The folly of national missile defense
Galbraith, James K.
THE FILM Thirteen Days, which deals with the Cuban missile crisis, reminds us that the danger of global nuclear annihilation does not come, mainly, from irrational adversaries and rogue...
...But in fact, missile defenses in all forms are drastically destabilizing, easily defeated, and globally dangerous whether the system works or not...
...The obvious fallacy is that no "rogue" state would target the United States with a ballistic missile when simpler, cheaper, more effective, less traceable means of delivering a small atomic terror weapon are available, against which missile defenses would be useless...
...But TMD has its own dangers, and a decision to move TMD now does not preclude a decision to move ahead with national missile defense (NMD) later...
...Third, such attacks are actually invited: how is a state targeted by missile defense to know that the shipboard missiles are in fact interceptors, and not short-range nuclear shiptoshore weapons...
...NMD has been tested repeatedly...
...And if NMD is really aimed against accidental launch by Russia or China, how can TMD counter this threat...
...But if TMD develops into a workable system, then many parts of the world will be drawn into the vortex—beginning in all likelihood at the Taiwan Strait...
...It can be implemented, up to a point, by upgrading existing systems...
...First, scores of billions have already been spent on the system, with little to show...
...This point is clear to both Russia and China, who long ago concluded that NMD merely extends longstanding American strike-first plans...
...it has enabled them to escape the stigma of Dr...
...It took only six years to go from the discovery of uranium fission to the detonation of an atomic bomb, and only one test to show that the implosion bomb would work...
...And it cannot seriously threaten the retaliatory nuclear forces of a great power like Russia or China...
...As such, missile defense in any form threatens the fragile stability of nuclear peace...
...The accidental launch argument, on the other hand, concedes that Russian and Chinese missiles are the real targets...
...It is a highway back to the days when thermonuclear death threatened from one minute to the next...
...The administration claims to regard this treaty as a cold war relic, but it is the foundation of the entire structure of strategic arms control...
...Second, who protects the ships...
...Third, it is a budget sinkhole...
...Finally, there is—or will be eventually— proliferation, a military certainty in a multipolar, globalized world...
...Fourth (and partly for this reason), the ABM treaty forbids a ship-based ballistic missile defense system...
...The administration claims that NMD is not targeted against Chinese or Russian deterrence, but against the threat of a rogue state or an accidental missile launch...
...In each case, countermeasures will follow...
...First, it is a diplomatic disaster...
...Diplomacy worked when, under the threat of the hydrogen bomb, nothing else could...
...Second, all military development programs cost much more than is budgeted for them at the outset...
...Finally, it is a strategic threat...
...But once created, it will be copied, around the world, by emerging nuclear states who are close to each other: India and Pakistan, and perhaps especially Israel, Iran, and Iraq...
...Cost is particularly openended for high-urgency programs whose technological difficulties remain unresolved...
...As defense, national missile defense will not work, for the simple reason that it is easily defeated by decoys and by attacks on the "eyes" of the system...
...This piece is adapted from an essay in the ECAAR newsletter...
...The fact that the technology has not matured after forty years of effort is clear evidence of this fact...
...Without the ABM Treaty, neither Russia nor China can feel secure in their second-strike capabilities, and neither will comfortably adhere to their longstanding restraint in nuclear offensive weapons...
...The risk is then of proliferating offensedefense arms races, with high likelihood that 6 n DISSENT / Summer 2001 BRAVE NEW GLOBE one or more of them will eventually lead to nuclear war...
...There is no sign that the fundamental difficulties of making it work under combat conditions can be overcome...
...Instead, the main threat stems from the policies and behaviors of those entrusted with the world's largest and most volatile nuclear arsenal— our own...
...THE FILM Thirteen Days, which deals with the Cuban missile crisis, reminds us that the danger of global nuclear annihilation does not come, mainly, from irrational adversaries and rogue states...
...This is, of course, the further lesson of Thirteen Days...
...The American debate over missile defense has accepted this self-portrayal—so much so that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld now feels able to describe the pursuit of missile defense as a "moral imperative...
...So what is TMD really about, except once again for blackmail or possibly to build a system for sale to Israel and Taiwan...
