Star Wars: a moral mirage?
Russett, Bruce
demands more than a bumper sticker; philosophical arguments are more complex than slogans; rational agreement is often hard-won, and will only succeed when each side can see clearly why the other...
...the Russians have theirs ringing Moscow, we dismantled ours as ineffective...
...Can the SDI provide a reliable and virtually impenetrable shield for population centers...
...Catholic bishops' pastoral letter, The Challenge of Peace...
...He has exhorted us to support SDI on the grounds that it would be "better to save people than to avenge them...
...Some elements of the system, such as space-based lasers, have a formidable potential as offensive weapons, able, for example, to hit aircraft on the ground...
...Using SDI technology, massive conflagrations induced from space could return an industrial nation to an eighteenth-century level in thirty minutes...
...Trying to decide public policy must involve more than name calling and begging the question...
...9 In addition to forbidding use of nuclear weapons on civilians, the bishops declared any first use of nuclear weapons unacceptable...
...the Americans in the 1970s and currently in use around Moscow, would attempt to intercept the surviving inissiles in a so-called (maybe all-too-aptly) "terminal phase...
...Cities -- people -- would become the target of choice...
...But SDI promises to give significant advantages to the side that goes first...
...Will a space-based defense as envisioned in President Reagan's SDI dream provide a tranquil, invulnerable shield...
...system, the U.S...
...And indeed, if the purpose of 11 April 1986:209such a defense were to protect our own retaliatory vehicles, retaining an ability to "destroy the Soviet Union as a functioning society" if it should dare to attack us or our allies, it might conceivably be judged a success...
...and lead to the abrogation of the 1972 ABM Treaty...
...Vasily Morozov, the Soviet .Union air~dy possesses the basic technology for such ir at a cost of 1 or 2 percent of the Amencan SDI...
...But no ohe familiar with the plans for these systems remotely imagines that they would be, individually or even collectively, 100 percent effective...
...Is that compatible with the goal of drastic reductions in nuclear weaponry, advocated by the bishops and ostensibly the goal of the Reagan administration...
...It is also ironic that in its last drafting session the bishops' committee agreed to insert a sentence urging continued observance of the ABM Treaty, but due to staff oversight the sentence was lost...
...Robert English has detailed some of ~,, these in The New Republic (February 24...
...They also made clear their extreme skepticism that any nfilittry specialist, Col...
...Finally, the basic question must again be posed...
...In fact, a "just-war" moral argument against SDI is a strong one, and needs to be made forcefully and clearly...
...Remember that the postulated success rates are technically very optimistic ones, at the edge of what informed observers J JJ JJ OFFENSIVE IN NATURE THE RISKS OF 'REAGAN ROULETI'E' W J E ARE NOW three years into the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) research program...
...on combustible cities they would very likely even do the kind of damage necessary to produce nuclear winter...
...One layer would be a system of space-based weapons, commonly pora'ayed as X-ray lasers from satellites that would strike a newly launched enemy ballistic missile in its "boost phase," that is, during that short minute or so while the launching rocket still burned...
...According to a Soviet . . . . . . . ' , L . . . . ' . . . . Commonweal: 210~?'~ - . [1" soft, eminently hittable cities on which even a small number of successful strikes would do enormous damage...
...would be the loser...
...That ability has appeared again in the vision of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) as a "peace shield...
...This same kind of calculation would follow for American decision-makers faced with a choice of how to retaliate to a Soviet first strike if the Soviets also had SDI...
...That is, not that any particular layer was totally successful in eliminating penetrating weapons, but that each layer was roughly 75 percent effective...
...moral mirage...
...For, according to Lt...
...According to Los Angeles Times reporter Robert Scheer, President Reagan took this seriously, and perhaps felt himself genuinely torn by the moral dilemma implied...
...The hope is that penetration could be held to an "acceptable" level...
...Paul Nitze told a strategic systems conference in February it will take that long to determine whether SDI can meet the president's "criteria of feasibility, survivability, and cost-effectiveness at the margin...
...If the Soviet leaders could not depend on destroying enough protected (hardened) military targets to be sure of inflicting unacceptable damage on the United States in retaliation for an imaginable American first strike, they would become all the more committed to targeting are bound to provoke...
...9 The easiest Soviet response to an American SDI is simply to build more offensive missiles...
...9 Is that marginal capability worth sacrificing existing or readily achievable arms control agreements...
...So much for the mirage of SDI as inherently more moral...
...the room for human error in such systems...
...It is clear why the Soviet Union's response has be~n Weinbergian...
...It will not do, then, for pro-lifers to call fetuses babies and assume the issue settled...
