Rising Tide: Who Will Catch the Wave of the Prompt Deployment of U.S. Missile Defenses?
(Washington, D.C.): In recent days, some of the finest minds in the United States have used
the
editorial pages of the Nation’s leading newspapers to make a strikingly similar appeal:
The time
has come to deploy effective national defenses against the growing threat posed by ballistic
missile-borne weapons of mass destruction.
This dramatic development in elite thinking mirrors the increasingly vocal support for such a
step
among key elected officials — notably, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, House Majority
Leader
Dick Armey, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senate Majority Whip Don Nickles,
California Governor Pete Wilson, Oklahoma Lieutenant Governor Mary Fallin, Senators
Thad Cochran, Dan Inouye, Jon Kyl, Jim Inhofe, Bob Smith, Kay Bailey Hutchison and
Reps. Bob Livingston, Floyd Spence, Curt Weldon, Duncan Hunter and
Tillie Fowler.
The question occurs: Will this rising tide of intellectual and political power behind
the idea
of defending America translate into action — and if so, will it bear fruit
before we need it, or
after?
The Best and the Brightest
The following are among the powerful arguments for ending America’s current, absolute
vulnerability to ballistic missile attack that have been advanced in print over the past few weeks
(emphasis added throughout):
- Charles Krauthammer, syndicated column entitled “Defenseless
America,” Washington Post,
22 May: “In a decade or two, we will be facing regimes, some quite
nasty, that possess missiles armed with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. What do we
do
about it? The obvious answer is to build anti-missile defenses. Today, if a
nuclear missile
were launched accidentally toward, say, Washington there is absolutely nothing we could do
to
prevent the incineration of the city.
- “The good news is that for the first time in history a “bullet-hitting bullet” to
shoot down that missile is within technological reach. The bad news is that this
Administration has little interest in building it….Not to worry, says the Administration.
There will be no ballistic missile threat to the United States before 2010. How do they
know? The CIA assures us….As it did about India.”
- Wall Street Journal, editorial entitled “Nuclear Week,” 26
May: “It would be wise not to
obsess so much on China or any other potential threat that we lose sight of the more
fundamental issue: how best to protect the U.S. itself from the threat — sure to exist at
some future date — of missiles capable of reaching the American mainland.
- “The biggest obstacle to that goal is the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
Treaty, under
which the U.S. and the now non-existent U.S.S.R., in the name of ‘stability,’ agreed
not to defend their homelands against missile attack. Mr. Clinton is fond of calling the
ABM Treaty the ‘cornerstone of national security.’ Last year, he negotiated an
expansion of the treaty that he has yet to submit to the Senate for advice and consent,
as is constitutionally required.
- “The reason for the stall is the President knows that the eventual Senate debate on
the amendments can’t help but turn into a debate on the treaty, itself. Senate
Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms will ensure that. Senator
Helms is already tired of waiting for the President to ship over the amendments
and may schedule hearings for this summer.
- “The goal is for the U.S. to get itself out of the ABM Treaty and get on with
the business of building a full missile-defense system, something that’s never
going to happen during a Clinton Presidency. In the Senate last week every
Republican and four Democrats voted to bring the missile-defense bill to the floor;
it was blocked by one vote.”
- A.M. Rosenthal, syndicated column entitled “He Didn’t Do It Alone,”
New York Times, 5
June: “Some knowledgeable supporters of the [CTBT] say it has lost credibility as an
anti-nuclear safeguard. All right, then: Should we tickle ourselves into believing the
treaty
is our protection or at last go for anti-ballistic missile defense? All opposed to that
defense please raise hands; now tell us what you offer that could substitute for both
ABM and the anti-testing mirage.”
- “…Clinton appeasement [of China] has become so obviously against U.S. interests and
democratic morality that maybe Americans will do our duty: expose and fight that
policy, as long as we have breath or print.”
- Ben Wattenberg, syndicated column entitled “Pointing America’s Missile
Defense at the 21st
Century,” New York Post, 5 June: “The recent nuclear events in Asia tell us that
some old
arguments should be put to rest. The time has come for America to cautiously build and
deploy a limited version of an anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) system…Such a course
would likely provide for a more peaceful world. It would go a long way toward
guaranteeing that in the 21st century the United States will remain the only
superpower.”
- George F. Will, syndicated column entitled “Paper Defense,”
Washington Post, 7 June:
“Various of the President’s policies, whether shaped by corruption, incompetence or naivete,
have enabled China to increase the lethality of its ICBMs. The President and his party
are
committed to keeping America vulnerable to such weapons: 41 senators, all
Democrats,
have filibustered legislation sponsored by Sens. Thad Cochran (R-Mississippi) and Daniel
Inouye (D-Hawaii) declaring it U.S. policy ‘to deploy effective anti-missile defenses of the
territory of the United States as soon as technologically possible.’
