Jim Woolsey Helps U.S. Reach ‘Critical Mass’ on Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): As Congress
returns to work following the Memorial
Day recess, one of the most important
tasks confronting it will be literally to
fulfill the constitutional responsibility
to “provide for the common
defense.” The legislative branch has
— thanks to the convergence of the
following factors — a unique opportunity
to begin defending the American people
against ballistic missile attack:

The Growing Threat

First, the threat is
indisputably growing day-by-day. href=”97-D74.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
As the Washington Times has
assiduously documented, U.S. intelligence
is aware of myriad instances in which
Russia, China, Ukraine, Belarus and North
Korea have engaged in the transfer of
ballistic missile-related equipment and
know-how. This sort of cooperation has
made a mockery of the 1995 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that is still
used by the Clinton Administration to
justify its insouciance about the missile
threat and its flaccid programmatic
response to that threat.

Of particular concern is the fact that
North Korea unexpectedly has begun to
deploy a missile capable of attacking the
Japanese home islands. If Pyongyang
follows past practice and makes this No
Dong missile available for sale to
countries like Iran and Syria, the
repercussions could be felt far and wide.
In the event that North Korea follows a
similar accelerated deployment approach
with its longer-range Taepo Dong 2
missile, it could hold at risk parts of
the United States in the not too distant
future.

Alaska Wants Its Share of
the ‘Common Defense’

Second, some of those Americans most
immediately in jeopardy from North
Korean, Chinese or Russian missile
threats have begun to appreciate their
peril. Last month, Alaska’s
Senate unanimously adopted a bipartisan
resolution that had previously been
overwhelmingly approved by its House of
Representatives. This resolution urges
the federal government “to take
necessary measures to ensure that Alaska
is protected against foreseeable threats,
nuclear and otherwise, posed by foreign
aggressors, including deployment of a
ballistic missile defense system to
protect Alaska.”

The legislature’s action reflects an
appreciation that Alaska — a state the
Clinton NIE incredibly chose to exclude
in assessing the missile threat to the
United States — is a particularly
attractive target. After all, a
nuclear missile attack on the $32 billion
energy infrastructure of Prudhoe Bay
could have a crippling effect on both the
U.S. economy and that of Asian countries
even more dependent upon the oil and
natural gas that passes through that
facility.

‘Three-Plus-Three’ Mutates
Into ‘Four-Plus-?’

Third, the Clinton
Administration has recently been forced
to confirm that its plan for developing
missile defenses is a fraud.
Notwithstanding the official depiction of
the Clinton plan as a
“three-plus-three” program —
that is, one that will take three years
to develop and then be deployable after a
further three years — the Pentagon now
admits that it will entail at least four
years and much risk to prepare for a
deployment decision.

Even doing that will require some $1-2
billion more than has been budgeted to
date. And, there is no money in the
Clinton budget for deploying such a
system. Were the funding somehow to be
found, this system involving a single
fixed, ground-based site in Grand Forks,
North Dakota would be unable to defend
Alaska and Hawaii — or do much for the
rest of the country against any but the
most modest missile attacks.

The AEGIS Option

Fortunately, Senator Jon Kyl,
Republican of Arizona and one of the most
influential congressional leaders on
missile defense, has recently endorsed an
alternative approach. In a 22 May op.ed.
article in the Wall Street Journal,
Sen. Kyl called for a global sea-based
anti-missile system utilizing the Navy’s
existing AEGIS fleet air defense assets.

A blue-ribbon panel sponsored by the
Heritage Foundation in 1995 and 1996
determined that such an evolution is
technologically feasible and eminently
affordable thanks to the $50 billion
investment the U.S. has already made in
acquiring AEGIS ships and the associated
launchers, missiles, sensors and command
and control systems. Heritage estimates
that, as a result, the Nation could begin
protecting wide areas against
shorter-range missiles and offer initial,
limited protection for the American
people for as little as $2-3 billion.
Sen. Kyl observes that, “Even the
notoriously skeptical Congressional
Budget Office estimates that the first
650 interceptors could be brought on-line
for as little as $5 billion.”

