London Telegraph
July 10, 2000
Everybody's Happy the Missile Missed
THE technical failure of a test of America's National Missile
Defence system was welcomed in London, Moscow and most of the
world's other capitals yesterday.
However, it has prompted a litany of soul-searching in
Washington. Miles above the Pacific Ocean, a ground-launched
interceptor failed to separate from its booster rocket and
destroy an incoming dummy nuclear warhead early on Saturday.
It had been designed to provide evidence that would ease a
decision by President Clinton this autumn on whether to order
deployment of the NMD system.
Whitehall officials admitted to profound relief at the failure of
the American test. They expected it to persuade the President to
delay his decision. Deployment would cause a deep split within
Nato and raise a serious threat to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile treaty which underpins nuclear arms control.
But the relief may be short-lived. If Mr Clinton defers the
decision to his successor, the issue will become a subject of
debate in the run-up to November's presidential election. That
means that sensitive strategic decisions may well become straws
in the wind of electioneering.
A former administration official said: "Anyone who thinks that
having this test go wrong was a good thing for world peace is
deluding himself. It would have been so much better to have this
decided by someone, like the President, who is not standing for
office and can be genuinely statesmanlike."
Congress had set an extremely tight deadline on the NMD decision
by its bipartisan vote in 1998 to deploy such a defence against
"rogue states" following the test firing of a long-range missile
by North Korea in August of that year.
Intelligence reports in America concluded that Pyongyang would be
technically capable of launching an attack on America by 2005,
meaning that building work on radar sites for NMD would have to
get under way by the end of this year. British sources pointed
out that the test failed despite efforts by the Pentagon to "fix"
it to ensure success.
One source said:
"This was not just a failure. It was a failure in the most
idealised conditions."
It is an open secret that there has been considerable disquiet
within the State Department, as well as in Whitehall, at the
Pentagon's enthusiasm for a project that would cause enormous
diplomatic headaches, threaten all existing arms control
agreements and risk a rash of new arms races in return for an
expensive system that shows no sign of working. The consensus by
foreign affairs analysts remains that the threat of an attack by
a "rogue state" remains minimal and can be countered by
conventional deterrence - the threat of massive retaliation.
The only circumstances in which Britain would be relaxed about
the NMD proposal is if the Russians agreed to it. But at his
first meeting with Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, last
month, Mr Clinton spent hours on the issue yet made no headway.
George W Bush, the favourite to succeed Mr Clinton in the White
House, would like to see a considerably larger NMD than that
proposed even if it meant abandoning the ABM treaty. Meanwhile,
Britain does not want to be forced to choose between its American
ally and its European partners, some of whom oppose NMD on
principle and all of whom oppose scrapping the ABM treaty.
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Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh, YHVH, TZEVAOT
FROM THE DESK OF: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
*Mike Spitzer* <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
~~~~~~~~ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
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