- “Instead, the Administration would defend the Nation with parchment — gestures like
the Comprehensive Test Ban (CTB) Treaty, which is a distillation of liberalism’s
foreign policy of let’s pretend. Let’s pretend that if we forever forswear tests,
other
nations’ admiration will move them to emulation. Diagnostic tests are indispensable for
maintaining the safety and reliability of the aging U.S. deterrent inventory. So the
CTBT is a recipe for slow-motion denuclearization. But let’s pretend that if we become
weaker, other nations will not want to become stronger.
- “Seeking a safer world by means of a weaker America, and seeking to make
America safe behind the parchment walls of arms control agreements, is to start
the 21st century by repeating the worst fallacies of the 20th century.”
- Henry Kissinger, op.ed. entitled “India and Pakistan: After the
Explosions,” Washington
Post, 9 June: “The nuclear explosions by India and Pakistan have knocked the last
prop
out from under the Administration’s doctrinaire opposition to ballistic missile defense.
During the Cold War it was possible to argue that mutual vulnerability guaranteed mutual
restraint. But in a world of multiple nuclear power centers, that argument — which I always
rejected — lacks any merit. It is reckless to stake the survival of a society on its
vulnerability or on genocidal retaliation — even against an accidental launch.
National
and theater missile defense must become a higher national priority.”
Who Will Lead?
The Clinton Administration professes to be increasingly concerned about America’s posture of
assured vulnerability — at least up to a point. Yesterday, the New York
Times reported that:
- “President Clinton asked Congress to add about $300 million to next year’s Federal
budget to protect Americans better from germ and chemical attacks, the White
House announced. A senior Administration official said the request represented a 30
percent increase in money to fight bioterrorism and was the largest single supplement
to the Federal budget ever sought specifically to bolster civilian and military defenses
against such terrorism. The Government is spending an estimated $1 billion a year on
such efforts.
- “The supplement reflects President Clinton’s growing alarm about the
possibility of germ-wielding terrorists crippling the Nation by sowing deadly
epidemics. Mr. Clinton’s personal interest, officials said, has become a powerful
force behind a series of secret Federal meetings and directives meant to bolster the
nation’s anti-terrorism work.” (Emphasis added.)
Unfortunately, the President’s concern about the threat of attacks involving
biological
or chemical weapons applies only to non-missile delivery systems. Even
though defenses
against missiles might deny a state sponsor of terrorism (and perhaps a subnational terrorist
group) its preferred means of threatening to harm the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction —
and undercut the impetus to proliferate such delivery systems, the Administration remains
adamantly opposed to deploying the necessary anti-missile systems. In fact, as noted above,
within the past month, the Clinton team has leaned on Senate Democrats to filibuster relevant
legislation.(1)
Enter the Republicans
The failure of the Democratic Administration and all but four of its partisans in the Senate —
the
commendable exceptions were Sens. Inouye, Dan Akaka (HI), Fritz Hollings (SC) and Joseph
Lieberman (CT) — to recognize the handwriting on the wall and take corrective action offers
Republicans a tremendous opportunity. As the Wall Street Journal editorialized last
month: “If
the Republicans keep on elevating the issue, the voters will soon have a clear, voting-issue
picture of which party is prepared to defend the nation against missiles and which says a
treaty signed in 1972 forbidding defenses is all we’ll ever need.”
Should the Democratic leadership continue to resist efforts to defend America, they will be
offering the Republicans an invaluable chance to: retain the loyalties of Reagan
Democrats
currently up for grabs; offer a national plank in a mid-term election
otherwise expected to be
dominated by the most local (and, therefore, unpredictable) of circumstances; appeal to
women
voters who overwhelmingly support the idea of protecting hearth and home; and lay
claim once
again to their historic position as the more responsible of the two parties when it comes
to
matters of national security.
The Bottom Line
Ideally, Republicans and Democrats, executive branch officials and legislators alike, will
recognize
the peril facing the United States as missile threats proliferate and the Nation remains defenseless
against them. Such an ideal political realignment would certainly assure the deployment of
anti-missile systems with the greatest military effectiveness in the shortest possible time.
sort of bipartisan consensus on the most critical national security issue of our time, however, the
Republican Party is superbly positioned to take to the electorate the case for deploying missile
defenses as soon as technologically possible. Will it do so?
– 30 –
1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Shame, Shame: By One Vote, Minority of Senators
Perpetuate America’s Vulnerability to Missile Attack (
2. Such a deployment would begin with the modification of the Navy
AEGIS fleet air defense
assets. For more on the AEGIS Option, see the Center’s Decision Brief
entitled Validation of
the Aegis Option: Successful Test Is First Step From Promising Concept to Global Anti-Missile
Capability (No. 97-D 17, 29 January 1997)
and a Heritage Foundation blue-ribbon study
on its feasibility, which can be accessed via the World Wide Web at the following address:
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