...Following a first strike, a limited missile defense might shoot down a handful of surviving retaliatory missiles...
...It makes no sense at all to allow the U.S.-Taiwan military relationship or a desire for arms sales to force the hand of the mainland...
...JAMES K. GALBRAITH chairs Economists Allied for Arms Reduction...
...But the risk of accidents could be eliminated by dealerting Russian missiles (China's are not on high alert now), as well as our own—de-alerting that is only possible without missile defense...
...Put simply, national missile defense is wrongheaded on four counts...
...The Taiwan issue deserves special attention, for the fact is that both sides of that dispute have displayed creative patience over fiftytwo years, during which time strong ties of trade, finance, and personal relationship have built up between them...
...They came because John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev opened communication channels, agreed to withdraw forward-based missiles from both Cuba and Turkey, and later banned atmospheric testing...
...It places confidence in men with trigger fingers, and puts hair-trigger systems back onto forward stations...
...In the last analysis, therefore, no form of missile defense can ever substitute for building strategic stability, for resolving conflicts, for de-alerting, and ultimately for disarmament, on which the nuclear future of the world finally depends...
...Deployment of NMD requires abrogation of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM...
...No shipbased or boost-phase system can hope to hit a missile launched from the interior of either country...
...Our allies in Europe and elsewhere recognize these dangers, and for this reason they also oppose U.S...
...The fact that NMD cannot defend against a first strike again calls attention to the only configuration in which NMD might work: as an adjunct to an American first strike that destroys most enemy forces (and everything else) on the ground...
...Accordingly, the American argument over whether to proceed has come to turn on technical issues...
...It can be based on ships and posted to parts of the world where missile threats exist...
...Such programs are, of course, an invitation to misDISSENT / Summer 2001 n 5 BRAVE NEW GLOBE representation and fraud...
...AT FIRST GLANCE, theater missile defense (TMD) is comparatively appealing...
...NMD is impossibly expensive...
...Missile defense repudiates diplomacy...
...Opponents make the superficially pragmatic argument that decisions to deploy should be delayed until the system can be proven to work...
...Fifth, there is a glaring logical contradiction in TMD plans...
...Strangelove and to portray themselves as guardians of the search for security and survival...
...DISSENT / Summer 2001 n 7...
...On permanent station near hostile countries, they are vulnerable to missile attack—or for that matter to attack by shore-based jets, patrol boats, or submarines...
...So long as neither side commits to major military upgrading now, the other need not do so...
...important accusations of this have already been made against NMD...
...Theater missile defense may be the path of the years just ahead...
...They will respond, as both have warned, by increasing the numbers of their own missiles, and by placing their forces on a higher alert...
...TMD will only come to exist if, with very large investments, we create the technology...
...And matters will be worse still if TMD turns out to be a cover for later development of NMD...
...Under TMD, that decision has to rest with a forward commander—the ship's captain, in the naval version...
...There is a tendency, here and in Europe, to view this as a face-saving station along the path of retreat from the delusions of NMD...
...no less than NMD, TMD in this form would undermine arms control...
...Standard estimates of sixty billion dollars for a working system overlook two important facts...
...The new administration may be showing technical realism in shifting emphasis from a national ballistic missile shield to the more limited theater missile defense (TMD...
...navy ships to have authority to shoot down test rockets and weather satellites in the boost phase...
...Since Ronald Reagan announced what was dubbed "Star Wars" in 1983, missile defense has come to dominate the evolution of strategic technologies and strategic thinking...
...Second, it is a technological dead end...
...NMD is, in short, an unlimited budget drain aimed at a deeply immoral objective: the nuclear blackmail of other states...
...It signals, and reflects, contempt for the interests, concerns, and perspectives of other powers...
...If the rogue state argument for NMD is a ruse, how can it be a valid argument for TMD...
...First, who decides when a missile is hostile...
...But a closer look raises frightening questions...
...The great improvements in strategic stability that followed the Cuban crisis did not come from better U-2s, more accurate inter-continental ballistic missiles, or because the Russians "blinked...
...In taking this position, they concede the principle that a working system would be a good thing...
...Do we want U.S...
...For the leaders of the nuclear establishment, its propaganda value has been immense...
Vol. 48 • July 2001 • No. 3
