An early controversy in the 2000 U.S. presidential race centers on the unhistorical opinions of Pat Buchanan. Mr. Buchanan believes that the United States may have been better off had it stayed out of World War II. Had our British and French allies not given war guarantees to Poland and Czechoslovakia, Germany, after defeating those countries, would have been free to wage war unencumbered against the Soviet Union. Such a view, besides being mere folly, overlooks the obvious: that Hitler, over time, would have obtained atomic bombs and, coupled with German rocketry, would have presented and even more monumental threat to the Free World.
We know this, of course, because it is true. The German V-1 rocket was a crude cruise missile slightly predating the V-2, a ballistic missile. Hitler built them for two reasons: to kill Englishmen and to break the spirit of the British people. Thankfully the Germans were not able to launch the V-2 with an atomic warhead, because we also know that Hitler had his own version of the Manhattan Project underway.
How would Germany have been stopped then? Suppose Hitlers war machine could have been beaten on the battlefield had he possessed a deliverable nuclear bomb. Can anyone doubt that Hitler, in the bunker and on the verge of defeat, would not have taken millions of Americans, Englishmen, or Frenchmen with him?
Since the end of World War II, men as evil as Hitler have possessed nuclear weapons. Unlike Hitler, Soviet leaders have been rational and calculating, or at least cautious, in their use of military power, especially nuclear weapons. But at the end of the 20th Century, other nations have the destructive power of the bomb as well. And these nations, undemocratic and militaristic, may not be as rational or as cautious in their application of military power. For these nations, the use of nuclear weapons may not be out of the question.
A nuclear missile is a weapon of terror. It can be launched from afar, with little or no warning. And yet for many Americans today, nuclear war is unimaginable. After all, despite 40 years of hostility with the Soviet Union, nuclear war was averted. Who can imagine, in the post-Cold War era, the nuclear destruction of major cities such as Los Angeles or New York or Seattle or Houston? Who, in his worst nightmare, could conceive of a nation with nuclear missiles actually ever using them? The sheer terror of mutually assured destruction worked yesterday, some might say, why will it not work today?.
Common sense would dictate that the United States should have a defense against ballistic missiles. This was President Reagans view, and the view of the men and women who advanced the cause of missile defense. Reagan opposed the idea that the only alternative the United States possessed to a nuclear attack was the destruction of the people of the nation that launched the missile first. President Reagan expressed this understanding in moral terms. He asked the nation why it would not be better to save lives than to avenge them. And yet, 16 years after Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative, the United States cannot stop a single missile launched at its citizens.
Since that time the worlds strategic balance has changed dramatically. No longer is the threat of nuclear attack limited to Russia and Communist China. Countries around the world, many of them hostile to the United States, are actively acquiring nuclear-armed missile technology. In the case of North Korea, Iran and Iraq, they have demonstrated time and again that they do not value the lives and well-being of their own people. We should not expect that they value the lives of American citizens.
That these nations should have this capability should come as a shock to no one. The fact is, the techniques for making weapons of mass destructionan old Soviet term for chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons delivered by a ballistic missilehave been around for a long time. Nuclear bomb-making technology is fifty years old. Chemical weapons are older than that. Never before, however, has this destructive capability been in the hands of so many.
One question for our time, then, is whether the old strategic doctrine of mutually assured destruction will deter a new generation of tyrants from using their weapons against the United States. Will U.S. presidents have the same resolve as their predecessors to the threat of nuclear attack? Would a president really launch a retaliatory strike against a country if it meant certain and massive casualties to American citizens? Could a nation like North Korea-which starves its own people so that its armed forces can build nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles-launch an attack against the United States to achieve a strategic objective, or as a final act of desperation if it invaded South Korea unsuccessfully? A second, even more troubling question remains: Is nuclear war possible?
This paper will discuss the ballistic missile threat to the United States, the legal and political obstacles to building a missile defense, and what the United States should actually do in the short term and long term to defend itself from missile attack.
This paper is part of a larger project to educate citizens about the need for a national missile defense in light of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by Russia, Communist China, North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. Of course, other countries, such as India and Pakistan, have nuclear weapons, but do not pose threats to America, and so are not considered here. Subsequent papers will offer an in-depth discussion of the strategic targets in the western United States and an explanation of the science of missile defense in terms any citizen or policymaker can understand.
The goal of this effort is to increase awareness among the free people of the United States while they still have time to defend themselves from the incalculable consequences of nuclear attack or nuclear blackmail.
The Threat to the United States
The threat to the United States cannot be understood only in terms of the number of nuclear missiles possessed by its enemies. Numbers tell only a small part of the story.
At the height of the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union had well over 20,000 nuclear warheads between them. Today those numbers are under 10,000. These 10,000 warheads, however, would still cause massive destruction on both sides. But even China, with just under 20 missiles capable of hitting the United States, or North Korea, which is testing a single missile with more to follow, has the ability to kill millions of Americans.
What is more important than the numbers of missiles is the fact that these countries have them at all. Worse, they may be willing to use them. Russia, China and North Korea are spending billions of dollars to build weapons of mass destruction that have one purpose: To kill Americans. By themselves, missiles do not make nuclear war inevitable. But they do make it possible.
A sensible person might ask why these nations would go to all the trouble. Russia is becoming a democratic nation-is it not? China, although politically repressive, is a valued trading partner. And as for North Korea, what would a country that can barely feed its own people have to gain from attacking the United States? The answer is merely the age-old desire by some nations for power over others. In a century scarred by the predations of Nazism and Communism, it is simply impossible to deny this brutal point. Despite the best efforts of freedom loving people, this lust for power cannot be eradicated from the souls of tyrants. Nuclear weapons give a nation the power to exert influence far in excess of their size or wealth. They are the ultimate symbol of military power.
Let us now take a closer look at the threats facing the United States from abroad.
The Threat From Russia
The collapse of the Soviet Union did not mean its disarmament. The Soviets massive investments in nuclear-war fighting capability remain at the disposal of the Russian government. Because of its sheer size, the Russian nuclear arsenal remains the single greatest threat to U.S. security. Russia possesses and continues to modernize a huge nuclear arsenal-thousands of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and sea-launched cruise missiles (SLCMs). Though at approximate parity with the U.S. in strategic nuclear arms, Russia retains a substantial lead in non-strategic nuclear weapons, some 8-15,000 to 300. Unfortunately for the United States, current Russian military development-at least concerning its nuclear forces-resembles that of the old Soviet Union more than a new democratic Russia. And the return of ex-KGB chief Yevgeny Primakov, and other Communists, as major political figures suggests that the political developments the West hoped for are slow to arrive if they arrive at all.
Another foreboding sign: Russian scientist Yuri Solomonov, in an interview in the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper in February 1999, boasted that the new Russian Topol-M rocket was the most advanced Russian strategic missile ever made. Solomonov went on to chide western missile defense advocates by declaring that the Topol M could defeat any anti-missile system.
