The Tide Rises Further: Bill Safire Calls for Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): Today, one of the Nation’s most shrewd observers of the political scene
and
influential voice of conscience in the Fourth Estate, New York Times syndicated
columnist William
Safire, weighed in with a powerful call for defending America against missile attack. In the
attached essay, Mr. Safire describes — with characteristic
eloquence and intellectual verve —
the changed circumstances that have made the deployment of effective national missile
defenses a question of when, not if.

With today’s column, Bill Safire joins a growing list of prominent Americans who have
recently
urged the abandonment of the posture of assured vulnerability that has outlived the Cold War and
any justification there may once have been for the obsolete arms control theology that condemns
the U.S. to that posture. As the Center noted yesterday,⁽¹⁾
this list includes: 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. As well as syndicated
columnists: Charles
Krauthammer, A.M. Rosenthal, Ben Wattenberg and George F. Will. In addition,
Steve
Forbes, Gary Bauer, former Secretary of Defense Caspar
Weinberger and former Secretary
of State Henry Kissinger have recently lent their
formidable voices to this call to defensive arms.

It’s the Missiles, Stupid!

Perhaps the single most important contribution made by Bill Safire today was his dissection of
the
arguments of those in the Clinton Administration and elsewhere who continue to oppose the
deployment of effective missile defenses as soon as technologically possible. In particular the
following passage warrants close attention:

“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.”

The Bottom Line

Critical intellectual mass is clearly being achieved on behalf of defending America. Will these
influential voices go on, however, unheeded? Specifically, will America further risk making the
moment when it deploys missile defenses too late by failing promptly to modify — as
Bill Safire
put it — “the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system [as] a step toward serious missile defense”?

The Center for Security Policy agrees with Bill Safire’s final conclusions: “The threat is here.
The money is there. The answer is now.”

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1. See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled
Rising Tide: Who Will Catch The Wave Of The
Growing Demand For The Prompt Deployment Of U.S. Missile Defenses? ( href=”index.jsp?section=papers&code=98-D_104″>No. 98-D 104, 10
June 1998).