‘My God, The Threat is Right Now‘
(Washington, D.C.): In a recent interview, the Chairman of the House National
Security
Committee, Rep. Floyd Spence (R-SC) declared with palpable frustration: “The first
warning
you have of a heart attack is a heart attack….And that’s the way it is [with the missile threat].
The [Clinton] Administration’s response to all this is that we are working on [an anti-missile]
system and we are going to experiment for about three years. And if the threat arises, we will
decide at that time whether or not to deploy. My God, the threat is right now here, this minute,
this moment, not some time in the future. And they refuse to make that commitment to
deploy.”(1)
North Korea v. Alaska
Chairman Spence’s assessment — offered weeks before Sunday’s launch by North Korea of an
extended-range Taepo Dong 1 ballistic missile over the Japanese home islands — has
been
powerfully affirmed by that test. After all, the impressive technical achievement entailed in
developing and successfully flying such a missile removes the major impediment to fielding a
Taepo Dong 2.
The Taepo Dong 2 is expected to be capable of attacking not only Japan
and all of
America’s other Asian allies, but the U.S. states of Alaska and Hawaii as
well. According to
a report issued in July by the congressionally chartered, blue-ribbon commission led by former
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, such a system could be tested within six-months of a
decision to do so and be deployed shortly thereafter.(2)
As it happens, Rep. Spence, who has long been one of the Congress’ most assiduous
advocates of
U.S. missile defenses, recently participated in a symposium in Anchorage sponsored by the
Institute of the North to address this subject. In the course of that event, he and some two
hundred other participants heard a sobering analysis of what could ensue from the mere
threat of
a North Korean (or Chinese or Russian) missile attack against Alaska’s energy-rich North Slope.
Here’s the bottom line of an impressive econometric analysis performed by MIT
Professor
Daniel Fine: If the $32 billion infrastructure in Prudhoe Bay — which produces 1.6
million
barrels of oil per day for export to Asia and the rest of the United States — is subjected to a
credible threat of a nuclear missile strike: “In ten days…the cost to the American
economy of
a missile threat as economic ‘blackmail’ could reach an estimated $4-6 billion.” This
staggering sum would reflect the rippling effect of world-wide efforts to hedge against the
financial, energy and economic impacts associated with a possible disruption of Alaskan
low-sulphur crude and the finished product derived therefrom.
Missile-enforced Blackmail
There can be little doubt that this sort of blackmail is the shape of things to come. As
Dr.
William Graham, a former Science Advisor to President Reagan who served on
Secretary
Rumsfeld’s Commission, and Dr. Keith Payne, an expert consultant to the Commission,
observed in an op.ed. article published in the Washington Times on August 18, 1998:
- “The leverage of a withheld threat on the will of Western leaders requires only
that those leaders anticipate the possibility of a missile strike. And, because
Western powers generally place high value on the lives of their citizens, many emerging
powers consider a small number of missiles capable of terror threats to be ‘good
enough’ for the purposes of deterrence and coercion.”
Let us be clear: This coercive potential will only grow in the days ahead. Having
mastered
the art of ballistic missile staging,(4) as Pyongyang’s
engineers have clearly done, it is a just a
matter of time before the North Koreans can put even the continental United States in their
cross-hairs. Since the North views missile exports as a principal source of hard
currency,
moreover, others — including such clients as Iran, Syria and Pakistan — will soon be
capable
of big league blackmail, as well.
Gen. Shelton: ‘What, Me Worry?’
The Clinton Administration’s response to the North Korean test has, thus far, been subdued,
to
say the least. Unnamed Pentagon officials were first reported to view it merely as a “serious
development.” The State Department spokesman averred that this test would not interfere with
the U.S.-led, multilateral appeasement of Pyongyang.
Worst of all, there has — as far as can be determined — still been no change in the
Administration’s pollyannish view that the missile threat remains years away. Most recently, this
irresponsible wishful-thinking has been expressed by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff
General Hugh Shelton. The General responded dismissively to a letter from
Senator James
Inhofe (R-OK), in which the latter asked whether the grim Rumsfeld Commission
findings would
alter the Administration’s understanding of the threat and policy prescriptions:
- “We remain confident that the Intelligence community can provide the necessary
warning of the indigenous development and deployment by a rogue state of an ICBM
threat to the United States….The [Rumsfeld] Commission points out [ed.: correctly]
that through unconventional, high-risk development programs and foreign assistance,
rogue nations could acquire an ICBM capability in a short time and that the Intelligence
Community may not detect it. We regard this as an unlikely development.”
The North Korean test on Sunday makes a mockery of Gen. Shelton’s last sentence.
How Not To Retard Proliferation
In addition to misperceiving and/or dissembling about the emerging missile threat,
Clinton is pursuing policies that are adding to the incentives rogue nations feel to
acquire such
coercive weapons. On the one hand, the Administration is clearly demonstrating that
states
with threatening missile and WMD capabilities get priority attention.
