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Leading
the nuclear race
By Michelle Ciarrocca
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy In Focus)
With public attention focused on Iraq, the Bush administration's prized missile
defense system has been far from the limelight. But make no mistake, it's still
chugging along. Many things have changed since the attacks of September 11,
2001, but the current administration's stubborn determination to deploy some
kind of missile defense system - whether it works or not - has not wavered.
During President George W Bush's State of the Union address in January, he
said, "This year, for the first time, we are beginning to field a defense to
protect this nation against ballistic missiles." However, the truth is, this
won't be the first time.
Under president Richard Nixon, the Safeguard system was developed and
eventually deployed. That system, using nuclear-tipped interceptors, became
fully operational on October 1, 1975. It was actually Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld who pulled the plug on the system four months later during his first
stint in that position. Rumsfeld announced that the Safeguard system was being
shut down because it was too costly while offering only meager capability.
Today, Rumsfeld is of a different mindset. Acknowledging that the system will
only be able to deal with a relatively small number of incoming ballistic
missiles, he now calls it "better than nothing".
In March 1983, president Ronald Reagan introduced his Strategic Defense
Initiative - Star Wars - as a way to render nuclear weapons "impotent and
obsolete". Since that time the United States has spent more than US$90 billion
(over $143 billion since the early 1960s) attempting to develop various
approaches to missile defense. Though the current administration has scaled
back Reagan's vision of a multi-tiered defensive shield fending off thousands
of Soviet missiles, its broad description of the program's goals is just as
ambitious. Bush has pledged to install a system capable of defending "our
friends and allies and deployed forces overseas" from ballistic-missile attack.
According to a news release from the Pentagon, this time around, the initial
missile defense capability will build on the Fort Greeley, Alaska, test-bed
site and include up to 10 land-based interceptors in Alaska and California by
next year. Another 10 interceptors could be added in 2005. The Pentagon says it
will employ an "evolutionary approach to the development and deployment of
missile defenses over time" and it envisages a layered system comprising
ground-based and sea-based interceptors alongside upgraded versions of the
short-range Patriot system.
Bush's decision to start with a modest missile defense shield may have been
prompted by the string of test failures that preceded it. As the New York Times
reported, the $100 million test conducted last December 11 failed when the
interceptor "missed its intended target by hundreds of miles and burned up in
the atmosphere, while the mock enemy warhead it was meant to destroy zoomed by
unscathed".
As with previous failures, officials were quick to deny dismissively that the
malfunction had anything to do with advanced missile technology. Air Force
Lieutenant-Colonel Rick Lehner of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) said the US
has been successfully separating boosters from their payloads for 50 years.
However, the same problem had occurred during an intercept test in July 2000.
The 2004 budget requests $9.1 billion for missile defense programs, a hefty
increase over the amount in the last budget of the administration of president
Bill Clinton ($5.4 billion) and $1.5 billion more than this year. The Pentagon
is projecting yearly missile defense funding to reach $11.5 billion by 2007.
Though substantially surpassing the Clinton administration's spending on
missile defense, these sums represent only the down payment on the actual cost
of deploying the system.
The Bush administration has been increasing its support for missile defense
while dismantling the international arms-control regime both by withdrawing
from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and by putting forth a new
nuclear-war-fighting doctrine. Whereas Reagan left office saying that a nuclear
war can never be won and must never be fought, two decades later, the word
coming from the Bush administration is that nuclear weapons are here to stay.
Bush's "new idea" is that the United States should develop flexible nuclear
weapons that can be employed in a variety of circumstances from busting Saddam
Hussein's underground bunkers to bailing out US forces in a conventional
conflict. Following the recommendations from the Bush administration's Nuclear
Posture Review (NPR), the declared role of US nuclear weapons could change from
a tool of deterrence and a weapon of last resort to a central, usable component
of the US anti-terror arsenal.
Problems with current US policy
The threats that a missile defense system is meant to address have
been greatly exaggerated.
The Bush administration is rushing to deploy a missile defense
system before it has been sufficiently tested.
The resurgence of Star Wars has been politically driven, spurred on
by the missile defense lobby, which is thoroughly entrenched in the Bush
administration.
