|
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/gam/Commentary/20010507/COLUTTWAK.html Why Bush's New Missile Defense Is Sure To Crash By Edward Luttwak The Globe And Mail Back in 1967, the Johnson administration unveiled the Sentinel radars and interceptor missiles meant to defend the United States against China, then the ultimate "rogue" state, which was building its first ballistic missiles. Sentinel was backed by technology enthusiasts and some key Senators but opposed by the Army, Navy, Marines and Air Force because the money would be taken from their budgets. Sentinel was soon cancelled. � In 1969, the Nixon administration announced the Safeguard system focused on protecting American missile silos against a "counterforce first strike" by Soviet missiles. Again, Safeguard was promoted by technology enthusiasts and figures in Congress, but it, too, was resisted by the U.S. military, unwilling to pay for it by cutting their traditional forces. Safeguard was cancelled in 1972, when the United States instead negotiated the ABM Treaty with the Soviet Union, prohibiting all ballistic-missile defences except for a token unit with just 100 interceptors. � In 1982, President Ronald Reagan personally launched the Strategic Defence Initiative SDI (satirized as "Star Wars") focused on the use of detection and killer satellites to destroy long-range ballistic missiles at launch, or in their high parabola through space. Once again SDI was opposed by the U.S. military. SDI was abandoned when the Reagan administration came to an end. � The National Missile Defence that President George W. Bush has just announced is not the brainchild of technology enthusiasts. The lobby that has been demanding one for years is made of policy types, with allies in Congress. It all started with Iraq's launch of Scud missiles against Israel and Saudi Arabia during the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf. If a backward country like Iraq could build ballistic missiles, even if copied from Soviet Scuds (a 1952 design, itself based on the German V-2 of 1944), many other countries could do the same -- not only Iran and North Korea and Iraq again, but even Libya. � This new missile-defence lobby was already strong in the Bush campaign, and now occupies all three top civilian positions in the Pentagon: Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld; Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defence; and Douglas Feith, under-secretary for policy. They spurn the 1972 ABM Treaty as ancient history, believe that European allies can be talked out of their opposition, and have no patience with State Department types that took Russian objections seriously. There was nothing to resist them so long as U.S. national strategy was still focused on the so-called "rogue" states: Iran, North Korea, Iraq . . . and their efforts to build ballistic missiles. � But ever since mounting tensions exploded in the collision between the U.S. Navy's EP-3 and Wang Wei's F-8 jet fighter over Hainan island, U.S. national strategy has started to refocus on China instead of rogue states. With so many bureaucracies and people involved, it's a slow process, like turning around a supertanker. But if U.S. relations with China continue to worsen, everyone will eventually accept the necessity of having the best possible relations with Russia, which is China's prime source of modern weapons but is fearful of China in the long run. That rules out Mr. Rumsfeld's unilateral NMD, and its repudiation of the 1972 ABM Treaty. Only a co-operative approach, to build missile defences with Russian approval and participation, can fit Washington's emerging strategy. � The drafting of the Bush speech started in February, before the strategic refocusing on China. The text was changed several times. When Mr. Bush read it last Tuesday, its tone was already much warmer toward Russia than it would have been in February. Had the speech been delayed another few months, it would have emphasized dialogue and co-operation with Russia even more. � Meanwhile, there is no ready-to-build national system, just different radars and interceptor missiles suitable only for localized "theatre" defences. And more ambitious, satellite-based "boost-phase" systems exist only on paper. It would therefore take at least a decade to actually deploy the Bush national missile defence. � For that reason alone, it's unlikely it will be built. The United States does complete other weapons that require many years to build, such as aircraft carriers and bombers, but that's because they are tenaciously supported by the Army, Navy, Marines, or Air Force. While administrations come and go, the military remain and keep pressing for what they want. � There is no such support for the national missile defence. On the contrary, as soon as the new Bush defence budget was announced, showing only slight increases, the military chiefs started opposing it, to protect the funding of their traditional forces. They cannot contradict their civilian bosses, but reserve officer groups speak for them; they argue that none of the rogue states has nuclear weapons as yet, and ballistic missiles are just not a serious threat with their small, high-explosive warheads. � In spite of popular fears, chemical warheads are even less powerful; while biological warheads frighten only non-experts, they are in fact useless. True, a "rogue" state could buy a few nuclear devices at any time, but it would be very hard to engineer them into missile warheads -- as opposed to simply hiding them in a merchant ship going to a U.S. port. By contrast, simpler and cheaper "theatre" defences could be useful, because the threat is not a few intercontinental missiles useless without nuclear warheads, but hundreds of shorter-range missiles that could inflict real damage even with high-explosive warheads. � Mr. Rumsfeld is out to win the bureaucratic battle. But military opposition inside the Pentagon weakens him in his fight with Colin Powell's State Department, which opposes any unilateralist rush to missile defences. � In coming months, we'll witness engineering debates on the various systems, as well as noisy diplomatic spats with the Russians, the French and the Chinese. But as the refocusing of U.S. strategy on China continues, it will reshape U.S. policies across the board. Allies such as Canada should bear in mind that the Bush speech may have been overtaken by events even as it was delivered. � � Edward Luttwak, a security analyst based in Washington, is the author of Turbo-Capitalism. |
