Cohen: Nobody Has a Veto’ over U.S. Missile Defenses — Except America’s Allies

(Washington, D.C.): There was good news and bad news in Secretary of Defense William Cohen’s testimony yesterday before the Senate Armed Services Committee concerning the U.S. national missile defense (NMD) program. The good news is that he declared that “neither Russia nor China will have a veto” over the decision to deploy such an anti-missile capability. The bad news is that he pretty much declared that America’s allies would — as a practical matter — be able to exercise such a veto.

In response to a question from one of the Senate’s foremost opponents of missile defense, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), about whether “the issue of having allied support [is] a deal-breaker,” Secretary Cohen responded:

Well, in the sense that, can you have an effective NMD without them [the allies]? The answer at this point would be “No.” It’s not a question of having the interceptors. We could develop and deploy as many interceptors as we want or think that we need, but if you don’t have the forward-deployed X-band radars, then you can’t see the missiles coming, therefore your interceptors really are not worth very much.

So having the forward-deployed radar is critical….The support of your allies to have that remains critical. It’s up to the President and those of us in the Administration to persuade our allies this is something that’s in our interest and in their interest.

It Ain’t Necessarily So

There are, of course, two fundamental problems with this statement.

• First, it is simply not true that the United States must have cooperation from its allies in order to have “an effective NMD” system. Effective national missile defenses utilizing sea-, air-and/or space-based anti-missile assets might benefit from allied logistical or other support, but would not require it. The Secretary’s statement is but one of a number of reasons why the arms control-driven, ground-based approach to NMD putatively favored by the Clinton-Gore Administration is inferior to such other options.

  Among the other reasons for favoring, for example, a sea-based system (ideally combined with space-based missile tracking satellites) would be that adapted Navy AEGIS cruisers and destroyers could protect America’s allies against missile attack — something a single-site in Alaska is utterly unable to do. These forward- deployed ships would also have a better chance of destroying missiles in their boost or ascent phase, before they launch their warheads and countermeasures. And, importantly, by utilizing the already $50+ billion investment in the AEGIS air defense system, the marginal additional costs of providing such a near-term, limited defense could be as little as $2-3 billion.

• Second, offering the allies a veto can only encourage Russia and China in their efforts to reprise the failed “divide and conquer” strategy pursued in 1983 against NATO’s INF modernization program by the last KGB thug to preside over the Kremlin, Yuri Andropov. Secretary Cohen actually acknowledged this absurdity, albeit implicitly, when he told the Armed Services Committee:

  If we say we don’t care about the allies’ concern, and we don’t care what the Russian response is, and we’re not making an effort to lay out the architecture to the Russians, then I think we won’t have the allied support and then we won’t have an effective NMD. So we have this sort of iron triangle of logic that we have to follow, in order to get an effective NMD.

The Bottom Line

Comments like these from the man who should be the chief spokesman for a robust U.S. missile defense system can only send the wrong signal to both America’s allies and her once and possibly future adversaries by signaling that the campaign to fracture the U.S. from its friends with threats of arms races and strategic instability can succeed in stopping efforts to defend our people against ballistic missile attack. The United States must not simply pay lip service to the principle of not affording any foreign power a veto over our defensive capabilities; it must act in a way that denies them such a veto.

Fortunately, one of the most forward-thinking allied leaders in recent history, Margaret Thatcher, has made just this case in a recent speech at the Hoover Institution, excerpts of which were published in the Washington Times on Monday (see the attached). According to Lady Thatcher:

The soundest experts in this field advise that we need to build a fully integrated system which combines both space- and sea-based components, rather than the fixed, land-based one favored by the present administration. There are, indeed, very strong reasons for building a global rather than merely a national missile defense system. Technically, it is safer for us, and more dangerous for our enemy, if their missiles can be destroyed in the boost-phase, before they are able to send out decoys. Politically, it will solidify the NATO alliance if all its members can be brought within this defense system. Strategically, global ballistic missile defense will reinforce America’s position as the only truly global superpower, on which the security of all nations from missile attack rests.

Amen.