Interestingly, one of the Nation’s
leading experts on the economics of
commodities, energy and hard rock
minerals, Dr. Daniel I. Fine, associated
with the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology’s Mineral Resources Institute,
has estimated that the mere threat of
a missile attack against Prudhoe Bay over
just ten days time could translate into
market disruptions on the order of $3-4
billion. In other words, for the price of
coping with such blackmail, the United
States could largely put into place a
preliminary, global missile defense
system that may well be capable of
neutralizing it.

The Clinton ABM Treaty —
and Jim Woolsey’s Critique

Of course, the only problem with such
an AEGIS option is that the
twenty-five-year-old Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty prohibits sea-based
defenses against intercontinental-range
missile attack. As presently written,
that Treaty condemns the United States to
having, at most, the sort of ineffective,
single-site defensive system that the
Clinton Administration purports to seek.
In response to the obvious inadequacies
of such a system, the Alaskan
legislature advised the President on 11
May of their expectation “that
Alaska’s safety and security take
priority over any international treaty or
obligation.”

Worse yet, the Administration is
trying to negotiate amendments to this
accord that could prevent Navy assets
from effectively defending against even
shorter-range ballistic missiles. To be
sure, the Clinton team contends that the
demarcation agreement it seeks will allow
the Navy to pursue its sea-based
anti-missile program for theater defense
purposes. As a practical matter, however,
limits under consideration on the speed,
sensors, quantities and location of such
defenses will at a minimum prevent such a
theater missile defense system from
realizing its full potential. When
combined with the executive branch’s
efforts to deny needed funding and
otherwise slow the pace of the Navy TMD
program, the effect could be even more
disruptive.

Fortunately, there is an important
development in this area, as well. The
United States Senate last month
unanimously stipulated that another
Clinton amendment to the ABM Treaty —
one that would designate at least four
states (Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and
Belarus) as parties in lieu of the
collapsed Soviet Union — has to be
submitted for Senate advice and consent. href=”97-D74.html#N_2_”>⁽²⁾
As former Clinton CIA Director
James Woolsey observed in another Wall
Street Journal op.ed. published last
Friday: “We make…modification of
the Treaty impossible if we add three
more countries to membership, including
particularly the execrable Lukashenko
regime in Belarus, which can be counted
on to carry the water for the most
unreconstructed and anti-American parts
of the Russian establishment and to block
any return to Russian-American
cooperation.”

There is a distinct chance
that the Senate will follow Mr. Woolsey’s
advice and “kill this thing
cold.” Should 34 Senators
vote not to “multilateralize”
the ABM Treaty, there will, in Senator
Kyl’s words, “be no recognized
successor to a nation that disappeared
nearly eight years ago.” He went on
to describe the implications of such a
step:

“It seems a pretty
straightforward proposition: No
treaty partner, no treaty. And in
the absence of the ABM Treaty,
there would no longer be a legal
basis for preventing the U.S.
from protecting against a danger
that is dramatically different
from that of 1972 — a
bipolar world in which the Soviet
Union had a monopoly on ballistic
missile threats to America and
its allies.”

The Bottom Line

The moment of truth is at hand. Congress is
now in a position to end the regime that
leaves the American people defenseless
and to begin providing affordable,
effective protection against one of the
most worrisome dangers we face.
Legislators should stop wasting money on
Clinton’s fraudulent missile defense
scheme, kill his ABM Treaty amendment
“cold” and begin defending the
United States, as well as its forces and
allies abroad, from the sea.

– 30 –

1. See in this
connection , the Center’s Decision
Brief entitled Unhappy
Birthday: 25 Years Of The ABM Treaty
Is Enough; Senator Kyl Points Way To
Begin Defending America ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_72″>No. 97-D 72, 23
May 1997).

2. For more on the
factors prompting this remarkable display
of bipartisanship in the service of
worthy cause, see Will Senate
Pass ‘No-Brainer,’ Insist On Right To
Advise And Consent On Major ABM Treaty
Changes? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=97-D_64″>No. 97-D 64, 12
May 1997).