Reports that the control of the Russian nuclear arsenal is breaking down cannot be taken lightly. Should a missile or warhead get into the hands of rogue elements of the Russian military a launch upon the United States is not impossible. Nor is transfer of such technology to third world tyrants out of the question. Indeed, legitimate elements of the Russian nuclear and scientific establishment have been at odds with the United States government over known transfers of nuclear and missile technology to Iran, Iraq and North Korea.
Amid reports that its economy is collapsing there are also reports from Le Monde and Janes Defense Weekly that Russia is developing an ultrasonic cruise missile capable of destroying the current naval defenses of the United States. Should anyone doubt the seriousness of Russias military, in January it unveiled a new stealth fighter plane.
The situation may be even more dangerous. In January 1995, President Boris Yeltsin activated his nuclear briefcase, based on the false warning that a Norwegian space rocket was a U.S. missile attack. Even a benign Russia that miscalculates can destroy America in less than a half and hour.
Whether or not Russia is changing for the better remains a subject of hot debate. But there can be little doubt that the Russian nuclear threat remains.
The Threat from China
From a strategic point of view, China is different from Russia. While the Russians have given up the holdings of the former Soviet Union (with some exceptions), China, on the other hand, lays claim to the Republic of China on Taiwan, as well as island possessions claimed by Japan and the Philippines. What is more, the Chinese harbor ill feelings over past Japanese imperialism on the mainland. These facts they make plain. And as the Russians engage in arms-control diplomacy, the Chinese engage in a military buildup.
The Chinese appear to be deadly serious about their nuclear intentions. The Peoples Liberation Army is aggressively building a modern nuclear force capable of causing mass destruction. The Central Intelligence Agency confirmed in 1998 that in addition having over 600 nuclear weapons, China has at least 13 nuclear-armed ICBMs aimed at the United States. Each one is capable of destroying major U.S. cities. The Dong Feng 31 missile, with a range of 4,960 miles, gives China major strike capability against targets in Hawaii and along the entire west coast of the United States. Chinas next generation of ICBMs, the DF 41 and the DF 5A, will soon be capable of delivering large nuclear payloads anywhere in the U.S.
The capabilities of the DF 31 reveal the nature of Chinese nuclear thinking. The DF 31 is a mobile missile, easily concealed from current U.S. satellite surveillance. Mobility means that U.S. ICBMs cannot target these missiles. In other words, the DF 31 is an offensive weapon designed to ensure the Chinese first and second-strike nuclear capability in the event of war with the United States.
Also, there are clear indications of how China views nuclear weapons politically. During a confrontation between Taiwan and the Peoples Republic of China in 1996, Lt. Gen. Xiong Guang Kai, a senior Communist Chinese official, made an implicit nuclear threat against California, telling a U.S. official not to interfere because Americans care more about Los Angeles than they do Tai Pei. For the Chinese then, nuclear missiles are not merely offensive weapons with which to engage in war but are tools of policy. In this instance in 1996, they were meant to limit U.S. influence over events in the Far East.
Recent translations of Chinese military journals also reveal a sober view of nuclear weapons and strategy. Peoples Liberation Army General Mi Zhenyu writes that because China will not produce the number of ICBMs that Russia or the United States possesses anytime soon, it will be necessary to develop an advanced force of tactical nuclear missiles in order to meet their foreign policy and military defense goals. These tactical nuclear weapons are of the range to hit U.S. troops and allies in South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. And, as China builds up its strategic nuclear force, it must also keep pace with regard to a variety of advanced exotica, such as laser, particle beam, microwave and plasma technologies. Bear in mind that China is an underdeveloped, essentially Third World nation. And yet the recent report by the Cox Committee-a congressional committee headed up by California Congressman Christopher Cox to investigate Chinese espionage and possible transfers of military technology-suggested that the Chinese are prepared to take whatever steps necessary to make up for any technological shortcomings they may have. Indeed, the theft of the highly advanced W-88 warhead miniaturization technology from the U.S. nuclear laboratories is a clear indicator of how serious the Chinese are.
It is perfectly understandable that in the nuclear age China would want the same military capability as other nations. It would be folly for the U.S. to believe otherwise. It should alarm us, though, that in addition to making its nuclear arsenal more potent, the Chinese are seeking to dominate the nations of the Far East.
Michael Pillsbury, who has translated recent Chinese military journals and published them with the National Defense University, suggests that it is dangerous for American strategists to believe that diplomatic and cultural exchanges alone will change Chinese ambitions or check the rise of more militaristic forces within the Chinese leadership. In the meantime, Pillsbury notes, Chinese thinkers are writing about how the PLA defeated the United States in Korea and Vietnam and how Chinese Armed Forces could do it again if necessary. These are the types of misperceptions that U.S. policy makers must work to overcome. American China policy must make explicit the power at the disposal of the United States.
During the Cold War there was at least the belief that the United States and the Soviet Union would refrain from nuclear war for fear of destroying one another. This doctrine, called mutually assured destruction, or MAD, hinged on the two nations mutual understanding that they were mutually vulnerable to nuclear annihilation. But MAD does not apply to Chinese strategic thinking. First, with a population of 1.3 billion, the Chinese conceivably could absorb a massive nuclear strike. Second, China is trying to change the odds to its favor. One indication of this is the Great Wall Project-a missile complex built into the Tai-Hang Mountain Range in Northern China, designed to withstand a massive nuclear strike and ensure Chinese nuclear retaliation. Such a complex is built away from population centers and is not easily targeted with current U.S. nuclear forces. In other words, the strategic thinking that prevailed in the U.S. during the Cold War is sorely outdated.
The Threat from North Korea
Like Communist China, North Korea has already demonstrated, with its test launch of the Taepo Dong I rocket in August 1999, that it is serious about developing nuclear weapons. The Taepo Dong I missile is capable of traveling much farther than first predicted. As a bipartisan commission of security experts pointed out in its 1998 report, the Taepo Dong II, North Koreas next generation missile, is not only capable of hitting Alaska-repository of 25% of U.S. oil reserves-and Hawaii, but also the western states of Washington, Oregon, California and Nevada. And lest anyone forget, this heavy investment in nuclear weaponry occurs at a time when North Koreas citizens are reportedly grossly malnourished or starving to death.
In light of these revelations, a defector, Colonel Choi Ju-hwal, explained at a 1997 U.S. Senate hearing why North Korea is developing nuclear missiles: If war breaks out in the Korean peninsula, the Norths main target will be the U.S. forces based in the South (Korea) and Japan, which is the reason the North has been working furiously on its missile program. Colonel Choi also testified that the ultimate goal for the development of North Korean missiles is to reach the mainland of the United States.
Like China, North Korea has attempted to use the threat of nuclear attack as a means of achieving its policy goals. In 1994, North Korea threatened to turn Seoul and Tokyo into a sea of glass-an expression that implies the use of a nuclear weapon-if the U.S. held its annual military exercises with its ally, South Korea, and insisted on continuing inspections of its nuclear weapons programs. Subsequently, the U.S. offered to suspend its inspections and build North Korea two new 1000-Megawatt nuclear reactors in exchange for a promise of better behavior.
