Safire makes the case for a missile defense for allies and US

In yesterday’s New York Times, syndicated columnist William Safire addressed with characteristic lucidity the folly of the left-wing governments now running virtually every Western European nation who are bent on forging a separate defense "identity." In other words, they are seeking ways to diminish, if not actually to eliminate, the Transatlantic security pillar and its principal instrument, NATO.

The perils of this stratagem are evident amidst reports that the former leftist Committee on Nuclear Disarmament agitator turned British Minister of Defense turned NATO Secretary General, George Robertson, is in Moscow seeking to thaw chilly relations with Russian president Vladimir Putin by promising to "go much farther in [NATO’s] cooperation" if the Kremlin is willing to do so, as well.

In his column, Mr. Safire ridicules the European Rapid Reaction Force (EERF — "barkingly pronounced erf!") and offers a different approach, one that "revives the original idea behind NATO. American power — including the nuclear umbrella — was extended across the Atlantic to protect our European allies, as their forces joined in mutual defense."

In planning to cope with the threat sure to come from Iraq, Iran or some well-financed terrorist group, an American-built missile defense system should again be assisted by, and in return protect, our allies. Therefore, we should not limit ourselves to N.M.D., a national missile defense. We should test and deploy an A.M.D., an allied missile defense, extending its reach to allies endangered by blackmailers with deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

Fortunately, the most cost-effective, near-term and flexible approach to missile defense would be to adapt the U.S. Navy’s Aegis fleet air defense system so as to give it the capability to shoot down as quickly as possible missiles aimed at U.S. forces and allies overseas and Americans here at home. It can only be hoped that President Bush will commit the Nation to such a course of action in the very near future and — by so doing, that he will revitalize not only American security, but the common defense of freedom loving peoples everywhere.

NATO or ERRF?

By William Safire

The New York Times, 25 January 2001

London — Believers in a united European superpower have taken their vision beyond the realm of economic union. Led by French chauvinists and Brussels bureaucrats, they now espouse a military alliance without the United States, called the European Rapid Reaction Force — ERRF, barkingly pronounced erf!

The non-American force would not supplant the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the go-it-alone crowd in Europe insists. With the old Soviet threat gone, erf! would "rebalance" the Atlantic Alliance by taking regional responsibility for strictly local interventions.

This Euro-isolationism delights American isolationists. What are we doing in the Balkans anyway? our America-firsters ask. Let Europeans take care of Europe; Lafayette, we are outta here.

One European leader not yet in power is resisting this slow dissolution of the alliance. In a Churchillian speech defending the U.S.-European strategic relationship, William Hague, the Conservative challenger to Tony Blair’s "third way" government of Britain, said: "Conservatives wanted cooperation inside NATO, to strengthen NATO. What we are getting is duplication outside NATO, to weaken NATO."

President Bush inherits a wishy- washy U.S. response to Euro-isolationism. Bill Clinton’s "three D’s" accepted erf! provided it did not decouple Europe from NATO, did not duplicate forces, and did not discriminate against Turkey, the NATO member outside the European Union. That was strategic sophistry: erf! is designed to do all three.

Pollsters here give the bold, bald Hague no chance of ousting Labor in elections this spring. Despite the resignation of Blair’s chief political guru yesterday after a passport-influencing episode was revealed, the most that the small rightist minority is said to hope for is a gain of 80 seats in the lopsided Parliament.

The agile Blair, Clinton’s buddy, is now pulling out all the stops to get a pre-election photo op with Bush. Because meddling in the elections of democratic allies is not good policy, I hope our new president prudently waits to make a post- election date to reassert our special relationship with whomever the British choose as their prime minister.

That’s also because Hague understands America’s need for a missile defense against rogue-state blackmail. Although Blair, like many Europeans, nibbles his nails about an American shield lest it be seen as an invitation to a new arms race, Hague says, "I believe Britain should cooperate with the United States to the best of our ability as it develops and builds its weapons shield."

How? In Fylingdales, among the black-faced sheep of northern Yorkshire, sits a radar station built by the U.S. If expanded, it could well become an outpost much needed to track missiles on their way to North America and to plot their interception.

The Fylingdales upgrade is resisted because any nation that cooperates with U.S. missile defense might itself become a terrorist target. For that reason, Hague wishes that the Bush administration would go beyond "a purely national missile shield." Instead, "the aim should surely be a global defense shield to which Britain could contribute its early warning radars as well as much-needed political and diplomatic support."

This revives the original idea behind NATO. American power — including the nuclear umbrella — was extended across the Atlantic to protect our European allies, as their forces joined in mutual defense. In planning to cope with the threat sure to come from Iraq, Iran or some well- financed terrorist group, an American-built missile defense system should again be assisted by, and in return protect, our allies.

Therefore, we should not limit ourselves to N.M.D., a national missile defense. We should test and deploy an A.M.D., an allied missile defense, extending its reach to allies endangered by blackmailers with deliverable weapons of mass destruction.

That will be costly; only the superpower can afford it. Tests will fail and fail and ultimately succeed; only the superpower’s technology can achieve it.

The same idea that protected the free world from Communist domination for a half-century can protect the world from future terrorist intimidation. That idea is not erf! or multi- isolationism or a go-it-alone shield. It is the idea of collective security exemplified by NATO and led, as before, by a powerfully safe America.