The President Must Quickly Demonstrate that His Commitment to Defend America is No Gambit’

Israeli Election, Defense Budget Caps Argue for Aegis Option

(Washington, D.C.): To their great credit, President Bush and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld have in recent weeks made clear that they are personally committed to protecting the American people against ballistic missile attack. Secretary Rumsfeld has indicated that the President perceives this as a “moral” obligation, as well as a strategic necessity. He told top officials from all over Europe and Russia over the weekend that the United States would not be diverted from this path by outdated objections like the fear that a U.S. missile defense deployment would spark an “arms races” — a construct he said was “left over from the Cold War” and “less relevant today than it was then” — or the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that he has called “ancient history.”

Specifically, Rumsfeld told the Werkunde Conference in Munich:

…The United States intends to develop and deploy a missile defense designed to defend our people and forces against a limited ballistic missile attack, and is prepared to assist friends and allies threatened by missile attack to deploy such defenses. These systems will be a threat to no one. These systems will be a threat to no one. That is a fact. They should be of concern to no one, save those who would threaten others.

These declarations are supremely important and thoroughly commendable. They are abso lutely necessary to the task of defending America. Surely, however, Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld appreciate that they are not, in and of themselves, sufficient.

Actions Speak Louder

If anything, the necessity promptly to begin acting on the Bush-Cheney Administration’s commitment to deploy missile defense was underscored yesterday in an editorial in the Washington Post. It effectively charged Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld with bluffing, hoping that by declaring National Missile Defense (NMD) inevitable without including specifics, the Administration will be able to “defuse a potentially divisive debate within NATO before it can get hot,” and “neutralizing an emerging Russian strategy of fomenting European opposition” to NMD.

The Post put the matter bluntly: “It is striking how little seem[s] to lie behind Mr. Rumsfeld’s opening gambit [at the Werkunde defense conference in Munich last week].” It warns that “The risk is that instead of resolving…difficult and pressing questions [like an anti-NATO European military force and increasingly costly Balkan deployments], Mr. Bush’s relations with Europe will be shaped in their opening months by a weapons system that has not yet been chosen, proven or paid for…even in the best of circumstances…won’t materialize for years.”

What Needs to be Done

The Administration simply cannot continue to allow its rhetoric to be unaccompanied by concrete actions. It will find, should it do so, that the sort of criticism evident in the Post yesterday will rapidly metastasize into emboldened opposition to doing anything about missile defense. In no time, the gridlock likely to accompany the onset of the 2002 mid-term elections will make problematic implementation of Candidate Bush’s most concrete national security promise to the American people. This could have most undesirable political — as well as strategic — repercussions in light of the findings of a poll released last week by McLaughlin & Associates.¹ This sampling was but the latest confirmation that the vast majority of the American people — irrespective of race, gender, party affiliation or political orientation — want the United States to be protected against missile attack.

Accordingly, the Bush Administration should immediately accompany its rhetoric about missile defense with specific, concrete actions. As a practical matter, the only near-term step it can take in this regard is to announce that it will begin deploying in not more than six-months time, the first elements of a sea-based anti-missile system aboard existing Navy Aegis ships. By so doing, Messrs. Bush and Rumsfeld can with one stroke: underscore their commitment to start addressing the problem they properly describe as intolerable (thanks to the fact that the necessary infrastructure for such a system is largely in place today); demonstrate their determination to defend our forces and allies overseas, as well as the American people (thanks to the inherent flexibility of the ships that will over time become anti-missile capable); and secure missile defenses in the most cost-effective manner possible (thanks to the investment already made in the 55-ship Aegis fleet).

The last point takes on supreme importance in light of the Administration’s ill-advised decision not to take any step in FY2001 to increase defense spending. The Aegis Option is simply the only means available at the moment by which way the Bush-Cheney team can begin doing what it correctly states is needed — namely, defending America — within existing resources, without grievously exacerbating the shortfalls already afflicting the combat readiness and esprit de corps of the U.S. military.

The Bottom Line

With yesterday’s election in Israel of Ariel Sharon, the issue of missile defense may suddenly be put into even sharper focus. If, heaven forfend, deterrence should fail and Israel’s enemies in Iraq, Iran, Syria or Libya decide to seize upon the electoral outcome in the Jewish State to initiate regional hostilities, an attack may well feature the use against Israel of deadly ballistic missiles — perhaps carrying weapons of mass destruction.

In the aftermath of such a disaster, it is clear that the United States would, among other things, undertake a crash program to put into place whatever anti-missile capabilities it can rapidly muster. Inevitably, the Aegis Option would be one of the first to be exercised. If that step would surely be taken under those circumstances, the Bush Administration has no excuse for not taking it now — especially when, by so doing, we might discourage this sort of eventuality.

¹ See, the Center’s Decision Brief entitled, The American ‘Mainstream’ Wants a U.S. Missile Defense; Guess That Makes its Opponents ‘Extremists’ (No. 01-D 11, 31 January 2001).