All of this raises troubling questions. What will deter China and North Korea from using their military or nuclear arsenals to achieve their strategic objectives? How would the United States respond to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or a North Korean invasion of the South? Would the U.S. resist such an invasion, launched using only conventional forces, if it were preceded by threats of the nuclear destruction of Los Angeles, or San Francisco, or Prudhoe Bay, Alaska? Absent even a limited missile defense U.S. policymakers would have to pause and consider the consequences.
Understanding the Threat: The White House vs. Congress
Another question: Why have these facts not led policymakers to action? Although the threat has been present throughout the Cold War, only recently has the government acknowledged the growing nuclear threat from nations other than Russia. Throughout much of the Clinton Administrations tenure, U.S government officials have been guided by a threat assessment in denial of North Korean, Iraqi and Iranian nuclear proliferation, and Chinese and Russian nuclear modernization. Since we do not now have a missile defense, it is worth understanding why America is unprotected today, and why we only now may be getting somewhere. It is a story of how the administration politicized an intelligence estimate.
National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) are the intelligence communitys analyses of issues of major importance to the United States. These analyses are the communitys most authoritative projection of future developments in a particular area. They are supposed to help government policymakers and top military brass understand key issues by presenting relevant facts, making judgments about likely developments abroad, and suggesting what these events mean to the United States. NIEs are produced by the National Intelligence Council, which is made up of intelligence officers from all the intelligence agencies with expertise on the subject in question. Ultimately, these intelligence estimates are the Director of Central Intelligences assessment with the concurrence of the other intelligence agencies, and except where dissent is noted in the text or footnotes. In late 1995, President Clintons National Intelligence Council produced NIE 95-19: Emerging Missile Threats to North America During the Next 15 Years. It declared, with 100 percent certainty, that No country, other than the major declared nuclear powers, will develop or otherwise acquire a ballistic missile in the next 15 years that could threaten the contiguous 48 states and Canada. The release of this estimate left members of Congress flabbergasted. Republican leaders were considering legislation to deploy a limited National Missile Defense. The Clinton administration had opposed the plan vigorously, and the President subsequently vetoed the bill. Before NIE 95-15, the administration argued that a national missile defense such as the one proposed by Congressional Republicans was too costly. After its release, however, the White House added that NMD was unwarranted because there was no threat. A number of congressmen saw the NIE as little more than a political ploy to subvert the missile defense bill.
But the reality of the threat was too much for R. James Woolsey, Clintons first director of Central Intelligence. He found the NIE 95-19 to be fundamentally flawed. By generating the estimate based on weak and misleading assumptions about the nature of North Koreas technical prowess, Woolsey wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, it was inevitable that NIE 95-19 would underestimate the real threat. Worse, the analysis was based on the threat to the 48 contiguous states it excluded Alaska and Hawaii. Only by excluding Alaska and Hawaii-two states within range of North Korean missiles-could the authors of NIE 95-19 claim that North Korea posed no immediate threat.
In May 1997, following hearings on the ballistic missile threat led by scholars from the Claremont Institute, the Alaska State Legislature sent a resolution to President Clinton and Congress calling on them to defend Alaska and to include the state in any future National Intelligence Estimate.
In response to this, Congress assembled an independent team of outside experts in late 1997 to assess independently the nuclear threats to the United States. This represented a vote of no-confidence in NIE 95-19. This wasnt the first time Congress had second-guessed a national intelligence estimate. In 1975, when Congress and the public had serious concerns about CIA estimates of Soviet strategic forces and programs, then-Director of Central Intelligence George Bush appointed a B-Team to look at the same evidence - the A-Team being the CIAs own analysts. The B-Team came to remarkably different conclusions, which were subsequently found to be far more accurate. The new B-team, headed by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, filed its report in July 1998. Called the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (or Rumsfeld Commission for short), the report differed significantly from the official Clinton administrations assessments.
Here, in brief, is what the Rumsfeld Commission found:
Concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially hostile nations to acquire missiles with biological or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United States, its deployed forces and its friends and allies.
The threat to the U.S. posed by these emerging capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the Intelligence Community.
The Intelligence Communitys ability to provide timely and accurate estimates of ballistic missile threats to the U.S. is eroding.
The warning times the U.S. can expect of new, threatening ballistic missile deployments are being reduced.
Note two important things about the Rumsfeld Commissions report. First, this B-Team looked at the same intelligence materials that the CIA reviewed for its assessment. But, in addition to looking at the hard data of intelligence itself, the commission members also studied significant gaps in U.S. intelligence collection capabilities. Rather than assuming that Russia may remain stable or that a rogue state will fail to acquire advanced ballistic missile technology from another nation, the commission allowed for the uncertainties inherent in political calculations. Since no one has a crystal ball, the future of Russian political stability (to take just one example) remains a mystery. The commission allowed room for a rogue state to attempt to deceive the U.S. and deny it the ability to gather hard intelligence on its weapons programs The Rumsfeld report also questioned whether U.S. intelligence collection will remain adequate to the task of detecting an ongoing weapons program in the future. This only seems reasonable, in light of the experience of the Persian Gulf War. Just prior to the Gulf War in 1991, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had inspected Iraqs nuclear program and found it to be in compliance with international law. After the war, however, U.S. and international agencies began to find out how extensive, dedicated, and hidden Saddam Husseins secret weapons program actually was. Second, it is important to understand that intelligence analysts on the National Intelligence Council reflect the culture of the intelligence bureaucracy. Career bureaucrats must live within the constraints of their political masters. Strong dissent from the mainstream view is not rewarded. Prior to the reporting of NIE 95-19, there was reportedly a night of the long knives-a purge of the National Intelligence Council-to shape the bureaucracy to the liking of the Clinton White House. The roster of the Rumsfeld commission, on the other hand, reads like a Whos Who list of high-ranking, bi-partisan experts. Consisting of physicists, economists, engineers, generals, lawyers, and professors, the group represents Democrats and Republicans who served in every administration since Nixon. In addition to a broader study of the threat, commission members conducted interviews with most of the principals involved in the official assessment, as well as with numerous outside experts. Yet despite the manifold differences among commission members about how to solve the problem, they achieved consensus on the reports major findings.
A number of the commissions secondary findings are also important. These reflect the commissions preference for a more realistic way of assessing threats. For example, even though rogue nations will not have the technical sophistication of the United States, they would be able to inflict major destruction on the U.S. within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability (10 years in the case of Iraq). Unlike NIE 95-19, which categorically averred that no such threat will emerge for at least fifteen years, the Rumsfeld Commission argued that [n]ewer ballistic missile and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development programs no longer follow the patterns initially set by the U.S. and the Soviet Union. These programs require neither high standards of missile accuracy, reliability and safety nor large numbers of missiles and therefore can move ahead more rapidly.
In other words, U.S. intelligence should not mirror-image the behavior of rogue states. Mirror-image is intelligence jargon for attributing your own standards and behavior to those of your enemy. For example, U.S. nuclear proliferation experts discounted Iraqi work on Electromagnetic Isotope Separation (EMIS) for years, because the U.S. discovered during the Manhattan Project in the 1940s that it was not cost-effective, and required huge amounts of electricity for enriching uranium. But what these same government experts failed to realize was that Iraqi leaders had plenty of petroleum and hydroelectric power to use. To them, it was not a waste.