...Currently each superpower possesses on the order of 10,000 strategic nuclear warheads...
...Confident during a dangerous, rapidly evolving military crisis...
...Many elements of SDI development and deployment would violate the ABM Treaty...
...The administration could not afford to be seen as committed to a policy of deterrence that would be judged immoral because of its effects on civilian noncombatants...
...and the staggering costs -all questions posed with shattering immediacy by the Challenger disaster...
...encourage the Soviet Union to increase its nuclear attack forces...
...Thus he was all the more ready to seize upon the supposedly moral deus ex machina presented by Star Wars...
...Further imagine that SDI worked as well as claimed by its most enthusiastic technically knowledgeable proponents...
...Technologically, by historical standards of defense, that would be a tremendous success...
...The report pointed out that SDI would likely lead to greater strategic instability, and might prompt an antagonist to undertake a nuclear first strike...
...And this assumes that all enemy warheads are delivered by missiles...
...Should the Soviet Union ultimately decide to develop its own SDI and attain parity with a U.S...
...Ironically, therefore, the bishops may bear some responsibility for the new policy, and accordingly bear responsibility to clarify their reasoning and intent...
...Nuclear-armed terminal phase defenses would probably require many new test explosions of nuclear weapons, and the X-ray laser (to be powered by a nuclear explosion) certainly would...
...Acceptable, however, means something very different for cities (centers of people) than it does for strategic weapons bases (missile launching-sites...
...Of the 10,000 warheads launched, only 2,500 would survive the boost phase interception, 625 of those would survive the mid-course phase, and a mere 161 would survive the terminal phase interception...
...Or will its finite and destabilizing character usher in a terrifying new world, one that sentences humanity to dangle minute by minute before the cocked tri~eer of total human de...
...But however emotionally and politically potent this appeal to both self-interest and morality, the president's case turns on a further question of fact...
...A "mere" 161 warheads directed against cities would destroy us as a functioning society...
...Space-based weapons would also reduce the present half hour of warning time to a mere two or throe minutes...
...The USSR has vowed to develop countermeasures that would render a U.S...
...But that argument -- for enhancing deterrence rather than for defending people -- lacks the simple "gut" appeal of the "peace shield," As the strength of the prudential argument begins to weaken, so too does the moral argument...
...Furthermore, Alex Gliksman, a strategic defense analyst, believes that the fullest.range of technological gains produced by SDI research is likely to be realized in conventional weapons...
...Catholic bishops in preparing their 1983 pastoral letter on war and peace...
...It concluded SDI would threaten the arms control process...
...Applying futuristic technologies to conventional battlefield situations might give the lead side a quantum advantage in that re.aim...
...Yet another layer, probably of ground-based rockets similar to the ABM system designed by" III BRUCE RUSSETT i$ Dean Acheson Professor oflnternational Relations and Political Science at Yale University, and was principal consultant to the U.S...
...T HE ADMINISTRATION'S moral argument is in part a response to the U.S...
...For the fact remains, even if the optimistic experts are right, that Star Wars cannot protect our cities...
...Defenders and opponents of abortion must realize that we share a large common moral ground...
...Fewer warheads would, of course, survive if fewer were launched, but the attacker's intention would be to launch as many as possible to try to overwhelm the defense...
...The bishops' pronouncement created a political problem for the Reagan administration, and in some degree a moral problem as well...
...We must begin to work from that common ground to come to an agreement on policies that can respectfully govern us all...
...IN THE WAKE OF THE BISHOPS" "CHALLENGE' Star Wars: a...
...Yet possibly the most dangerous aspect of SDI, and one which has received too little attention, is its offensive capability and the responses such offensive developments I IIII III consider possible...
...9 ff achieving the ability to protect cities is implausible, is its marginal capability as a defender of missile silos worth the economic costs (remember the bishops' "preferential option for the poor") and the political risks involved compared with other options for protecting missiles (mobility, or concentrating on submarine-based forces...
...But if the purpose were to protect American cities, such a success rate would constitute a resounding failure...
...But there is much more to be said if all morally concerned Americans are to understand why he and other politicians are neither inconsistent, nor rabid moral relativists, nor insensitive moral thugs...
...Imagine that all were launched...
...Some are carried by bombers, but most by missiles...
...Mario Cuomo began an explanation at Notre Dame...
...It must involve sensitive deliberation which carefully takes into account the deeply felt and morally reasonable concerns of a variety of perspectives...
...The liberal Catholic politicians are in trouble, and they will stay in trouble until they more adequately explain their reasons for not seeking a legal prohibition of abortion...