- Item: the danger of a renewed nuclear threat from Russia is
being cited to justify the President
proceeding with a summit in Moscow at the worst possible moment, and probably concessions
he will make there.(7) - Item: the State Department’s assurance that the U.S. will
continue to provide oil and other
assistance to North Korea, despite its Taepo Dong test and covert nuclear program. - Item: the implicit rationale for why American missiles
destroyed a suspected chemical weapon
site in Sudan — but not those in Iraq.(9)
On the other hand, the Administration is simultaneously and deliberately
perpetuating
America’s vulnerability to blackmail by all comers. This is the ineluctable result of its
slavish
adherence to the obsolete Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty — signed under very different strategic
circumstances with a country that no longer exists — and by its concomitant refusal to deploy
missile defenses barred by that treaty. Oh yes, as Chairman Spence caustically notes, the Clinton
team is willing to conduct open-ended research on missile defenses, but only to the extent
that
such research and any system that might result are deemed compliant with the ABM Treaty’s
crippling restrictions.
One upshot of this hamstringing approach is to make the object of the Administration’s
national
missile defense program a system that would not be able to defend Alaska or Hawaii against
missile attack. It may not even do much for parts of the western “lower 48” that will, in due
course, be subjected to blackmail from North Korea’s second generation “Taepo Dong 2.”
Enter the Loyal Opposition
It does not have to be this way — and should not be much longer. As former Cabinet
members
William Bennett, Jack Kemp and Jeane
Kirkpatrick pointed out in today’s Washington
Times, the Senate leadership is expected before the week is out to ask that what has been
called
the “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body” be allowed to deliberate and act upon
urgently needed
legislation: the bipartisan American Missile Protection Act of 1998 (S.1873),
sponsored by
Sens. Thad Cochran, Republican of Mississippi, and Daniel Inouye,
Democrat of Hawaii. This
bill would make it the policy of the U.S. government to deploy effective national missile defenses
as soon as technologically possible.(10)
Forty-one Senators, all Democrats, successfully filibustered this measure last May. That was
before Pakistan tested its nuclear weapons;
before Iran launched a medium-range missile
capable of striking Israel; before the Rumsfeld Commission
reported its frightening
findings; before the political and economic meltdown in
Russia; and before North Korea’s
“Taepo Dong 1” test. History will judge these Senators harshly if, in the wake of all
these
warnings and the blackmail they portend, they perpetuate any further America’s dangerous
vulnerability to missile attack.
The Bottom Line
The sponsors of the Senate Republican leadership and the bipartisan sponsors of S.1873 are
to be
commended for their efforts to defend America. The House of Representatives should follow suit
before the recess — an action that would seem to be portended by the decision to
devote last
Saturday’s GOP response to the President’s weekly radio address to this topic. Among the points
made in that inspiring response by Rep. Michael Pappas (R-NJ), a respected
freshman member
of Chairman Spence’s National Security Committee, were the following:
- “During the Cold War only a few countries possessed missiles capable of reaching the
U.S. interests, but now potentially two dozen countries including Iraq, Iran and North
Korea have missile technology. As a result, the men and women defending our
freedom have never been more vulnerable to attack.
“Our government’s number one priority has always been to provide for the
common defense of its citizens. Our military has answered the call time and time
again. However we can not take for granted our past success, and we must
evolve to fight future challenges. Supporting missile defense is the logical way
to do so. Although some do not consider it a top priority, it should be. It is
important, and it needs bipartisan leadership.”
Amen.
– 30 –
1. This interview is one of dozens conducted in connection with a
documentary about America’s
vulnerability to ballistic missile attack currently being prepared by the Center for Security Policy.
For more information about this important project, contact the Center.
2. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Critical Mass # 2: Senator Lott, Rumsfeld
Commission Add Fresh Impetus to Case for Beginning Deployment of Missile
Defenses (No.
98-D 133, 15 July 1998) and Press Release entitled Wall
Street Journal Lauds Rumsfeld
Commission Warning on Missile Threat; Reiterates Call for Aegis Option in
Response (No.
98-P 134, 16 July 1998).
3. The Center for Security Policy is proud to have both Drs. Graham
and Payne as long-time
members of its Board of Advisors.
4. Staging entails burning the fuel in one missile section, or “stage,” to
exhaustion, separating it
from a second stage without compromising the latter’s balance, then firing its motor to burn-out.
5. For more on the Inhofe-Shelton exchange, see the Center’s
Decision Brief entitled ‘Politically
Correct’ Joint Chiefs Are Dead Wrong on Missile Defense (
6. See The Clinton Lies that Count
(No. 98-D 142, 3 August 1998).
7. See What Can Possibly Come of a Moscow Summit
Under These Circumstances? More
Reckless U.S. Disarmament (No. 98-D 150, 24
August 1998).
8. See ‘Seize the Day’: Asian Financial Crisis Offers
Opportunity to End Dangerous
Appeasement of North Korea (No. 98-D 12, 21
January 1998).
9. See Clinton Legacy Watch # 31: Will This
Damaged Presidency Be Able to Mount, Sustain
Needed Anti-Terror Campaign (No. 98-D 148, 21
August 1998).
10. For more on the Cochran-Inouye bill, see Senate
Should Vote to Defend America ‘As Soon
As Technologically Possible’ (No. 98-D 79, 6 May
1998). and Shame, Shame: By One Vote,
Minority of Senators Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability to Missile Attack (
May 1998).
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