The commission also concluded that Nations are increasingly able to conceal important elements of their ballistic missile and associate WMD programs and are highly motivated to do so. As a result of this view, it determined that [d]uring several of those years [the five from which a decision to develop such weapons was made], the U.S. might not be aware that such a decision had been made. India did this in preparation for its surprise nuclear weapons tests in April 1998. It is safe to assume the same for other countries as well. The United States has hard intelligence about Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iraqi, Libyan, Syrian, and Iranian concealment, denial, and deception programs occurring right now. These are huge underground facilities designed to develop and build ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction, often aided by Russia, but by other countries as well. This problem, however annoying to the Clinton administration, will not go away. After the Gulf War, nations proceed with such programs only if they can be concealed from U.S. intelligence-collection efforts. U.S. intelligence, the Rumsfeld Commission recommended, must develop new techniques for detecting these programs, and new methods for accommodating the uncomfortable conclusions that follow.
Finally, the Rumsfeld Commission flatly contradicts NIE 95-19s rosy assumption that diplomatic arms control efforts are an effective barrier to proliferation. As the commission notes, A nation that wants to develop ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction can now obtain extensive technical assistance from outside sources. Foreign assistance is not a wild card. It is a fact. The network of proliferators and their clients is a rogues gallery. China sells nuclear and ballistic missile technology to Pakistan and ballistic missiles to Iran and Saudi Arabia. North Korea sells ballistic missile technology to almost everyone including a number of states in the Middle East. Russia sells both nuclear and ballistic missile technologies to the highest bidder. Iran and Pakistan already have a more sophisticated ballistic missile industry than North Korea, and may also go on the market for customers soon. The barriers to proliferation in NIE 95-19 simply do not exist.
This was underscored in May 1999, when the Cox Committee released its report of Chinese espionage of U.S. nuclear and ballistic missile technology. The committees investigation found that the PRC is one of the leading proliferators of complete ballistic missile systems and missile components in the world.
These are the facts of nuclear missile proliferation. Either they will be heeded and steps taken to defend against them or they will be ignored to the peril of the United States.
Misunderstanding Our Adversaries
Historically, official U.S. government reports and documents referred to mass destruction weapons as nuclear, biological, or chemical (NBC) weapons or Chemical, Biological, Radiological (CBR) weapons. Since the end of the Cold War, however, the U.S. has adopted the Soviet nomenclature, weapons of mass destruction. This is unfortunate for several reasons. First, it collapses certain important distinctions, lumping together very different weapons and their effects. Nuclear weapons can be made small enough to damage a bridge, yet without the trademark mushroom cloud or residual radioactive fallout, or large enough to wipe out a fleet of ships. Chemical weapons may be designed to only incapacitate soldiers for a short time, or lethally persist for several days. Biological weapons, on the other hand, can kill millions. The Black Death killed about one-quarter of the population of medieval Europe. Second, despite its Soviet origin, the term weapon of mass destruction reflects a U.S. prejudice on their potential use in war, a bias that others do not share. The Soviet military first came up with the term WMD to obscure its inadequate inventory of nuclear weapons early in the Cold War. Later, however, Soviet propagandists used the term extensively in arms control negotiations to brow beat the U.S. diplomatically. The U.S. adopted the term after the Cold War because it fit U.S. bias. The bias is that people in positions of responsibility in the U.S. consider massively destroying another country only as a last resort. Not unless the very survival of the U.S. was at stake would U.S. policymakers consider using such weapons, and then only in retaliation. Such was, and purportedly remains, U.S. nuclear deterrence policy. Only after the Soviet Union, or now Russia, launched an effective surprise nuclear attack on the United States, would policymakers consider a nuclear riposte-a final, impulsive act of desperation.
U.S. adversaries do not view these weapons in the same way. They regard WMDs as special weapons-weapons that confer small states military leverage on larger ones. As such, special weapons may be weapons of first resort: a way to offset the superior conventional warfare capabilities of the United States demonstrated so ably in the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein, of course, has already used chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and even on his own citizens, the Kurds. The Soviet Union used chemical weapons against the Mudjahadeen in Afghanistan. Libyan leader Muammar Ghadafi has built a pharmaceutical plant- a chemical and biological weapons facility-inside of a mountain, about 90 miles south of Tripoli. The only reason to build such as facility inside of a mountain is to prevent the U.S. from destroying it. And Iran, despite its oil reserves, is developing the infrastructure for building nuclear weapons and is arming itself to the teeth with ballistic missiles.
Ultimately, adopting the Soviet nomenclature hampers Americans ability to see why hostile states want to develop, and use, such weapons, and leaves us vulnerable to surprise. The United States will be in for other surprises as well. Some historians argue that true surprise attacks never really occur, that there will always be warning-a factor the Clinton administration counts on in its official intelligence estimate. But that blurs a distinction. There is more than one kind of surprise. A bolt from the blue surprise attack, one in which no warning is given or comes out of the blue during peacetime conditions, is extremely rare in history. But a bolt from the black surprise attack has been ubiquitous. A bolt from the black is a surprise attack that comes after a great deal of warning. Usually, though, the warning is a combination of signals and noise, terms borrowed from early radio broadcasts.
The signals are the actual warning signs of an impending attack. These may include such things as troop movements, intensified military communications, stolen war plans, civil defense exercises, and the like. But the noise may be garbled, confused, or deceptive signals. These might include misleading diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict, fake communication among divisions of the hostile government, and concerted efforts to deceive the victim. The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was a bolt from the black that contained plenty of signals but also lots of noise. Separating the two is difficult in the best of times-it is often impossible when faced with an implacable foe.
A bolt from the black surprise attack also may occur without the enemys help. Surprises can occur because policymakers have biases that blind them to the intentions of other states. Sometimes it is because they mirror-image the motives and behavior of other leaders. Just as individuals project motives on others behavior when they do not know why they do certain things, so also governments project on the behavior of other states. State leaders frequently interpret other states actions based on their own experiences, values, styles of governing, and even military doctrines. During the Cold War, certain American leaders and all too often, the Central Intelligence Agency explained Soviet behavior by referring to U.S. democratic practices. We only deceive ourselves by such images.
At other times, leaders simply misperceive what other states do. Sometimes an administration holds a preferred, though flawed, interpretation of others behavior. Just prior to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, the CIA reported Iraqi troops massing on its southern border. But the Bush administration interpreted Iraqi troop movements as a way to intimidate the Kuwaitis in negotiations over war debts. Iraq had borrowed over $50 billion from Kuwait during its eight-year war with Iran and had no ability to repay the loans. The Bush administration misinterpreted the signals of Iraqi troop movements as noise-military bluster for gaining bargaining leverage over Kuwait.
