Take Russia’s ‘No’ for an Answer on Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): Here we go again. The Clinton Administration is once more trying to
have
it both ways on missile defense.

For reasons that apparently have mostly to do with Al Gore’s efforts to position his campaign
on
the issue, ¹ Mr. Clinton wants to be seen as preparing to
deploy a limited, ground-based
“National Missile Defense” (NMD) system in Alaska. This position reflects at least a tacit
agreement with the Loyal Opposition that the threat of ballistic missile attack from rogue states
necessitates the fielding of at least modest anti-missile protection for the United States.

On the other hand, in the face of increasingly shrill opposition from Russia even to this
meager
NMD proposal — and to the changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty the Administration
insists it would require — the Administration is putting out the word that it is in no hurry to do
more than discuss the matter with the Kremlin.

The Administration cannot have it both ways. Congress should immediately direct
the
President to take “No” for an answer from the Russians and get on with the business of
deploying the most militarily and cost-effective system technology will permit to be
deployed at the earliest possible moment, without further regard to the ABM Treaty.

Talk is Not Cheap

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported:

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told reporters she was concerned about
comments made Monday by Russian First Deputy Defense Minister Nikolai
Mikhailov who said Russia would defend itself against any new U.S. [missile defense]
system. ‘I must say … that I was troubled by the report today of some statements by
the Russian military that I think are an overreaction to our desire to deal with what we
believe is a common problem,’ she said.

At the White House, spokesman Joe Lockhart said that despite Mikhailov’s
warning, talks on amending the treaty, which began in June but have yet to bear
any fruit, would continue. ‘We believe that we are moving forward in a
constructive way,’ Lockhart said. ‘This is going to be a process that will take
some time. I don’t expect that there is only one meeting where we expect to get
closure on ABM and missile defense issues,’ he said.

In fact, there is no reason to expect to “get closure” on ABM and missile
defense issues,
no matter how many meetings the United States has with Russia and how rich the bribes the
former offers the latter, ² if by “closure” one means
providing — in the words of official U.S.
policy, “as soon as technologically possible” ³ — an
anti-missile system for the American people
that is as effective, flexible and inexpensive as we can make it. The Russians cannot believe
their good fortune in facing an American government willing to offer them a veto over U.S.
defense capabilities. ⁴ That being the case, however,
Moscow is not so foolish as to pass up the
opportunity to exercise it.

Moscow Plays for Time

In fact, the Clinton Administration’s open-ended approach — predicated upon the twin, and
unfounded — propositions that the ABM Treaty is still in force and, therefore, that the Kremlin
must grant permission before the U.S. can proceed with missile defenses — actually
invites the
Russians to run out the clock. If anything, American indecisiveness and passivity with respect to
the question of actually deploying missile defenses will only embolden the Russians (and, for
that matter, the Chinese, allied governments and even the United Nations) to intensify their
demands that the ABM Treaty be preserved and that the United States refrain from deploying
anti-missile systems that would violate the Treaty’s categorical prohibition on territorial defenses
against ballistic missile attack.

Already, China has joined the Kremlin in introducing a draft resolution for consideration by
the
United Nations General Assembly — where it can safely be expected to pass overwhelmingly —
demanding that the United States take no action that would depart from the ABM Treaty.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Mikhailov’s belligerent threats are but a foretaste of the sort of
intimidation to come. According to AP, he declared on Monday: “‘Our arsenal has the
capability,’ he said of Russia’s ability to break through an eventual US defense shield, adding
that Russian technology ‘could and would be used if the U.S. pushes us.'” (Emphasis
added.)

Finally, the prospect of flouting the sort of UN resolution designed by Russia and China to
reflect the “international community’s” demand that the United States adhere scrupulously to the
ABM Treaty will doubtless hit the Clinton Administration where it lives — i.e., tirelessly seeking
the favor of multilateral organizations and the impotent nations that exercise influence only
through those organizations’ machinations.

Why Are We Doing This to Ourselves?

President Clinton’s approach is strategically unsound and morally bankrupt. It is also
politically
untenable once it becomes clear to the American people that its premise (or, to use Mr. Clinton’s
phrase, its “cornerstone”) — namely, that the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty continues to be legally
binding upon the United States — is demonstrably incorrect. A rigorous legal analysis performed
earlier this year for the Center for Security Policy by former Deputy Assistant Secretary
of
Defense Douglas J. Feith and former Justice Department attorney George
Miron has
established that under international legal practice and precedent, the ABM Treaty lapsed when
the other party — the Soviet Union became extinct in 1991. ⁵

So decisive is the Feith-Miron study that neither the Clinton Administration nor its
supporters
among the Nation’s anti-defense, pro-arms control elite have yet found persuasive grounds to
rebut the its central conclusion: We have spent the past eight years observing the ABM Treaty
not as a matter of legal necessity, but as one of political choice. We need not do so,
and indeed
we cannot afford to do so, any longer.

