Stop the ‘Incoming!’

By William Safire
New York Times, 11 June 1998

For years, when hawkish Republicans uttered the phrase “missile defense,” dovish Democrats
would respond with a derisive Bronx cheer: “Star Wars! Pie in the sky! Cost too much and would
never work!”

Partisan positions froze and debate was paralyzed. Tens of billions were spent on research just
to
keep our hand in but with no hope of actually defending the nation against incoming nuclear
missiles.

Democrats asked, with some reason: How in the world could we build a foolproof shield in
the
sky against 10,000 Soviet missiles? Wasn’t it wiser to rely on the threat of mutual suicide that
served us so well during the cold war?

But circumstances changed. The threat is now no longer an overwhelming rain of missiles
from
Russia, but only a dozen or 20 from rogue states or terrorist groups. That’s more manageable.

Opponents of missile defense then tried a different argument: A shield in the sky would not
stop a
terrorist from sneaking a bomb into the U.S. in a suitcase.

True enough, and methods of detecting smuggled nuclear and germ weapons need refinement.
But nations like China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, India and Pakistan have not been investing
heavily in suitcases. For some reason, they have been spending national treasure on long-range
missiles, swapping know-how, importing hungry Russian scientists, buying or stealing American
missile-guidance technology.

From this we may deduce that the preferred method of delivery is a missile, and that a
monomaniacal dictator or a terrorist with little to lose would not be deterred, as Soviet leaders
were, by the assurance of massive retaliation.

As the nuclear club expands and as missiles become cheaper and rangier, the threat increases
of an
accidental launch — or of an unintended missile headed our way during a nuclear war among other
countries.

What could we do about it? At the moment, nothing. Most Americans do not realize that our
armed forces have no way of stopping the most likely weapon to be used against us. We spend a
quarter-trillion dollars a year for defense and it buys the population of American cities zero
defense against missiles.

Why do we allow this terrible anomaly to exist? Some die-hard doves insist that our debatable
1972 ABM treaty with the defunct Soviet Union locks us in forever to “mutual assured
destruction” (MAD) — even as Boris Yeltsin prepares to run for a third term on the theory that
Russia is not the Soviet Union. President Clinton, mired in decade-old rhetoric, still professes to
see that treaty as the “cornerstone of strategic stability.”

Senator Carl Levin of Michigan argues, incredibly, that no defense is needed because the
C.I.A.
would give us three years’ warning of any threat. Those are the same spooks who assured us in
1990 that Saddam Hussein was 10 years away from a nuclear device (postwar inspection showed
it had been less than one year), and the same who were caught flatfooted last month by India’s
blasts.

But we are beginning to see evidence of a paradigm shift in the thinking of both sides about
the
threat of “incoming.” Last week, as Senator Levin led a filibuster against missile defense, only a
bare minimum of 40 Democrats enabled him to block the will of a growing Senate bipartisan
majority.

Even within the Clinton Defense Department, support is growing for deploying the Navy’s
Aegis
fleet air defense system, a step toward serious missile defense. Secretary Bill Cohen’s choice for
chief technical adviser, the former NASA hand Hans Mark, was welcomed last week by Senate
Armed Services as the harbinger of a new Administration attitude toward countering missile
dangers.

The center of gravity in the old “Star Wars” debate has moved. Ronald Reagan turns out not
to
have been deranged on defense — only ahead of his time. For those concerned about our new
vulnerability, the trick is not to adopt a nyah-nyah, told-you-so posture, but to give proponents of
the old strategy a graceful exit citing changed circumstances.

“There is absolutely no question the nation will have missile defense in the future,” Dr.
Jacques
Gansler, a top Clinton Defense official, has said. “The question is when.”

The threat is here. The money is there. The answer is now.