...SDI "useless junk...
...Despite this official resolve, rudimentary questions about the possible practicality of SD1 continue to arise...
...And the effort must lead to decisions that thoughtful persons in a pluralistic society can respect, no matter what policies they would prefer...
...BRUCE RUSSETr p RESIDENT REAGAN has an ability to tap profound emotional depths in the American people...
...Nor for pro-choicers to call fetuses parasites and call the question closed...
...security...
...Official arguments for SDI have consequently shifted their emphasis to objectives such as insuring the survivability of an adequate number of American land-based retaliatory missiles...
...and Soviet anti-missile defenses should give some indication of the USSR's own probable resolve to offset a U.S, space-based defense...
...use of nuclear weapons, even against strictly military targets, could satisfy the second traditional criterion of "proportionality," in that the number of civilian deaths, however unintended, would be far beyond the bounds of any proportionate good to be achieved or evil to be avoided by that use...
...Instead of becoming a policy, in the president's rhetoric, of "mutually assured survival" rather than MAD ("mutually assured destruction"), it would actually reinforce MAD...
...The bishops gave but a reluctant and "strictly conditioned" acceptance of deterrence, and made it clear that certain forms of deterrence -- namely the deliberate use or intent to use weapons against civilian populations, even in retaliation -- could never be morally acceptable, and deserved condemnation...
...All of these problems exist quite apart from the other, myriad difficulties in deploying an untested SDI: its complicated and vulnerable computer systems...
...The administration now sees SDI research extending far into the 1990s...
...In all likelihood, any even moderately intelligent enemy would make an end run around the SDI, with bombers, apparently peaceful merchant ships carrying bombs and sailing in and out of American seaports, and even bombs delivered by van or suitcase...
...A working SDI would be composed of several layers of defense...
...The 1972 ABM Treaty permits one such system to each side...
...SDI would then have led to a net loss in U.S...
...Perhaps we would never make a first strike...
...But can the Russians be confident of that...
...rational agreement is often hard-won, and will only succeed when each side can see clearly why the other side begins from the position it does...
...But he also appeals to our moral sense, our desire to avoid targeting civilians in other countries...
...Glenn Kent, USAF Ret., of the Rand Corporation, were both sides to have an equal defense of this nature, the Soviet Union would have an inherent strategic advantage because of its differing force structure, geographic nature, and political system...
...The leaky shield offered by SDI may look inadequate to deal with an attack by thousands of warheads, but could be much more adequate to deal with the sharply diminished number of warheads that might be launched in retaliation after a moderately successful first strike...
...Nor have we much assurance about the ways political and military entities are likely to respond to a new and strained situation in which 'all the known parameters of the nuclear stand-off are fundamentally altered, and in which military strategy is suddenly untried...
...The point then is whether, even if SDI should work more or less as advertised, we would want it...
...In a multi-phase SDI system, each succeeding layer would pick off most of the incoming warheads missed by the preceding phase or phases...
...This judgment conformed with the traditional "just-war" criterion requiring "discrimination" in the use of force...
...In December 1983, Secretary Weinberger said that a unilateral, effective Soviet SDI "would be one of the most frightening prospects I could imagihe...
...The president appeals to our self-interest in not becoming the targets of nuclear weapons...
...In any substantial strike, some missiles would always get through...
...Most telling has been the report on SI)I and anti-satellite weapons last September by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment (Strategic Defense, Princeton, paper $12.50, 146 pp...
...Space,-bas0~.~.~ . weapons using SDl-spawned technology could swiftly" "" and accurately destroy targets in space as well as on the earth's surface, making vulnerable an adversary's space satellites, its "soft communications network," its strategic missiles, its bombers on the ground, oil tankers, power plants, and even its grain fields...
...Another layer, perhaps Of kinetic-energy weapons (objects fired at very high speeds to cause great destruction on impact), would intercept in the "mid-course phase" a large proportion of those warheads missed by the first layer...
...will not be set aside in response to any demand in connection with any arms reduction agreement," he told them...
...A Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, forbidding all such testing instead of, at present, just tests above ground, has been ready for signature since the late days of the Carter 11 April 1986:211...
...Enough American landbased missiles should survive to inflict that kind of damage...
...This may be hyperbole, but the fact that even France has announced it would mount a major effort to develop nuclear weapons capable of penetrating U.S...
...The Pentagon's recent annual "Defense Guidance" document gives SDI the "highest priority" among all Pentagon programs, and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger underscored the administration's commitment to SDI at a meeting last month with NATO defense ministers: SD...
Vol. 113 • April 1986 • No. 7