A powerful voice has recently been heard decrying the Administration’s efforts to breathe
new
life into the ABM Treaty: The powerful chairman of the Senate Appropriations
Committee
and its Defense Subcommittee, Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK). According to a report in the
23
October editions of the Anchorage Daily News:

In deciding whether to proceed with the national missile defense system next year, the
administration said it felt compelled by the 1972 treaty to try to negotiate changes
permitting the limited exception. Stevens charged that the 1972 deal was with the
Soviet Union, of which Russia was only a part.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Stevens said, the United States should not
be trying to cut a deal with Russia. “The United States had no business going to
Russia and asking, could we modify the ABM,” Stevens said. “It was a treaty
with the Soviet Union….The question of how it remains applicable to Russia
and our relations with Russia has nothing to do with whether or not we
protect our nation against missiles from a rogue source, or a terrorist
source.”

At the time of the 1972 treaty, Stevens said, only the United States and the Soviet
Union had intercontinental missiles. Now, there are “several nations beyond
Russia that have the capability to launch weapons of mass destruction against our
nation.”

What We Can Do About Defending America

Fortunately, as soon as the United States decides no longer to permit the ABM Treaty to bind
its
hands, the Nation will be able to exercise an option for defending its people that will be far a
more flexible, near-term and cost-effective than the approach favored
by the Clinton
Administration. The National Missile Defense system it purports to favor would give
the
United States very limited protection against ballistic missile attacks — and some parts of the
country probably none at all. It would certainly not be useful in defending American forces or
allies overseas. According to the March 1999 report of the Heritage Foundation’s blue-ribbon
Commission on Missile Defense, ⁶ the first ground-based
site alone “would be likely to cost
about $25 billion and take eight-to-nine years to build….A multi-site system could cost an
additional $25 billion and take another five-to-seven years to complete, depending on how many
sites were to be built.”

Even the Clinton Pentagon has belatedly begun to acknowledge the merits of an alternative
approach recommended repeatedly since 1995 by the Heritage commission — a sea-based missile
defense built upon the 55 cruisers and destroyers currently equipped with the AEGIS fleet air
defense system. ⁷ Using Navy data, the panel members
estimated that the Nation could adapt
these existing assets and achieve an initial deployment of 650 missiles starting within 3 years or
so at an additional incremental cost of $2-3 billion (expended over the next five years). The
United States would thus achieve a highly mobile and flexible missile defense for
both its own
territory and for its forces and allies overseas.

The difference between the “AEGIS Option” and the Clinton NMD system may
prove to be
the difference between having an effective missile defense system in place before we
need it,
rather than after.

The Bottom Line

Russia will never agree to the deployment of effective
American anti-missile systems. It is
far from clear whether the Russians will bless the deployment of even the grossly inadequate
NMD system the Clinton Administration claims to favor at the moment.

Since there are neither legal grounds nor attractive prospects for the Administration’s present
course of action, it should stop trying to cajole and/or bribe the Russians into accepting such a
limited NMD system. At best, if they accept, the U.S. would be condemned to a missile defense
approach that is less flexible, less effective, less readily available and far more costly than a
sea-based alternative utilizing the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system. In any event, the
longer
this country indulges the Kremlin’s efforts to drag out and otherwise obstruct the development,
testing and emplacement of such systems, the longer the present — and increasingly dangerous —
posture of “assured vulnerability” to ballistic missile attack will go uncorrected.

¹ An item in Newsweek’s current issue reports: “Senior
Clinton Administration officials worry
that the White House is headed into a major nuclear-arms tussle with Russia, China and the
Republican Senate — battle that they fear could have serious domestic and international
ramifications. ‘We mishandle this and you could see Russia and China resume nuclear testing
and the Gore campaign going down in flames,’ says one Clinton aide….The situation has put
Vice President Al Gore in a tough spot. He has pushed for negotiations with Moscow and backs
the CTBT. But U.S. public opinion favors building missile defenses, whether Moscow agrees or
not, as does GOP presidential contender George W. Bush. ‘The Veep could see years of
arms-control work go down the tubes on this,’ says the Clinton aide.

² See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Clinton Legacy Watch # 43: Hard Questions About
Effort to Bribe Russia into Amending the A.B.M. Treaty ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-D_118″>No. 99-D 118, 18 October 1999).

³ On 22 July 1999, President Clinton signed into law the National
Missile Defense Act of 1999,
legislation adopted by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress which
declared it to be the policy of the U.S. government to deploy an effective, limited national
missile defense system as soon as technologically possible. Unfortunately, as he did so, he made
it clear that he had no intention of actually deploying such a system any time soon.
See Candid
Halperin Remark, Cynical Clinton Statement Reflect Administration’s Abiding Hostility to
Missile Defense (No. 99-D 84, 27 July 1999).

⁴ See National Security Alert ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=99-A_30″>No. 99-A 30, 13 August 1999)

⁵ See Definitive Study Shows Russians Have No
Veto Over Defending U.S. (No. 99-P 11, 22
January 1999).

⁶ See The Heritage Foundation’s study entitled Defending
America. This study can be accessed
via the world wide web at the following address: href=”https://www.heritage.org/missile_defense/”>www.heritage.org/missile_defense/”>.

⁷ See Mirabile Dictu: Even the Clinton Pentagon
Now Recognizes the Necessity for the
‘Aegis Option’ to Defend America (No. 99-D 95, 2
September 1999).