Abstract
MISSILE DEFENSE: Two steps forward, two steps back
At the beginning of may, the Bush administration's plans for missile defense appeared on fast-forward; by the end of the month, fast-track deployment was less certain.
On May 1, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., President George W. Bush delivered his administration's first official pronouncement that the United States would proceed. In the absence of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear rivalry, he argued: “We need a new framework that allows us to build missile defenses to counter the different threats of today's world. To do so, we must move beyond the 30-year-old ABM Treaty.”
While he talked about consulting closely with allies and reaching out to Russia and China, he also declared: “When ready, we will deploy missile defenses.” He provided scant details about the direction of the program, but he outlined options for land-, sea-, and aircraft-based interceptors that would destroy hostile missiles as they rise from their launch-pads or travel mid-course, or shoot down warheads as they re-enter the atmosphere.
A week later, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced his plan to reorganize the Pentagon bureaucracy in charge of outer space. Rumsfeld denied that the shuffle was linked to placing weapons in space— although before becoming defense secretary, he headed a commission that advocated militarizing space in response to “threats” to U.S. assets in space.
Both developments alarmed U.S. allies as well as Russia and China. “When Bush officials traveled the globe to explain these new plans and seek support, reactions ranged from widespread skepticism to outright hostility. From London to Berlin, Moscow to Beijing, and Seoul to Tokyo, governments discovered a lack of details, price tag, and timetable. Only the Australians and Indians gave timid, qualified support.
The May 11 International Herald Tribune reported that even the ultra-hawkish Paul Wolfowitz, deputy defense secretary and one of the president's missile defense missionaries, confessed: “It is much too early, I think, even for us to ask people to agree with us, because we have not come to firm conclusions ourselves.” On May 29, a meeting of nato foreign ministers refused to endorse missile defense, agreeing only to “continue substantive consultations.”
Part of the administration's difficulty is that aside from missile defense ideologues—mostly in the Republican hierarchy—there are few inside the country or out who believe that U.S. security is jeopardized by countries like North Korea, Iran, or Iraq. These so-called rogue states' economic, political, and military power pales in comparison to that of the United States; the U.S. fiscal 2002 military budget of $325 billion is more than their gross domestic products combined. Without a realistic threat, it will be difficult to sell the rest of the world on the need for missile defense and space weapons.
Behind the public rhetoric, missile defense advocates see an anti-ballistic system not as a defense but as a means to reinforce the U.S. position as the world's dominant power. Only the United States will be able to afford the tens, or more likely, hundreds of billions of dollars needed to construct the expansive missile defense. Only the United States will have the economic and technical capacity to place weapons in space. “While presidents from Reagan to Bush have suggested sharing missile technologies with European allies and Russia, it is doubtful that any other country would opt for more than theater missile defenses.
Bush officials don't talk about the raw projection of power, but some of the right-wing think tanks behind missile defense are more open. The Heritage Foundation web site describes missile defense as a means to “help preserve our status as a superpower.” Peter Brookes, a Republican staffer on the House International Relations Committee suggested on July 26, 2000, that missile defense “will provide greater freedom of action and a broader range of policy options.”
Many argue that Ronald Reagan's Star Wars was a major factor in the demise of the Soviet Union. In an echo of that contention, on May 22, 2001, Steven Mosher, president of the conservative Population Research Institute, advanced the view that missile defense “would eventually break the back of China's military budget,” suggesting that China may “go the way of the former Soviet Union.”
The ideologues also see space as a place where the United States can roam unchecked. After Rumsfeld's announcement, New Hampshire Republican Sen. Bob Smith, a long-time proponent of weapons in space, crowed: “Believe me, the United States of America will have a dominant presence in space 20 years from now and beyond.” He ignores the fact that even without these new weapons, the United States is dominant in space. The Russians raced against the United States from the 1950s to the 1980s, but they now need cash from American space tourists just to maintain their meager space program.
The missile defense plan favored by Republican Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott ….