Conversely, late in the Gulf War, the U.S. surprised Iraq when it launched the ground war. But since the U.S. took about six months to build up its forces in Saudi Arabia, the surprise couldnt be about the attack itself, but when and where it would occur. U.S. military intelligence learned that Saddam Hussein feared an amphibious operation from the Gulf coast. U.S. military leaders played to this bias by conducting publicized amphibious exercises in Saudi Arabia and advertised the large contingent of U.S. Marines on ships in the water off Kuwait. After air attacks destroyed Iraqi intelligence and radar, U.S. armored forces were moved out to the west to conduct a surprise ground assault, dubbed the hail Mary, that cut off Saddams forces from Kuwait. The amphibious attack never materialized, but Iraq learned of the deception too late to reinforce its western front. Saddams fear coupled with U.S. intrigue made the surprise possible.
Surprises occur. America should be prepared for them. And we can no longer afford to misunderstand the threats we face.
How the ABM Treaty Undermines the National Security of the United States and Its Allies
In the aftermath of the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission Report, and with growing public awareness of the nuclear threat to the United States, Defense Secretary William Cohen announced in January 1999 that the Clinton Administration was changing its policy on missile defense. Cohen acknowledged the growing ballistic missile threat to the United States and said the White House would ask Congress for $6.6 billion toward the deployment of a limited defense by 2005. Most important, the Administration also stated its willingness to alter its policy, even if that meant changing the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972.
That the United States should have a missile defense in the face of a growing Chinese and North Korean arms build-up is obvious. In the event of a crisis, even if Chinese or North Korean missiles were not launched against targets on U.S. soil, American troops in Asia and our allies in the Pacific Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea need protection, too. A change in policy on the ABM Treaty, long considered sacrosanct among arms-controllers in the United States, is perfectly sensible and long overdue by the Clinton Administration.
In an effort to prod the Clinton Administration along on missile defense, Congress proposed the National Defense Act of 1999. The law says that it is the policy of the United States government that a missile defense will be deployed as soon as it is technologically feasible. The bill passed in June 1999 with overwhelming bi-partisan support. President Clinton signed it into law in July.
Alas, that was not the end of the story. The evidence so far suggests that the Clinton administration is not committed to the new policy, but remains enthralled with the old one embodied in the ABM Treaty. In fact, during the hearings on the National Defense Act, the State Department issued advisories to American diplomatic missions abroad to assure them that the Act does not mean the United States will ever deploy a missile defense, despite the clear language in the law. Presumably, this was to assure our allies that America will remain vulnerable in the wake of Chinese and Russian protests of our new pro-missile defense policy. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Advisor Sandy Berger testified before Congress that the Administration believes the ABM Treaty is still the cornerstone of our strategic relationship with Russia. This is the line they deliver to the press to this day. But the fact remains that no national missile defense can be deployed as long as the United States recognizes the ABM Treaty. It is worth understanding what the ABM Treaty is all about
Understanding the ABM Treaty
The ABM Treatys language is very clear in its prohibition against building a national missile defense. This is encapsulated in Article I, Section 2:
Each Party undertakes not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense, and not to deploy ABM systems for defense of an individual region except as provided for in Article III of this Treaty.
The treaty allows each side to build a defense for an individual region that contains an offensive nuclear force. That guarantees each country could destroy the other in the event of nuclear conflict the principle of mutually assured destruction (MAD) rears its head yet again. In other words, instead of defending the citizens of the United States, we would defend missiles that could destroy the Soviet Union. The United States abandoned such a defense in the 1970s.
As we discussed earlier, the premise of a national security strategy based on mutually assured destruction is that nuclear war cannot be won and therefore should not be fought. President Kennedys Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, explained that Americas security comes from a willingness to destroy the attacker as a 20th Century nation, no matter what the cost to the United States, and not from any ability to partially limit damage to ourselves. For most of the nuclear age, this way of thinking has guided U.S. policymakers.
When the Nixon Administration negotiated the ABM Treaty, it did so based on the logic that since a nuclear war could not be won, the greatest security would come from a ban on any defense that would make nuclear war even possible. If one country could develop a defense to thwart enough incoming missiles, nuclear war would become an option in the event of confrontation. This would lead to an arms race to build a nuclear arsenal that could overwhelm the other side, and a race to come up with ever more advanced anti-missile systems. At some point, one side would believe that a preemptive nuclear attack would be the only option, lest the other side develop a decisive advantage. Better to simply ban anti-missile systems and work toward arms reductions that limited the potential, but mutually assured, destruction. Or so the thinking went.
Although this position made some sense-it would be difficult to see how the United States or the Soviet Union could have survived a massive nuclear exchange in 1972-it fails to take into account several obvious facts. The first is that nuclear war, like any war, would be fought in a rational way with strategic objectives that each country would try to meet. McNamaras pronouncement notwithstanding, it seems likely that the first priority of a U.S. president would be the safety of the American people. Although movies and books have depicted a nuclear exchange with thousands of ballistic missiles passing one another in the sky, it is highly unlikely that such an exchange would ever occur.
Although nuclear war seems unthinkable, it is worth considering how nuclear war would be fought.
How Nuclear War Would Have Been Fought with the Soviet Union
The United States, like the Soviet Union, has three components in its nuclear arsenal:
Land-based Forces: Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles and Ground-launched Cruise Missiles from bases in the United States, etc. Sea-based Forces : Sea-launched Ballistic Missiles and Sea-launched Cruise Missiles from submarines and missile cruisers. Air-Based: Air-launched Cruise Missiles from bombers
The details of where these missiles are based and where they would go in the event of war is, of course, classified. In general, it is thought that the first component-the U.S. land-based nuclear force-targets four types of Soviet, now Russian targets: the strategic nuclear force, military forces, political and military leadership, and economic and industrial centers. The second and third components-the nuclear submarines and bombers-are to be held, in the event of a preemptive Russian attack upon our ICBM force, to launch a devastating nuclear counterattack upon Russian population centers. In other words, in order to ensure mutually assured destruction, it is not necessary to launch the massive U.S. ICBM force. But this begs the question of whether the United States would launch on warning of a Russian attack, or would it absorb the nuclear strike and then determine its response?
Launching Americas ICBM force on warning of a Russian attack is illogical in a way. If the U.S. is targeting Russias nuclear force, it would most likely hit empty silos. In the event of war, Russias political and military leadership would most likely have been moved to safety so as to avoid loss of command and control. Striking at Russias economic and industrial centers would have a limited deterrent effect, as we learned from NATOs engagement in Yugoslavia. And Russian submarines, like U.S. submarines, could still launch their nuclear payloads to counterattack our counterattack.
Here is a more plausible scenario, absent a national missile defense. The United States would absorb the nuclear strike. Afterwards, the President (or surviving political leadership) would ascertain what command-and-control capabilities the U.S. retained, what kind of losses were taken by our nuclear and conventional forces, as well as civilian populations, and what could be reasonably done to deter further attack. It is possible that the U.S. would use its submarine and bomber force to launch a counterattack. This would fulfill the premise of mutually assured destruction. It would almost certainly guarantee additional and lethal Russian attacks.
But what if a President, in order to avoid the complete annihilation of the United States and her people from a second or third strike, came to terms with the Russian leader who launched the attack? What rational leader wouldnt consider such an option, given that the full extent of such a horror has never been witnessed in history? The greatest loss America has ever suffered was during the Civil War, where both sides suffered some 600,000 casualties. But in a nuclear war, the President would face the deaths of millions of U.S. citizens. Is such an option out of the question, given the value placed on human life in, and relatively bloodless military engagements of, America today?
