide on the exact design, let alone the deployment, of a weapon system until the nature of
the forces with which it must contend becomes evident:
- “It is an inefficient aberration of Defense Department policy and practice to manage a
Major Defense Acquisition program so that it goes into a circling pattern at some point
in its development while awaiting the Intelligence Community’s detailed
characterization of some future threat. The United States is developing and deploying
the F-22, for example, because a new air superiority fighter will be necessary in the
middle of the next decade. Development of this aircraft is not being put on hold while
the United States awaits information on the thrust-to-weight ratio or low-observability
of a new enemy fighter that might appear at some time in the future.”
The Committee majority goes on to note that even the Clinton Administration’s current
Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, Dr. Jacques
Gansler, testified last
February that: “There will be a [National Missile Defense] system deployed. There is
absolutely no question the Nation will have to have missile defense in the future. The
question is when.” In light of this reality, the majority correctly declare: “Given the
inevitability
of the need for NMD, acknowledged by the Administration, the Committee believes the NMD
program must be put on a more rational acquisition path, which includes a commitment to deploy
as soon as the technology is ready.”
- ‘We Don’t Know If We Can Afford Missile Defenses’
As Dr. Gansler’s testimony makes clear, the United States is going to have to field
missile
defenses, no matter what the costs. The irony of the concern expressed by the Committee
minority about the affordability of an NMD system — and the fact that the Cochran-Inouye bill
does not address this point — is that the nearest-term approach to fielding effective
national
missile defenses for the territory of the United States is one that will cost but a
fraction of
the Administration’s 3-plus-3 option.
As a growing number of national figures have pointed out — including in recent weeks,
Governor
Pete Wilson of California, House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bob
Livingston (R-LA), Steve Forbes,
Bauer(12) — the United States could
quickly and relatively inexpensively deploy a global anti-missile capability at sea.
According to a
blue-ribbon commission sponsored by the Heritage Foundation,
billion investment already made in the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system,
such a
capability could begin operating in as little as 3 years for an additional investment of just
$2-3 billion. The only impediment to doing so is the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty.
- ‘What About Arms Control?’
The Armed Services Committee minority seconds a statement by
Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff General Henry Shelton that was conveyed to Chairman Strom
Thurmond (R-SC) in a letter of 21 April: “…The bill does not consider…the impact a
deployment would have
on arms control agreements and nuclear arms reductions.” They also cite approvingly a letter
written to the Committee nearly two years before by Gen. Shelton’s predecessor, General
John
Shalikashvili, which declared: “I am concerned that failure of either START [I or II]
will result
in Russian retention of hundreds or even thousands more nuclear weapons, thereby increasing
both the costs and risks we may face.”
There are several problems with these sorts of objections to S. 1873. First, a
National Missile
Defense of the territory of the United States — which even Under Secretary Gansler
declares the country will have to have — will be inconsistent with the terms of the ABM
Treaty. Assuming the Clinton Administration is serious about fielding such a system, it
will have
to contend with that reality. Doing so in the context of a determination to field missile defenses as
soon as possible is more likely to result in the realization of needed defensive capabilities than is
continuing the present practice — namely, of encouraging the perception that such deployments
are contingent upon their acceptance by the Russians.
Interestingly, such a proposition was advanced by none other than President
Clinton’s Director
of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, John Holum, in testimony last year
before
Sen. Cochran’s subcommittee. On 1 May 1997, Holum declared: “It seems to me that
the
determinant here of our National Missile Defense program, designed to deal with the rogue
states threats is going to be what the threat requires, not what the Russians think or what
the [ABM] Treaty says.”
Second, as noted above, there are increasing ballistic missile threats to the United
States
which do not emanate from Russia (except, in some cases, indirectly as a
result of the transfer of
Russian missile-relevant technology and know-how). Such threats are clearly unaffected by
bilateral arms control agreements — particularly an Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with a
country, the Soviet Union, that no longer exists.
Third, today, even more than in 1996, it seems unlikely that Russia will have the
resources to
maintain in a threatening, deployed status all of the thousands of warheads it is supposed
to dismantle under the START I and II agreements — to say nothing of building large
numbers of new delivery systems. Fiscal realities may prove a far more reliable constraint upon
the former Soviet Union’s offensive military power than arms control agreements have ever been,
or probably ever will be.
The Bottom Line
Dr. Gansler is right up to a point. Sooner or later, the United States will be
defended against
ballistic missile attack. The question is not only when, however — a matter of will it
be defended
before it needs to be, or after? Also yet to be resolved is the question of will the
territory of the
United States, in its entirety, enjoy such protection and will that protection be
effective against
plausible “limited” ballistic missile attacks?
The answer to both of these critical questions is more likely to be consistent with the national
interest in having effective defenses for all Americans in place before they are required if the
American Missile Protection Act of 1998 becomes law and is faithfully implemented.
– 30 –
1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
A Policy Indictment: Sen. Cochran’s Subcommittee
Documents Clinton Incompetence/Malfeasance on Proliferation (
1998). A copy of the Subcommittee’s report can be obtained on the Internet at
2. Armed Services Committee member Senator Joseph
Lieberman (D-CT) did not cast a vote
on the American Missile Protection Act of 1998.
3. See It Walks Like A Duck: Questions Persist that
Clinton CIA’s Missile Threat Was
Politically Motivated (No. 96-D 122,
4 December 1996).
4. See the Center’s Decision Briefs entitled
Unilateral Disarmament By Any Other Name Is
Still Recklessly Irresponsible; Will Clinton Be Allowed to Do It? (
1998) and Press Barrage Signals New Phase of Denuclearization
Campaign (No. 98-D 50, 18
March 1998).
5. With no disrespect to Gen. Habiger, it should be remembered that
Russia is the home of the
Potemkin visit.
6. Bill Gertz, “China targets nukes at U.S.,” Washington
Times, 1 May 1998.
7. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch # 21: Efforts to Help
Chinese Missile Program Reek of Corruption, Betrayal of U.S. Interests (
1998).
8. The Armed Services Committee’s report accompanying S. 1873
notes that: “A State
Department official testified in September 1997 that Iran could develop [a medium-range] missile
in ‘maybe one to one-and-a-half years, and it may be sooner than that,’ meaning as much as nine
years sooner than had been predicted only a year earlier by the Director of Central Intelligence.”
9. The 3-plus-3 claims to be an NMD Deployment Readiness
Program that would require three
years to develop a defensive system and then three further years to field, once a deployment
decision is taken.
10. The same could be said of the limited missile defense system
called for by S. 1873. The
presence of a robust U.S. global missile defense system, like that which could be evolved from the
Navy’s existing AEGIS capability, would almost certainly discourage a Russian targeteer from
contemplating the deliberate launch of a stylized nuclear first-strike due to uncertainty about what
American retaliatory forces would remain intact — an uncertainty unlikely to be created by the
easily overwhelmed 3-plus-3 system.
11. See the Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy’s
Press Release entitled Casey
Institute Symposium Shows Need for Security-Minded Approach to Asian Financial Crisis
and Other Global Challenges (No. 98-R 77, 5 May
1998).
12. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Onward Christian Soldiers — And All Other
Americans: Gary Bauer Joins the Fight to Defend America (
13. The Heritage Foundation’s study can be accessed via the World
Wide Web at the following
address: www.heritage.org.
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