‘Putting People First’: Clinton Must Stop Gutting The Children’s (A.K.A. Strategic) Defense Initiative

The Clinton Administration’s efforts to deprive the American people of effective protection against ballistic missile attack is on a roll. Last month, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin announced a $2.85 billion reduction in the Strategic Defense Initiative — a cut which will leave the program unable to bring to fruition, let alone deploy, promising space- and ground-based technologies for a defense of the United States or even permit near-term deployment of limited theater missile defenses.

This week, Secretary Aspin revealed that — as part of a Department-wide effort to come up with $750 million needed to pay for the U.S. relief mission in Somalia — a further $80 million would be reprogrammed out of SDI’s FY93 accounts. Of this amount, fully $50 million would come from the Brilliant Pebbles program, accelerating the rush to programmatic oblivion of this most highly leveraged and cost-effective approach to global missile defense. (N.B. Out odf an unwavering fealty to the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Clinton Administration had already reduced the budget for Brilliant Pebbles, which is inherently incompatible with that accord, from $300 million in FY93 to a mere $73 million in FY94.)

These actions on Brilliant Pebbles are the more remarkable for their inconsistency with the 1991 Missile Defense Act, a legislative initiative authored in part by then-Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee Aspin. That legislation directed that there be "robust funding" for space-based interceptors as part of a program designed to provide, in due course, effective global defenses against limited missile attacks.

The Aspin reprogramming would also disrupt the alternative for defending the continental United States: the Ground-Based Interceptor (GBI) program. The recently unveiled Clinton budget already precluded the sort of near-term deployment called for in the 1991 Missile Defense Act by reducing the FY94 Bush request for GBI from $633 million to $220 million. The decision to cut a further $20 million(1) from the FY93 appropriation of $142 million for development of the GBI system, however, will significantly exacerbate this impact.

What’s Wrong With This Picture

This raising of the SDI budget comes at a time when Mr. Aspin himself and CIA Director James Woolsey have acknowledged that the threat of ballistic missile attack is becoming more — not less — acute. These sentiments were powerfully underscored in the next program of the weekly public television series, The World This Week," hosted by Center for Security Policy Director Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. This show (which will be broadcast in the Washington area at 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. on Monday, 3 April on Channel 56) features Sen. Richard Shelby (D-AL) and former SDIO Director Henry Cooper.

For example, Ambassador Cooper observed: "The threat of some attack on the United States is perhaps even greater today than it was at the peak of the Cold War because of the uncertainties that are involved [e.g., questions about control of Russian nuclear weapons]." Amb. Cooper noted that short-cuts were now available to pariah states — such as the purchase of full-up ballistic missile systems and/or space-launch vehicles that could be turned into relatively inaccurate but still effective long-range delivery systems very quickly — that could make this danger even worse in the future. Sen. Shelby agreed, describing the threat of missile strikes against the U.S. as "imminent" and arguing that "the responsible thing to do is keep developing SDI, to deploy what we have as soon as we can."

Even more appalling than the steps the Clinton Administration has taken to date that would cripple the SDI program is the fact that such an outcome is precisely what the Administration intends to accomplish. The Center for Security Policy has learned that a senior member of the National Security Council staff recently explored with key congressional figures how they would react were the White House to announce that it was abandoning the Limited Defense System — the modest, primarily ground-based SDI program authorized, indeed demanded, by the Missile Defense Act. In the face of strong opposition to such an action on the part of leading legislators, it appears that the Administration has decided to do it piecemeal and through budgetary legerdemain, rather than formally and overtly.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy continues to believe that it makes no sense to gut crucial areas of American defense when present and prospective world conditions from Pyongyang to the Persian Gulf argue ever more strongly for increased vigilance to meet these threats, not a further, reckless undermining of U.S. military capabilities in general and anti-missile capabilities in particular. It is unconscionable to risk further damage to the morale, readiness and effectiveness of U.S. military forces — to say nothing of the future security of the nation — by dunning those forces and their budgets for the costs of the onerous humanitarian operations they were asked to perform in Somalia.

It would be a bitter irony, indeed, if the funds that went to ensure the safety of the men, women and children of Somalia — a worthy cause indeed — are permitted to be taken from accounts intended to ensure the safety of the men, women and children of the United States against the threat of ballistic missile attack. Given the Clinton Administration’s well-established priorities, perhaps the only way to ensure that the latter effort receives the funds it deserves, and ceases to serve as a cash cow for other purposes, would be to rename the Strategic Defense Initiative the Children’s Defense Initiative."

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1. The remaining $10 million will be taken from variouys other SDI programs. It is difficult to analyze at this point the exact impact of those cuts. Suffice it to say, however, that — coming on the heels of the $2.45 billion reduction in projected FY94 funding for strategic defense — such reprogramming actions will reinforce the stultifying effect the Clinton team is having on U.S. SDI options.