Hopefully, a United States president will never face such a decision. Sentiment notwithstanding, a U.S. nuclear war-fighting strategy requires an affirmative decision to fight back. There is no trip wire that will automatically cause a U.S. president to launch our nuclear arsenal. A rational assessment will be made as to how best to respond. For nuclear strategists, that is the greatest weakness in Americas war-fighting preparation.
Another flaw in the MAD mentality is that even though the United States may have believe nuclear war to be unwinnable, the Soviet Union seems to have taken the opposite view. The Soviets engaged in diplomacy-via the ABM Treaty and other means-in order to gain a strategic advantage. While the United States stayed true to the spirit and letter of the ABM Treaty, there is ample evidence, much of it new, that the Soviets did not.
A recent body of literature suggests that the Soviet Union actively engaged in ABM research and deployment in violation of the ABM Treaty. As retired CIA analyst William Lee points out, even when the ABM Treaty was signed, National Intelligence Estimates from the 1960s showed that Soviet Hen House radars were capable of battle management. That meant they gave the Soviet SA-5 surface-to-air missile the ability to track incoming American missiles and predict where they would gogiving them anti-ballistic missile capability. After the ABM Treaty was signed, the Soviets enhanced this system by building their large phased-array radars (LPARs). The Russians claimed this was simply a defense for their 100 ICBMs based in and around Moscow, hence allowable under the ABM Treatys 1974 Protocol. But it was more than that. LPARs are a national, if limited, missile defense system built in violation of the treaty.
Other evidence suggests that the Soviets went beyond building an ABM system. In his study of Soviet civil defense, Leon Goure described a Soviet strategic view that stands in stark contrast to the spirit of the ABM Treaty and the MAD doctrine. Evidently, the Soviets believed that nuclear war was possible and winnable. It organized its military and civil administration to maximize its chances of winning, should war ever occur. To that end, the Soviets built massive underground facilities, inherited by Russians today, where military leaders and political elites could survive nuclear attack. They made extensive plans to evacuate civilians, and stockpiled strategic foodstuffs. Goure concluded that the Soviets rejected the idea of mutually assured destruction as inherently unstable. Instead, they worked toward strategic superiority.
Throughout the 1970s the Soviet Union, more extensively than the U.S., engaged in advanced research on anti-ballistic missile systems, especially space-based systems. By 1976 the Soviets had an extensive effort underway at OKB Kometa, the industrial design facility that produced the first Russian anti-satellite system back in the 1960s. After condemning President Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative in 1983, Soviet Premier Yuri Andropov stepped up work on the Soviet space-based ABM program, at the same time initiating a diplomatic mission to ban such weapons and announcing a unilateral moratorium on orbiting any type of anti-satellite interceptor.
The casual observer might dismiss such Cold War Soviet behavior as unrepresentative of the new Russia. Yet despite a faltering economy and ostensible efforts to liberalize politically, Russia possesses and continues to modernize a massive arsenal of ICBMs, sea-launched ballistic missiles, and sea-launched cruise missiles. And on a number of occasions, the Russian military establishment has boasted publicly of its ability to beat any U.S. missile defense.
Looking at Russia today, William Lee points out, The Russians realize strategic nuclear forces are the only military counter to the U.S. that they can afford. Like the Soviets, the Russians understand that the side with both strategic offensive and defensive forces has a great advantage over the side relying solely on offensive weapons. They also understand that advantage multiplies as offensive arsenals are reduced by START agreements. Thats why the Soviets built strategic defenses to the limits of the ABM treaty and beyond
What is unclear for today is whether at the end of the Cold War the Russians abandoned the earlier Soviet strategy of nuclear superiority or whether they adopted the same policy of mutually assured destruction held by the United States. The Russians continue to build huge, deep underground nuclear command and control facilities near the Ural mountains, suggesting continuity with Soviet doctrine. In any case, such uncertainty calls into question a U.S. nuclear deterrence strategy based on mutually assured destruction. MADs shortcomings are even more obvious with regard to China, North Korea and the rogue states.
The Problem of China, North Korea and the Rogue States
Assume for a moment that MAD deterred the Soviet Union from going to war with the United States. Would that same strategy work with China, North Korea, or the rogue nations of Iran and Iraq? There are good reasons to believe that it would not. First, mutually assured destruction is based on rational considerations made by rational political leaders. What if a political leader does not behave rationally? More importantly, do we mistake Soviet caution in the Cold War for rationality? What if rationality implies using the best weapons? The United States has never had to consider this problem in the nuclear context until recently. But with nuclear technology proliferating in the Third World, that is precisely the problem the U.S. must face.
Despite Chinas economic growth and some political changes, massive repression of political speech and religious freedom is still the norm. North Korea is in far worse shape. For the past 50 years, North Korea has been run by a communist dictatorship with little concern for human rights. In Iran and Iraq, religiously autocratic leaders control the political and economic development of both countries and have ties to fundamentalist terror groups. Confrontation and war with the Christian West may well fit with the political and religious aspirations of leaders in these countries.
Of course, freedom-loving people would hope that all of these countries will respect the rights of mannot just their own citizens, but citizens of other countries. But the United States must plan for the worst while encouraging these countries to move toward more democratic government. The United States must also expect these countries to continue building weapons of mass destruction, continuing to be politically repressive, and continuing to behave irrationally or hold to a different conception of rationality.
Returning to the question we raised in the introduction: Is it so inconceivable that Communist North Korea would not seek to reunite with the South by force? And, having been repulsed by the South Korean and American armies, is it difficult to imagine the North Koreans resorting to their nuclear weapons as a method of attack or revenge? Or, even more likely, how hard is it to imagine that North Korea could threaten the use of nuclear missiles as a way of keeping U.S. armed forces out of a North Korean-South Korean conflict? Although we may believe nuclear war unthinkable, these scenarios suggest otherwise.
This is why Clinton Administration officials have raised the possibility of changing the ABM Treaty to deal with such a North Korean threat. But these appear to be just words. No effective missile defense against a nuclear threat from North Korea or anyone else is possible without effectively scrapping the ABM Treaty. And scrapping the ABM Treaty is not something the Clinton Administration appears willing to do.
How Devotion to the ABM Treaty is Scuttling Missile Defense
Action speaks louder than words. Anyone harboring doubts about the Clinton Administrations commitment to renegotiating the ABM Treaty should look past what the government says and watch what it does. For example, the United States Air Force announced on February 4, 1999, the cancellation of a major demonstration project for a key missile defense satellite system. This came just two weeks after Defense Secretary Cohen proclaimed the White Houses new pro-missile defense stance to reporters.
