6 June 2000 Decision Time: Open up the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? (aka Star Wars Revisited)

Summary: ABM defense systems don’t work; they are a waste of money; they will drive other countries into an arms race that will further destabilize the world; better to be more serious about enforcing MAD doctrine and making rogue threats feel threatened.

I’ve tried to avoid this topic ever since I first heard about it during the mid 1980’s, frankly because I think it is overly complicated and boring. However, it is important right now to discuss this because the world is at a crucial phase. Clinton is ending his presidency and the Pentagon has set a deadline for decisions in this area because it says it must begin to work to counter threats that will come on line some years into the future. The gist is that the US fears missile attacks from rogue states such as North Korea or from nuts like Osama bin Laden. It wants to open up the ABM Treaty to allow for the construction of anti-missile defenses not provided for under the treaty. The Russians are afraid that this will start an arms race that they will lose; the Europeans and Canadians sense that the Americans will use these limited defensive systems to weasel out of its commitment to an umbrella that protects these nations, and the Chinese and others are making noises that American placement of such systems around the world (ie: in Asia to defend Taiwan) will cause China and others to go out and create more missiles to counter these systems. The Economist surveyed this issue in the past week’s edition and wrote many words but came to no conclusion except to recommend delay in deciding the issue. Clearly, there is no clear sense of what is the thing to do and each option threatens to leash the law of unintended consequences.The fact that the debate is up for grabs is intriguing because as we head into campaign season George Bush is putting out new ideas that break with 40 years of arms control policy that has not been innovative till now. Gore, as usual, says that Bush’s ideas are nutty but does not put forth any of his own. Behind Bush saying his ideas is a pretty good team of arms control experts but the Pentagon does not agree with them. I am not an arms control expert but here’s my take on this.

Begin with the proposition that I just don’t believe these Star Wars defense shields will work. I don’t believe that the Israeli arrow missile defense system will protect Israel against NBC (nuclear, biological or chemical) threats even if it works better than the Patriot system did (at the time of the Gulf War we were all told how wonderful the Patriot was and have since found out it did nothing). 95% reliability is lousy if you have to clean up a 10 page OCR’d document and you could imagine how lousy it would be in the event of a nuclear attack. I simply think that throwing money at these programs is make-work without any expectation that it could ever be relied upon.

I think that the old MAD (mutually assured destruction) policy is still the best one, until a better one can be proven. The only deterrence that we can command with any degree of confidence is to convince people and nations not to permit a first strike, knowing that the cost will be too high. States must be held accountable for rogues in their midst, meaning if Afghanistan is sheltering bin Laden it must have to pay a price for this. If Hizbullah strikes at Israel from Lebanon, it is Syria or Iran that must pay, now that Israel is out of Lebanon. If States understand that a rogue on its territory is a threat to that State, it will work harder to control or expel the rogue. Today, except for the high seas, all land-based area is sovereign and a rogue does not act on the high seas without land-based preparation. States that are incapable of policing their own must cooperate with other states, even if it is inconvenient to their sovereignty, because a rogue on its territory ultimately threatens not only its host’s sovereignty but very existence.

True, MAD deterrence is not 100% foolproof, but then neither will be Star Wars. The money spent on air defense systems should be redirected toward better intelligence coordination and collection. I am also of the belief that much of the money being spent on defending against NBC attacks after they have occurred is duplicative and out of proportion to the actual threat. [There was a full issue of Current History this spring on the topic of Terrorism and it is worth reading.]

Finally, we really have to make a decision about rogues, meaning people, organizations and states such as North Korea. We know who they are and where they are. We can eliminate them but we choose not to. I find it hard to believe that Osama bin Laden exists and we can’t get rid of him. Clearly, in the case of Saddam Hussein of Iraq we have decided to tolerate him. There is hope that proper handling of North Korea will ultimately render peaceful change without cataclysmic eruption but meanwhile North Korea could be playing the world like a violin as it sends its missiles all over and creates more and more problems. It may be that we prefer to keep a lid on these people and keep them alive but under pressure and observation. Killing people has been generally ineffective; it unleashes violence and substitute leaders who can be even worse or less predictable based on the fact that they have no histories. Israel probably regrets it killed The Engineer with the rigged cellphone in 1995; the wave of violence which followed more than anything threw Peres out of office and brought Netanyahu in. That threw the peace process back 3 years.

I am not close enough to global intelligence to calculate the risk-reward ratio of destroying rogues or keeping them under wraps. I tend to believe that deterrence is better achieved by making rogues feel existential danger because leaders of terrorist organizations generally prefer to let their minions die – they themselves prefer to live and tend to have access to money and luxuries. It was not until the US began to go after Milosevic’s personal assets that he cried uncle. Meanwhile, we drove the country crazy while he sat comfy just as Saddam and his cronies sit in palaces and have whatever they want. Deterrence is best achieved when this type of retaliation becomes highly probable – not once in a decade-like.

To summarize, I would prefer to put our resources toward eliminating rogue threats and deterring others, rather than throwing money at missile systems that won’t work and that will cause countries to feel for nationalistic and security purposes that they need to enter into a high-tech arms race in order to keep up. The Chinese are modernizing and will do so no matter what the US does, but we don’t need to drive the anxious Indians and Pakistanis into a frenzy as well. The cash-poor Russians will also be receptive to US positions that do not offend its inferiority complex. Until there is a sense that these ABM defense systems will actually work, I only see downside in tinkering with them.

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