‘B-S’ PATROL: SENS. BUMPERS AND SASSER WISH AWAY BALLISTIC MISSILE THREAT, PROPOSE TO LEAVE U.S. VULNERABLE TO IT

(Washington, D.C.): According
to Senators Dale Bumpers (D-AR) and Jim
Sasser (D-TN), the appropriate time to
invest in a fire department is when you
are facing a raging flash-fire. This at
least appears to be the logic of the
stance they adopted in the course of a
recent Senate debate on a Bumpers-Sasser
legislative assault on the U.S. strategic
defense program.

On 7 August, Sens. Bumpers and Sasser
offered an amendment to the FY1993
Defense authorization bill which would
slash a further $1 billion from the
President’s request for the Global
Protection Against Limited Strikes
(GPALS) system. Taken together with the
$1.1 billion already deducted from the
request by the Senate Armed Services
Committee, the Senators’ amendment would
have the effect of eliminating fully 37%
of the funding associated with work on
strategic defenses in the next fiscal
year. In the words of Amb. Henry
Cooper, the director of the Strategic
Defense Initiative Organization, this
would “fundamentally destroy”
the core of the GPALS program,
effectively terminating its ability to
produce deployable defenses in the
near-term.

With Friends Like These…

The two Senators relied upon
statements by former Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff William Crowe and
the current Director of the Central
Intelligence Agency, Robert Gates, to
stake their claim that “we have run
out of enemies” and, therefore, that
spending can be dramatically reduced on
strategic anti-missile systems, in
particular, and on defense, in general.
For example, they quoted Adm. Crowe as
saying:

“At some point near the end
of the first decade of the next
century, we might be
vulnerable to attack by Israel,
Brazil, and India. Although
attack from those quarters seems
highly unlikely, in essence, I
believe the threat case has been
stretched to the limit by some
rather fanciful scenarios. It is
time to return to sanity.

“The critical point is that
the defense budget is close to a
zero-sum game, and money which
funds SDI will come from programs
which buy good defense
against more plausible and
likely threats. Given the
nation’s pressing domestic agenda
the whole subject should be
reviewed….In any event, I would
argue for a throttled-back effort
which seems to accord more with
both economic and military
reality, perhaps in the
neighborhood of $2 billion
annually to keep the program
moving and our knowledge ahead of
competitors.”

Also quoted approvingly was an assessment
offered on 15 January 1992 by CIA
Director Gates to the Senate Governmental
Affairs Committee:

“We do not expect increased
risk to U.S. territory from the
special weapons of other
countries — in a conventional
military sense — for at least
another decade.”

Another amendment co-sponsor, Sen. Carl
Levin (D-MI) drew the intended
conclusion:

“Why rush [to deploy
strategic defenses]? The only
reason is if we expect threats to
develop soon that SDI could
actually protect against. But we
do not. We are facing very
different threats after the Cold
War, and SDI is only designed to
address one of them — limited
ballistic missile attack. Even if
SDI works, it gives us no
protection against other means of
delivering weapons of mass
destruction — cruise missiles,
planes, boats, even
backpacks.”

The Perils of Selective
Citations

Interestingly,
the Senators neglected to mention several
other statements by Director Gates —
statements that seriously undermine their
contention that comprehensive,
cost-effective ballistic missile
defenses, like the Brilliant Pebbles
program (which is slated for evisceration
under the Bumpers-Sasser proposal), are
not needed now. Particularly noteworthy
was Mr. Gates’ response to a question
from Sen. John Glenn: “[W]e
do anticipate that at least some [Third
World ballistic missiles] will have the
capability of reaching the United States
by the end of the decade.”

Such a grim state of affairs could be
the consequence of several developments
now underway — or in prospect:

• Russian sales of SS-25 (or other)
  boosters as space-launch
  vehicles;
• Chinese sales of ICBMs to Third
  World countries;
• new nuclear nations in the former
  Soviet Union; and
• the proliferation of inherently
  dual-capable space- launch
  systems.

A Buyer’s Market

In fact, U.S. intelligence reportedly
believes that at least 15 Third
World countries already have
significant ballistic missile programs,
and 24 or more Third World
countries may acquire them within the
next eight years.

More frightening still, by the
beginning of the next decade, three (and
possibly more) Third World countries may
have missiles with ranges of up to 5,500
km — capable of striking anywhere in
Europe from the Mid-East. Such a
development could spell the end of
coalition-based responses to threats in
the latter region like that utilized in
Desert Storm and Operation Southern
Watch.

What is more, the proliferation of biological,
chemical and nuclear weapons with
which such missiles might be equipped is
proceeding apace. By 2000, eight Third
World countries with missile programs —
including such pariah states as North
Korea, Iran and Syria — could have
either nuclear weapons capability or an
advanced nuclear weapons program. Even
highly inaccurate missiles could pose a
terrifying threat if equipped with such
weapons of mass destruction.

The breakup of the Soviet Union has
merely exacerbated these problems.
Scientists and technology associated with
weapons of mass destruction and the
ballistic missile systems by which they
can be delivered are now available on the
international market. Under these
circumstances, it is only prudent to
expect that more nations will be
able to threaten U.S. citizens, interests
and allies with these weapons sooner
than is currently anticipated.

Unforgiving Lead-times

Tragically, thanks in no small measure
to the earlier budgetary and legislative
machinations of people like Senators
Bumpers and Sasser, the United States
finds itself already seriously
“behind the power curve” in
responding to this threat. As a practical
matter, even if it were to make a crash
effort to deploy effective strategic
missile defenses — i.e., one involving a
program far more risk-intensive and
costly than that proposed by the Bush
Administration — the nation probably
could not have a competent ABM system in
place as soon as it is likely to be
needed.

The Center for Security Policy
believes that in light of the
aforementioned real and identified
dangers that it is
unconscionable, however, for the U.S. not
to proceed at least as aggressively
as the Administration has recommended
so as to minimize the period and the
magnitude of America’s vulnerability. As
Gen. John Pietrowski, a former Commander
of U.S. Space Command and a distinguished
member of the Center’s Board of Advisors
recently observed, we have already had a
salutary warning of the potentially
enormous costs of remaining vulnerable to
missile attack:

“The only thing Saddam
Hussein really hurt us with [in
the Gulf war] were ballistic
missiles — notwithstanding his
immense conventional arsenal.
This was a lesson that was not
lost on lots of other countries
around the world.”

The Bottom Line

In
light of the real — and worsening —
nature of the ballistic missile threat
and the unduly long time it will take to
correct U.S. vulnerability to that
threat, the Center urges the
Senate to defeat the Bumpers-Sasser
amendment when a final vote on it is
called for after Labor Day.

– 30 –

1. This Decision
Brief is the first in a series
examining the various untenable arguments
offered by Sens. Dale Bumpers and Jim
Sasser to justify an amendment that would
gut the Global Protection Against Limited
Strikes program.