The Only Hope for Real Progress’ On Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.):In a recent, brief conversation with President Bush, the Center for Security Policy’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. thanked him for his leadership on the missile defense front but warned him that he was concerned the initiative was getting away from us. He responded confidently, “Actually, we are making more progress than you might think” and cited as an example his conversation earlier that day with Russian Foreign Minister Ivanov.

Perhaps we are making considerable “progress.” There is increasing reason to believe, however, that the “progress” we are making is in the wrong direction.

Let’s Make a Deal’

This concern has only been aggravated by reports in recent days in the New York Times to the effect that Mr. Bush’s administration has decided to try to “buy” Russia’s support for his pursuit of protection against ballistic missile attack for the Nation, its forces overseas and allies. The paper actually quoted “one senior White House official” as saying “If we are going to make this work, the Russians have to agree to the plan.”

Specifically, the Bush team is said to have made an offer to share with Russia early warning information, to conduct joint anti-missile exercises and to purchase Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems. A “senior administration official” told the Times: “Think of it as exercising their missile defense with ours, to see whether they could be made inter- operable. Our systems could be interconnected. It makes a lot of sense.”

What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Actually, it only makes sense if you make several dubious assumptions.

• First, you have to believe that the Russians will be more accommodating if they think the United States will only proceed with missile defenses if they approve, than would be the case if the Kremlin knows it has no say in the matter. In fact, for most of the past seventeen years, successive American administrations have tried unsuccessfully to persuade Moscow to accede to U.S. anti-missile deployments. This experience suggests that, if in the future as in the past, we accord Russia a de facto veto over our missile defense programs, they will happily exercise it.

  As the New York Times noted: “The evolving strategy is in strong contrast to that of the administration’s early weeks, when Mr. Bush and his national security aides said they were preparing to speed ahead alone to undo the [1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile] treaty.” In fact, the first approach was the right one. The only hope for making the Russians (and, for that matter, our allies) tractable is to persuade them that the United States is going to do whatever is required to defend itself, whether others concur or not.

• Second, you have to think that collaboration with the Russians on missile defense systems will not result in the compromise of U.S. anti-missile technologies. In fact, at the very least, the Kremlin will use any insights garnered from joint exercises and missile-sharing programs to improve the ability of their ballistic missiles to overcome such defenses. We may or may not worry about improved penetration capabilities being in Russian hands. We cannot ignore, however, the virtual certainty that these capabilities will be shared in short order with the many countries Moscow views as clients — from China to Iran, from North Korea to Libya — to whom it is feverishly proliferating its missile technologies.
• Third, you have to believe that American military officers and defense-minded congressional leaders already anxious about the adequacy of Bush Administration spending on the promised rebuilding of the military will be happier if money is being spent buying Russian hardware than U.S. equipment. This is all the less likely if reports in today’s Washington Times prove correct, namely that the lion’s share of the projected infusion of some $30 billion in additional funding for the Pentagon is earmarked for necessary improvements in medical care and housing for the armed forces — leaving practically nothing for needed procurement of modern weapons.

  Even if the acquisition of Russian S-300 missiles at the cost of untold millions of dollars made strategic sense, such investments will face tough sledding at home to the extent that they come at the expense of the production of domestic anti-missile systems, to say nothing of ships, planes and armored vehicles that enjoy higher priority among the JCS and in some quarters on Capitol Hill.

• Fourth, you have to ignore the fact that the Russians already have a territorial defense against ballistic missile attack. Their S-300s are upgraded versions of the nuclear-capable SA-10 surface-to-air missiles, thousands of which have been deployed across the former Soviet Union. When integrated with many older SA-5 SAMs, a number of large missile-detection and -tracking radars and an up-to- date ABM complex around Moscow, the Kremlin is in the enviable position of denouncing our prospective national missile defense system while preserving (in fact, while modernizing) its own extant one.
• Finally, you have to assume that the new Democratic leadership of the Senate will be more willing to support the President’s missile defense program if given an opportunity to slow, encumber or otherwise derail it. There is no evidence to support this thesis. To the contrary, Senators Tom Daschle, Carl Levin and Joe Biden — the new Majority Leader and the presumptive chairmen of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees, respectively — have been vocal opponents of efforts to defend America against missile attack since long before Mr. Bush came to town. All they need do to prevail now is to maintain the status quo of no anti-missile deployments and they will seize any chance afforded them to do just that.

The Bottom Line

In short, President Bush has a choice to make. He can make further “progress” on missile defense by heeding the advice and respecting the sensibilities of those who have kept this nation defenseless against missile attack to this point. Or he can make the only kind of progress that matters — by initiating deployments forthwith, first from the sea (as he intimated in his address last Friday at Annapolis was his intention), and pursuing thereafter whatever cooperation makes sense with the Russians and whatever dialogue is constructive with the allies and congressional Democrats.

The difference between the two approaches may determine whether the United States deploys effective anti-missile systems before we need them, or only after we do.