http://wagingpeace.org/articles/01.02/krieger_missiledefensemaginotline.html
Missile Defense and
the Maginot Line
By David Krieger
Following World War I, the French decided to build a line of defense that
would make them invulnerable to future attack by Germany. They created a
400-mile stretch of defensive installations known as the Maginot Line. It was
considered quite high-tech for the time, and the French took great pride in
it. When the Germans invaded and quickly defeated France in World War II,
they simply went around the Maginot Line. One wonders if there is a lesson
here that might apply to the current US plans to develop and deploy a missile
defense system to protect against ballistic missiles launched by small
hostile nations.
Imagine this scenario. The United States proceeds with its plans to create a
National Missile Defense system. The system employs the latest technology
considered capable of shooting and destroying a ballistic missile launched at
the United States. The system costs some $100 to $200 billion that might have
been used to provide health care and education for America’s youth.
Nonetheless, proponents of the system are proud of their accomplishment. They
have built a defensive system that will protect the United States against
missile attacks by countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq -- should
these countries ever acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable
of reaching the United States.
Let’s further imagine that a decade into the future Saddam Hussein succeeds
in obtaining a few nuclear warheads and a ballistic missile delivery system
capable of reaching the US. The proponents of the National Missile Defense
system feel justified in their vision because their system will protect the
US from a nuclear-armed missile attack by Saddam Hussein. Now, Hussein may be
belligerent, aggressive and hostile to the United States, but he is not
suicidal. He decides against attacking an American city by means of a missile
attack, which could be traced back to him. Instead he arranges for a nuclear
weapon to be smuggled into the US by ship, truck or plane. Of course, only a
few trusted accomplices know that it is him who has made these arrangements.
In this modern-day Maginot Line-type scenario, a determined enemy would
simply go around the defense or, in this case, under it.
In a different scenario, incoming missiles from a potential enemy might go
right through the missile shield. Many experts believe that it will not be
difficult to develop offensive measures to overcome the defensive shield. MIT
scientists Theodore Postol and George Lewis write: “The Pentagon claims that
the warhead and the ineffective large balloon decoy it is testing against are
representative of the missile threat from an idealized imagined adversary an
adversary presumed to be capable of building intercontinental range ballistic
missiles, and nuclear warheads that are sufficiently light and compact to be
mounted on such missiles, but at the same time so bungling as to be unable to
hide the warhead inside a Mylar balloon decoy released along with empty
balloons or to build warhead-shaped cone decoys.” In other words, it is quite
possible that after spending upwards of $100 billion to create a missile
defense, the shield will prove to be ineffective against an adversary
sophisticated enough to develop decoys along with ballistic missiles and
nuclear warheads.
Unfortunately, the fact that the planned National Missile Defense is likely
to be wasteful and ineffective is not the worst of it. The truly dangerous
aspect of moving forward with deployment of missile defenses is what it will
do to our relations with Russia and China. Both countries are strongly
opposed to a US defensive shield because of their fear that it will create a
US first-strike potential. From the Russian and Chinese point of view, the
shield would allow the US to attack them in a surprise first-strike, and then
use the shield to destroy any of their remaining missiles that might be
launched at the US in response. Their planners, like ours, must think in
terms of worst-case scenarios.
In 1972 the US and the former Soviet Union entered into a treaty, the
Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, prohibiting the development of a
national missile defense. Both countries understood that the development of
defensive systems would further spur offensive arms races, and that
limitations on defense would create the conditions necessary to reduce
offensive nuclear arsenals. The ABM Treaty has provided the basis for
progress on nuclear disarmament through the START I and II treaties.
The new US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, has been dismissive of the
ABM Treaty referring to it as “ancient history,” and publicly suggesting
that the treaty is no longer relevant because the Soviet Union no longer
exists. At a recent meeting on European security policy in Munich, Rumsfeld,
referring to the ABM Treaty, stated: “It was a long time ago that that treaty
was fashioned. Technologies were noticeably different. The Soviet Union, our
partner in that agreement, doesn’t exist any more.”
The Russians, however, continue to view this treaty as the foundation of all
current and future arms control agreements. The Russian security chief,
Sergei Ivanov, responded at the same meeting, “Destruction of the ABM treaty,
we are quite confident, will result in the annihilation of the whole
structure of strategic stability and create prerequisites for a new arms race
including one in space.” Jacques Chirac, the President of France, agrees,
having stated that a US missile defense “cannot fail to re-launch an arms
race in the world.” This eventuality stands in dramatic contrast to the
Russian proposal by President Putin to reduce nuclear arsenals to 1,500
strategic nuclear weapons or below in START III negotiations.
Sha Zukang, the Director of the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s Department of Arms
Control and Disarmament, has described the Chinese position on US missile
defenses in this way: “To defeat your defenses we’ll have to spend a lot of
money, and we don’t want to do this. But otherwise, the United States will
feel it can attack anyone at any time, and that isn’t tolerable. We hope
[America] will give this up. If not, we’ll be ready.”
Thus, US plans for missile defenses are a high-stakes game. While they aim at
providing security against an improbable future attack by a small nation,
they antagonize the other major nuclear powers in the world and are likely to
lead to new arms races. While this may be beneficial for weapons producers,
it is likely to undermine rather than enhance the security of people
everywhere, including Americans.
The United States agreed with more than 185 other nations at the 2000
Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference that it was necessary to preserve
and strengthen the ABM Treaty “as a cornerstone of strategic stability and as
a basis for further reductions of strategic offensive weapons.” We also
agreed, along with the other declared nuclear weapons states to an
“unequivocal undertaking” to achieve the total elimination of nuclear
weapons. By proceeding with plans to deploy a National Missile Defense
system, the US is turning these promises made in the context of preventing
nuclear proliferation into empty rhetoric.
If the US is serious about keeping these promises and achieving the
elimination of nuclear weapons from the world, it should take the following
steps:
Reaffirm its commitment to the 1972 ABM Treaty;
n Provide leadership in developing an effective ballistic missile control
regime to prevent the spread of this technology;
Continue negotiations with states of concern such as North Korea in an effort
to find solutions to outstanding problems;
Take steps to diminish the political importance of nuclear weapons such as
de-alerting nuclear weapons, separating warheads from delivery vehicles,
adopting clear policies of No First Use of nuclear weapons, and ratifying the
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty;
Commence good faith negotiations to achieve a Nuclear Weapons Convention
requiring the phased elimination of all nuclear weapons, with provisions for
effective verification and enforcement. Security from nuclear threat does not
reside in building a Maginot Line in the Sky. Rather, it lies in making the
good faith efforts promised long ago to seek the total elimination of nuclear
weapons from the world. There is only one way to assure that nuclear weapons
will not be used again, and that is to abolish them.