This satellite system, built in part by TRW Inc. and Boeing Corp. is called the Space-Based Infrared System-Low or SBIRS-Low. SBIRS-Low is the heart of any U.S. missile defense system, from the simplest-such as using our current fleet of Navy Aegis cruisers that could launch an upgraded missile interceptor-to the most advanced system using space-based lasers. What both of those systems require in fact, what any system would require is the ability to detect and follow enemy missiles shortly after they are launched. This is true for any theater missile defense the U.S. could deploy to defend our troops abroad or our allies, such as Taiwan and Japan. Even the missile defense system Israel is building with U.S. support-the highly effective Arrow-depends on SBIRS-Low, unencumbered by the ABM Treaty, for its success. Without SBIRS-Low, the only missile-detection and tracking system currently being researched, any other advances in missile-defense technology will be worthless.
So why did the Air Force cancel the contracts? The reason, reported in Aviation Week and Space Technology, was to avoid cost-and-schedule impacts on the SBIRS-Low constellation. But this is nonsense. The contractors get paid either way. And even before the Air Force backed out, it had moved the proposed launch date of any part of the main SBIRS-Low constellation from 2004 to 2006. Why? Officials claimed that there was too much technical risk involved in launching at the earlier date. But how, one wonders, does the Air Force plan to avoid technical risk without demonstration projects? After all, is that not part and parcel of research and development?
As of fall 1999, additional contracts for research and development of the SBIRS-Low program had been put on hold. And this appeared to be the tactic the Clinton Administration will use to block a national missile defense surreptitiously, while embracing missile defense publicly to defuse it as a political issue. Given the White Houses acknowledgment of an imminent nuclear threat, it is striking that the American people are asked to wait seven years-or longer-before the key component of a national missile defense is deployed. So despite President Clintons signature on the National Defense Act, which says that the United States will deploy a national missile defense has soon as it is technologically feasible, the his administration is making sure such a defense is will never be technologically feasible by stopping the necessary research and development.
Abandoning Americas Allies in the Far East
What do the allies of the United States in the Far East make of this failed commitment to missile defense? Their analysis of the Clinton administrations security policy is not likely to miss the empty promise of missile defense and the active steps to undermine it, exemplified by the Air Forces cancellation of the SBIRS-low contract. SBIRS-Low is necessary, after all, for an effective theater missile defense of Japan and Taiwan.
The Japanese see the danger of being pulled under the domination of China. As a reminder to the United States that America was still worth defending, Japans Defense Agency said on February 16, 1999, just after SBIRS-Low was cancelled, that North Korea could launch a missile capable of hitting the western United States. Think of it: A foreign country reminding the United States that it needs to defend itself. It was not as if the United States military lacked such intelligence. It was an effort by the Japanese to tell the American people something too many of their political leaders will not.
Another reason for the Clinton Administrations opposition to missile defense is its ongoing effort to maintain good relations with China. China opposes even a limited U.S.-Japan theater missile defense because such a system, most likely using upgraded Standard Block IV Interceptors from Japanese or American Aegis Cruisers, could also be used to defend Taiwan in the event of an attack from the mainland. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao told Chinas Xinhua News Agency in March 1999 that such efforts were meant to obstruct the great cause of Chinas reunification. China went so far as to say that any participation by Taiwan in the joint project would be a challenge to Chinas sovereignty and the Beijing government would have no choice but to take a military response to defend its territorial integrity.
But Taiwan would like very much to be part of such a system. Taiwans defense ministry has reported a significant buildup of Chinese nuclear missiles aimed at the island. On February 11, 1999, Taiwan defense ministry spokesman Kung Fang-ting told the Agence France Presse that intelligence data showed more than 100 M-group missiles targeted at Taiwan from Communist China. That same day, Bill Gertz of The Washington Times wrote of a secret Pentagon report that confirmed the Chinas buildup of short-range ballistic missiles against Taiwan. Gertz also reported that the PRC was fortifying Woody Island, one of the Paracel Islands claimed by Taiwan and Vietnam in the South China Sea. Gertz cited military intelligence officials who believe that China is seeking a gradual expansion to encompass a north-south island chain strategy that will give the Communist Chinese the ability to project air power from Japan to Indonesia.
Is the current U.S. administrations efforts to undermine a missile defense due to a genuine belief in the strategy of mutually assured destruction and the wisdom of the ABM treaty? Or is it a response to Chinese and Russian protestations? Difficult to say for certain. What is certain is the strain the current policy is putting on relations between the United States and her allies in the Far East. The worst-case scenario is that political forces in Japan and on the Republic of China of Taiwan will feel betrayed and see little to be gained from future alliances with the United States.
Finally, there may be a legal argument in favor of throwing out the ABM Treaty. Remember, that treaty was made with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, a state that no longer exists. Washington lawyers George Miron and Douglas Feith wrote a memorandum of law for the Center for Security Policy which definitively explains that the 1972 ABM Treaty expired when the Soviet Union did. It is also true, however, that as long as the Clinton Administration is guided by a policy of strict adherence to this treaty, America and its allies will remain vulnerable.
Section IV: Building A National Missile Defense

Why doesnt the U.S. have a national missile defense? As we have hinted, the answer is not technological, but political.
Fact is, American scientists have devised ways of countering enemy missiles since the 1960s. In its early days, missile defense could have been accomplished by using another nuclear missile a Nike Zeus or, later, the Nike X to explode in rough proximity to the incoming enemy warhead. In fact on July 20, 1962 on the Kwajalein atoll in the Pacific, this idea was tested successfully when three Nike Zeus missiles intercepted dummy warheads launched from Californias Vandenberg Air Force Base. Although this was not the optimal solution-as it would have used nuclear warheads to destroy nuclear warheads-it was in theory, an effective, if limited, form of defense.
Neither the Kennedy nor Johnson Administrations were committed to the Nike program. Both administrations preferred instead that we build our offensive nuclear arsenal to ensure mutually assured destruction. The Nixon White House followed suit in its dislike of anti-missile systems. The Nixon strategy, under the guidance of Henry Kissinger, was to try to end the arms buildup on both sides, work toward reductions in offensive strategic weapons, and create a climate of strategic stability whereby both sides would have enough offensive weapons to destroy the other. This would deter both sides from nuclear attack or so the thinking went. Kissinger and others believed that missile defense could give one side superiority over the other, thus upsetting strategic stability. That is why Nixon and Kissinger negotiated the ABM Treaty, as we discussed in the last section, and put off any hopes for missile defense in the 1970s.
Despite the successful test of the Nike Zeus missiles, the Johnson and Nixon administrations also entertained the idea that missile defense was not feasible. The argument was that the Soviets, with their large arsenal, could overwhelm any U.S. defense. Another argument, which gained currency over time, was that it would be better to destroy enemy missiles with either non-nuclear or space-based devices. Although missile defense proponents agreed that such technology would be better, it would be enough to maintain an active missile defense research program, in conjunction with adherence to the ABM Treaty, rather than push for the deployment an active missile defense.
President Ronald Reagan changed all that in 1983 when he made missile defense a central goal of his national security policy and set the United States on the path to actually building one. Reagan departed from his predecessors and articulated a new strategy. He thought it incredible that the United States should have a policy of mutually assured destruction, whereby we would be willing to destroy our enemy and ourselves. He believed that it would be better to defend the U.S. from a nuclear attack than to retaliate against one. And he assumed that most Americans and their representatives would agree with such thinking.
