The Missile Defense Debate

John Newhouse

From Foreign Affairs, July/August 2001

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Summary:  The Bush administration claims national missile defense can protect the United States from long-range missiles fired by rogue states. But that threat is trivial, and Washington's unilateralist approach to missile defense will only anger China and Russia while alienating U.S. allies.

John Newhouse is Senior Fellow at the Center for Defense Information.

TO DEPLOY OR NOT TO DEPLOY

Well before the 2000 election, George W. Bush and his inner circle were clear on a few things, one of which was missile defense. If they won, it would become the centerpiece of national security policy, even if all or most of the world's other major capitals see national missile defense (NMD), especially the U.S. approach to it, as irrelevant or unresponsive to plausible threats and a potential danger to global security.

There are various ways of looking at missile defense. Dispassionate advocates argue that it might actually have some deterrent value at some future moment against some violence-prone regime or possibly offer some protection against an accidental launch. And in any case, just deploying a missile defense could raise society's comfort level -- its confidence that the government was doing all that it could to prevent the irrational actors of the world from doing what has been called "the unthinkable."

Less candid proponents favor a system with the declared purpose of managing a threat from the rogues of the world but envisage it as the first step toward a system really designed to neutralize China's modest strategic arsenal or the expanded Chinese arsenal they expect to see. Other, even more strenuous advocates favor a "thick" multi-layered system -- combining land-, sea-, and space-based components -- that would neutralize Russia's forces, along with China's.

Many, probably most, opponents regard missile defense as capable of contributing nothing but trouble. They see it as threatening deterrence and the arms control structure, starting with the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty; as inevitably creating major difficulties with America's allies and greatly agitating its former adversaries, Russia and China. Also, they say, the assumption that it might even work and actually serve as a shield is badly flawed -- how flawed would be discovered only after an attack. Hitting ten or so bullets with ten other bullets under controlled testing conditions can prove nothing, they argue. And anyway, the argument runs, the offense can always outnumber and outperform any defense.

Less committed opponents would say the United States should not rule out all forms of missile defense. Indeed, building on smaller, theater missile defense systems (TMD) that are now under development would not agitate other governments or upend the arms control structure. However, the most effective way of coping with a supposed threat of missile attack is and will remain deterring it with awesome strategic power. The next most effective way is, or would be, prior restraint, meaning a blend of political measures aimed at infusing the global environment with greater stability. The various steps would include arms control agreements, preventive diplomacy, some provisions of international law (including constraints on using space for military purposes), lengthening the reaction time of missile systems, exchange of surveillance data, and more transparency.

Emphasizing missile defense would undermine prior restraint. Still, a system could be deployed not as the primary, let alone exclusive, response to a putative threat but as another string to ...

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