The seeming drive for world hegemony looked potent in early May, following Bush's speech. But it weakened at month's end when the U.S. Senate suddenly shifted from Republican to Democratic control. The defection of Vermont's Jim Jeffords from the Republican Party stunned Washington. Instead of Majority Leader Trent Lott acting as missile defense cheerleader, new Majority Leader Tom Daschle is a skeptic. Michigan Democrat Carl Levin replaced Virginia Republican John Warner as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and Delaware Democrat Joe Biden displaced North Carolina Republican Jesse Helms as head of the Foreign Relations Committee. Both Warner and Helms were leading missile defense boosters. Levin and Biden are now in a position to brake the administration's headlong rush to deployment. Both can influence the funding requests and the potential abrogation of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Both can use hearings to spotlight inconsistencies in the administration position.
At the beginning of 2001, no one could have foreseen this seismic event; few would have predicted Democrats becoming vocal critics of missile defense. Since March 1999, the public, the media, and non-Americans perceived Democrats almost as united in favor of deployment as Republicans.
At that time, 42 of 45 Democrats voted for a measure introduced by Mississippi Democrat Thad Cochran endorsing deployment of missile defenses as soon as technologically possible. While some Democrats tried to explain away their vote by noting conditional terms added to the bill, the rest of the world perceived the vote as demonstrating that most American politicians were in favor of missile defense. But the departure of President Bill Clinton, whose ambivalence on missile defense froze Democrats who might have been more critical of the program, liberated them to speak out.
The Jeffords shock heightened the importance of a May 2 press conference Daschle organized to respond to the president's missile defense speech. He was joined by three key Democratic senators with direct responsibility for the issue—Levin, Biden, and Rhode Island's Jack Reed, then the ranking Democrat on the Strategic Armed Services Subcommittee.
Daschle led off by emphasizing that “a missile defense system that undermines our nation politically, economically, and strategically without providing any real security is no defense at all.” Biden also criticized the president's plans: “I find the premise somewhat faulty, the approach somewhat slow, and open avenues left untried.” Levin argued that the president's approach “was a unilateral decision wrapped in conciliatory rhetoric.” Reed added “improved security, strategic stability, and a recognition of what we are doing were absent” from the president's speech. On June 5, all four senators were elevated to key positions in the Senate.
Pundits, reporters, and even politicians were virtually unanimous: The new Senate would be more hostile to missile defense. As cnn political analyst William Schneider concluded on May 23, missile defense “could be in very serious trouble.”
Politicians agreed. On May 25, Levin told cnn that the administration would be forced to rethink its approach: “The real concern is that the reaction to a unilateral deployment of a missile defense in violation of a treaty would lead to a less secure world.”
On the same show, Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel, a Star Wars supporter, suggested: “When you take an issue like missile defense, where there are significant differences between the Democratic Senate leadership and the president, it changes the dynamics considerably.” House Democrats from across the political spectrum appeared united against the Bush plan. The May 20 Washington Post reported that the Democrats, led by Minority Leader Richard Gephardt, had come to a consensus against deployment any time soon, although the group had different views on eventual deployment. A source close to Gephardt was quoted as saying: “This knits together our pro-defense people with our more liberal doves…. Even our most pro-defense people think that A, the technology doesn't work yet; and B, the money is not there.”
… was denounced by new Majority Leader Tom Daschle even before June 6, when the Democrats took organizational control of the Senate.
The new political lineup reinforces the growing international opposition to missile defense—and perhaps opposition within the Pentagon itself. With the passage of the $1.3 trillion tax cut at the end of May, the competition for budget resources tightens considerably. For the Pentagon, missile defense will have to compete with weapons modernization and quality-of-life improvements. Faced with potential cuts in ground forces, Gordon Sullivan, a retired general and president of the Association of the U.S. Army, voiced publicly the concerns of many within the Pentagon brass: “The rumors of pending reports coming out of the Pentagon seem to be drawing the easy but erroneous conclusion that by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on weaponizing space, developing nmd, and buying long-range precision weapons, we can avoid the ugly realities of conflict.”
Despite these portents, the fight is far from over. There is no doubt that the president and Rumsfeld will push hard for missile defense, at least in part to reinforce the notion of American dominance of the twenty-first century. Ardent advocates remain in the closely divided Senate, and the House of Representatives is still in Republican control. But the runaway freight train that was missile defense has now been slowed.