But Reagans optimism was misplaced. Many U.S. government officials, including Reagans successors in the Oval Office, have not shared his commitment to the task. As a result, research and development of Reagans Strategic Defense Initiative has moved slowly. And deployment has been forbidden altogether, thanks to continued adherence to the ABM Treaty.
Although the Clinton Administration has opposed building a national missile defense at every turn, Congress has continued to fund important research in missile intercept technology. And the research that has been done thus far has been very promising. Researchers have made excellent progress on satellite systems that can track enemy nuclear launches and non-nuclear kill vehicles, as well as laser technology that can destroy an enemy missile outside the atmosphere. And in September 1999, the Defense Department conducted successful tests of the Theater High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) and a successful test of the exo-atmospheric kill vehicle (EKV), built by Raytheon and launched from the very same Kwajalein atoll where the Nike Zeus was tested 37 years earlier. Although skeptics dismiss these Kill Vehicles as technologically impossible, likening them to bullets hitting a bullets, the two tests demonstrated that, in fact, such a system is perfectly possible. Indeed, with every test we find that the scientific challenges of missile defense are largely engineering problems that may be overcome through further research and refinement.
What is required now? We must apply this research to several defensive systems and begin defending America. Remember, there is no one system that will work for every circumstance. Some systems are better for striking down short-range missiles, some are more effective for hitting long-range ICBMs. Some are more feasible in the short term while others require more research and design. What is necessary is for some system to be deployed in the short run. Research must continue on the more advanced systems. And all of these systems must be improved over time to meet and defeat the ever-changing threat. Not to belabor this point, but nothing described below is possible so long as the United States adheres to the ABM Treaty.
Here are the categories of systems, all of which should be deployed to create an entire battle management system, some sooner than others:
Land-Based Systems
One component of a national missile defense is a land-based anti-missile system. The Ground Based Interceptor project (GBI) uses a non-nuclear hit-to-kill vehicle (KV) to destroy an enemy warhead. Both Raytheon and Boeing have KVs that are in various stages of development and testing right now.
If these systems are ever finished, they could be based, optimally, throughout key parts of the United States and could be launched to intercept long-range enemy missiles in mid-flight. Because of the North Korean threat, some analysts believe the best place to base the first such site is Alaska, which is well within range of the North Korean Taepo Dong II missile.
Sea-Based Systems
One popular component is the Navys Theater Wide System (NTW). This system would use the existing fleet of Aegis Cruisers (Ticonderoga class) and Aegis Destroyers (Arleigh Burke class) currently tasked with defending Americas naval battle groups from air attack and have them double as a missile defense system. How? By retrofitting the Aegis Cruisers and Destroyers with modified Standard II Block IV Interceptor missiles, making some improvements to the ships computer systems, and interfacing the ships missile tracking systems with sensors in space-the Space Based Infra Red System (SBIRS-Low) discussed in the previous section.
If U.S. policymakers found the commonsense to no longer recognize the ABM Treaty and make these changes, we could use these Aegis Cruisers in strategic spots around the world. The Aegis option is the most cost effective system-considering we have already invested $50 billion in the ships alone-in the short term. The Navy will need more ships over time to keep up with the Aegis cruisers current duties, but in the interim they would serve as an excellent stopgap measure to handle the threat from North Korea and others.
Space-Based Systems
The U.S. has done extensive research on space-based lasers for missile defense. When perfected, a constellation of these orbiting lasers could be highly effective against missiles in the outer atmosphere. The U.S. also has designed a system called Brilliant Pebbles. These are satellites that fire small, very high-velocity projectiles at incoming missiles. Both of these systems, if built and deployed, would allow for the destruction of long-range ICBMs launched anywhere in the world. Although this is the most costly option, it is also the best for combating long-range missiles. As designed, they could handle large numbers of missiles, warheads, and decoy warheads just about anything an enemy could throw at us.
What will it take to deploy these systems? It takes political will. First, a U.S. President must be committed to missile defense. Second, the Congress must be willing to hold the President accountable. Today we have neither.
Conclusion
Claremont McKenna College political scientist Dr. Harold W. Rood once articulated in a famous essay the basic principle of American security policy. He wrote, The central strategic objective of the United States is-as it always has been-the prevention of direct attack upon the United States. Rood explained the importance of the Vietnam War in terms of securing for the U.S. the strategic ability to deploy troops quickly against China, from what he called the island shield of Asia. Without such a strategic position in the Far East, he concluded, the United States must be prepared to meet ballistic missile attacks on Hawaii, Alaska, and the coast of the mainland of the United States, with forces that could be deployed only from continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii.


Rood wrote those words 30 years ago. Today, the U.S. faces that very challenge. Lacking a national missile defense, and operating from a dramatically weaker position in the Far East, America faces the threat of attack upon Alaska, Hawaii, and our continental west coast. U.S. troops in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea are also at risk, as well as allies and basing facilities in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Diplomatically, the U.S. is also vulnerable to nuclear blackmail. Lacking a missile defense, Americas only deterrent and recourse against these threats is our own threat of annihilating millions of people in Russia, China, North Korea, and other potential nuclear aggressors, while letting our citizens become victims of foreign tyrants.
History will record that the United States won the Cold War against the Soviet Union. History will also record that a decisive moment in that war was President Reagans commitment to build a national missile defense. In the face of such a technological challenge, the Soviet Union backed away from the Cold War and forty years of hostility with the United States. Within a short period of time the Soviet Union broke apart, the regimes of the old Soviet bloc collapsed, and a new era of democratic reform ushered in the hopes of a peaceful, democratic world order.
There was one small problem. What would become of the nuclear weapons that had guaranteed the Soviet Union superpower status? They were in the hands of a new, ostensibly elected, leader, Boris Yeltsin, but their destructive power remained. History will also record that at the end of the twentieth century, the Russian Federation became a corrupt, repressive regime that not only possessed nuclear missiles, but assisted other corrupt, repressive nations in acquiring them as well.
It would be ironic, as history often is, that in the face of such danger the United States did not have a defense against those nations that acquired their own ballistic missiles. The United States, having neglected to carry through on the promises of President Reagan, found itself at the hands of tyrants whose nuclear missiles could blackmail or attack America at any time. That for these tyrants nuclear attack was not unthinkable.
Finally, in a representative democracy like ours, the facts about our national security are normally given to the citizens by their elected representatives. That is, after all, their duty. Citizens assume that their representatives will be well informed about such matters having access to the best military and political intelligence in the country. Our current problem-the threat of nuclear ballistic missile attack-has few such champions. There are less than a dozen courageous men and women in the Congress that are willing to stand up and explain to the American people the danger they are facing. Throughout the western United States, well within range of North Korean and Chinese missiles, there are also a number of state legislators who are beginning to understand the problem and are willing to stand up and be counted on this issue.
Fortunately, the final chapter is yet to be written. There is a window of opportunity to build a national missile defense that can avert the disastrous consequences of nuclear blackmail or attack. That window will stay open for only a short time. It will be the job of citizens and their elected representatives to see that we make it through in time.