Since September 11, 2001, Bush has been painting a picture of "unprecedented
threats" to the United States, highlighting the threat of a hostile state or
terrorist group armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver
them. However, Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace has pointed out that "there are fewer nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons in the world and fewer nations pursuing these weapons than there were
10, 15, or 20 years ago".
Even the December 2001 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) disagrees with
Bush's claims. The NIE noted that "US territory is more likely to be attacked"
with weapons of mass destruction by countries or terrorist groups using "ships,
trucks, airplanes, or other means" than by anyone using a long-range ballistic
missile. Such delivery systems are less expensive than those needed for
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), and, unlike missiles, non-missile
systems can be covertly developed and employed in an attempt to evade
retaliation. They can also be deployed in ways that will evade
ballistic-missile defenses, rendering the costly investments in these systems
irrelevant.
Beyond the issue of whether or not the threat warrants an elaborate, though
partial, missile defense system is the fact that the proposed system has yet to
show that it can effectively defend the United States against a
ballistic-missile attack. As former Pentagon testing official Philip Coyle has
repeatedly pointed out, "There is nothing that the DOD [Department of Defense]
has done that is as difficult."
In eight highly scripted tests, the ground-based system, which is most
developed and the backbone of the Bush administration's scheme, has failed
three times. Compare that with Nixon's Safeguard system, which underwent 111
tests, including 58 successful target intercepts in 70 attempts. And the few
successful intercept tests of the Bush system are marred by how simple and
predictable the variables were compared with the uncertainties of a real
ballistic-missile attack. Furthermore, all the tests to date - successful and
unsuccessful - used a beacon inside the mock warhead, which helps guide the
intercept missile to the target. Lieutenant-General Ronald Kadish, director of
the MDA, was adamant in saying that the data from the beacon do not assist the
interceptor in the final targeting of the kill vehicle. But they certainly make
the job a lot easier.
A report from the Union of Concerned Scientists shows that although the target
and interceptor start out 5,000 miles away from each other, a transponder
guides the interceptor to within 400 meters of the warhead. Pentagon officials
claim that the transponder has to be used, because existing Pacific radars are
located in less-than-ideal places for testing. Maybe this is part of any
weapons-testing program - you've got to walk before you can run - but the Bush
administration wants to deploy them before they've even taken a step. Defense
contractor Raytheon won a $350 million contract to develop the X-band radar;
however, it won't be ready for testing until 2005, after the Bush
administration has deployed the system.
The Pentagon's own director of test and evaluation, Thomas Christie, noted in
his annual report that "due to the stage of development and the following
testing limitations, the GMD [ground-based mid-course missile defense] element
has yet to demonstrate significant operational capability". Elaborating to the
Senate Armed Services Committee in April, Christie continued, "This conclusion
is based on the fact that many essential components of the GMD element have yet
to be built." Similar concerns exist for the sea-based systems.
One obvious "solution" to test failures is to cancel the tests, and that's
exactly what the Bush administration has sought to do. The Pentagon has
canceled three of five intercept tests of the ground-based system that were
scheduled before the 2004 deployment date. The president's 2004 budget included
language that would have formally waived the system from testing requirements;
fortunately, the language was removed. As Senator Carl Levin said, "That law
exists to prevent the production and fielding of a weapons system that doesn't
work right."
After the president's deployment announcement, Senator Jack Reed got to the
heart of the matter: "The president's decision to deploy an untested national
missile defense system has more to do with politics than effective military
strategy." What else would explain the rush to deploy and get something in the
ground by October 2004, conveniently right before the elections?
More than any administration in history, the Bush team has relied on the
expertise of former weapons contractors to outline US defense needs. Thirty-two
Bush appointees are former executives, consultants or major shareholders of top
weapons contractors, including appointees with ties to major missile defense
contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and Northrop Grumman. At a time
when corporate scandals are making headlines, the Bush administration's
reliance on individuals with ties to the arms industry to fill major posts in
the national-security bureaucracy deserves far greater scrutiny than it has
received to date.
In addition to the dozens of former weapons executives in the Bush
administration, personnel from conservative, corporate-backed think-tanks such
as the Center for Security Policy, the Project for a New American Century, and
the American Enterprise Institute are now ensconced in key policymaking posts.
Their fingerprints can be seen on virtually every major element of the Bush
national-security strategy, from the doctrines of preemptive strikes and regime
change in Iraq, to the administration's aggressive nuclear posture and
commitment to deploying a Star Wars-style missile defense system.
Toward a new foreign policy
Key recommendations
Instead of focusing primarily on military and technical means to
deal with the threat of weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration
should expand and increase funding for non-proliferation programs.
The US should redouble its diplomatic efforts to bargain away
nascent nuclear-weapons programs in North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and India.
The ultimate goal of US nuclear strategy should be the abolition of
nuclear weapons.
It is true that Bush has pledged to reduce deployed US nuclear weapons. Last
May, Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed the Strategic Offensive
Reductions Treaty, which should reduce each nation's nuclear arsenal to between
1,700 and 2,200 warheads, although the cuts do not have to take effect until
the expiration date of the treaty: December 31, 2012. Moreover, there are
minimal accounting and verification measures within the treaty. Besides
granting 10 years to make the reductions, the treaty allows both sides to keep
thousands of their withdrawn warheads in reserve rather than destroying them,
and it gives either party the right to withdraw from the agreement on just 90
days' notice.
The new arms accord also does nothing to secure or destroy Russia's massive
stockpiles of nuclear weapons and materials. Shortly before Bush's
inauguration, a bipartisan task force chaired by former Senate majority leader
Howard Baker and former White House counsel Lloyd Cutler reported that "the
most urgent national security threat to the US today is the danger that weapons
of mass destruction or weapons-usable material in Russia could be stolen and
sold to terrorists or hostile nation-states and used against American troops
abroad or citizens at home". The task force recommended the development of a
$3-billion-per-year, long-term plan to safeguard, destroy or neutralize Russian
nuclear materials. Total current funding for all non-proliferation programs is
about $1.8 billion.
Even at current funding levels, major US government non-proliferation programs
have accomplished a tremendous amount, from financing the destruction of more
than 4,400 Russian strategic nuclear warheads to orchestrating the airlift of
nearly 600 kilograms of poorly guarded, highly enriched uranium from Kazakhstan
in 1994. But much more can and should be done.
The potential benefits of US-Russian nuclear reductions are overshadowed by the
risks posed from the administration's nuclear plans, which include dramatically
expanding the scenarios in which US nuclear weapons might be used, producing a
new generation of more usable nuclear-weapons systems, and resuming
nuclear-weapons testing. How likely are countries such as Iran, North Korea,
Syria, Libya, Russia, and China - all of which have been targeted in Bush's
nuclear plan - to heed the administration's calls to reduce or renounce their
own nuclear arsenals in the face of this new threat from the United States?
Given Washington's multibillion-dollar Star Wars plan and knowing that they may
be targeted by a new generation of US nukes, aren't such countries more likely
to beef up their nuclear stockpiles? Unfortunately, US arms trade and military
assistance policy also deters them from undertaking any serious nuclear
disarmament. For example, rather than pressing new nuclear nations such as
India, Pakistan, and Israel to give up their nuclear weapons, Washington has
been rewarding these states with arms sales and military assistance.
The continued pursuit of a costly missile defense system will have far-reaching
consequences for the future of arms control and the goal of nuclear abolition.
It will also take precious time, money, and energy from non-proliferation and
diplomatic efforts, which have proved to be far more productive in reducing the
threat posed by nuclear weapons.
A modest missile defense program of research, in the range of a few hundred
million dollars per year and focused on improving the performance of a
medium-range defensive shield to replace the current Patriot system, is
justified as a way to limit the potential damage posed by the use (or threat of
use) of ballistic missiles. Pentagon test director Thomas Christie rightly
noted: "I recognize and agree, in principle, with the desire to field new
capabilities as soon as possible, but that desire should be tempered with the
responsibility to ensure that the weapons will not put Americans at risk."
Ultimately the United States and other nuclear powers should strive for a
nuclear-weapons-free world by living up to their commitments, signed 30 years
ago under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, "to reduce and eventually
eliminate their vast arsenals of nuclear weaponry". The abolition of nuclear
weapons is the only reasonable safeguard against the threat of annihilation.
The US must lead the way toward this goal.
Michelle Ciarrocca (ciarrm01@newschool.edu)
is a research associate at the World Policy Institute and writes regularly for
Foreign Policy In Focus.
(Posted with permission from Foreign
Policy In Focus)
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