Tag Archives: Defense Procurement Policy

How to Share’ U.S. Missile Defense Protection: Deploy Sea-Based Anti-Missile Systems

(Washington, D.C.): Yesterday, on the margins of meetings with European allied leaders and en route to his weekend summit with Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Mr. Clinton blithely further compounded the already severe incoherence of his policy on missile defense. In the face of withering criticism — from allies and potential adversaries alike — of his putative determination to decide on initiating a deployment of a “national” anti-missile system prior to his departure from office, the President declared that he thought it would be “unethical” not to “make available” U.S. defensive technology to “other civilized nations who might or might not be nuclear powers but were completely in harness with us on a non- proliferation regime.”

Never mind that Mr. Clinton has up to this point not shown much interest in equipping the United States with missile defense technology, let alone making it available to others. Set aside for the moment as well just what the definition of “civilized nations” might be in the infamous Clinton lexicon — to say nothing of his self-acknowledged proclivity for “fudging” findings on things like the systematic contribution to global proliferation being made by nations “in the non-proliferation regime” like China and Russia.

The trouble with his statement in Lisbon is that, if the ABM Treaty is the “cornerstone of strategic stability” that Bill Clinton and Al Gore insist it remains, such sharing of missile defense technology would be, if not banned outright, then so limited as to negate its value to the recipient nations. After all, the Treaty’s Article IX states that, “To assure the viability and effectiveness of the [1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM)] Treaty, each Party undertakes not to transfer to other States, and not to deploy outside its national territory, ABM systems or their components limited by this Treaty.”

What About the Rest of the ABM Treaty?

Article IX’s explicit ban on “sharing” strategic (read, highly capable) ballistic missile defenses is, of course, far from the only problem with the Clinton approach. Article I of the ABM Treaty committed each of the Parties — that is, the United States and the late Soviet Union — “not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country and not to provide a base for such a defense.” Yet, the White House insists (incredibly) that the “national” missile defense system the President is considering deploying would provide protection to all fifty states.

Mr. Clinton seems to think that, if the Russians are amenable — and so far, at least, they appear to be anything but — this circle could be squared by some minor tinkering with a few of the other provisions of this treaty. The truth of the matter is that to make a treaty that was designed to preclude all national missile defenses into one that permits even a “limited” one would require a wholesale rewrite of that accord.

The Way to Go

More importantly, if President Clinton is serious about sharing the “benefit” of U.S. anti-missile “protection” with America’s allies — to say nothing of “every country that is part of a responsible international arms control and non-proliferation regime” — the obvious way to accomplish this is by using sea-based missile defense systems, not the fixed, ground-based and highly expensive version the Administration has under consideration for deployment in Alaska.

As it happens, the wisdom of adapting Navy AEGIS fleet air defense ships for this purpose has been increasingly recognized by influential Democrats. Former Secretaries of Defense Harold Brown and Bill Perry, former CIA Director John Deutch and even Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware have recently espoused this idea. In so doing, they appear to have embraced an approach for acquiring effective missile defenses long advanced by a blue-ribbon Commission on Missile Defense sponsored by the Heritage Foundation and by most leading Republicans — including Governor George W. Bush, who has noted the role modified AEGIS ships could play in defending allies like Taiwan, as well as Americans here at home.

Best of all, a new analysis by Mr. Clinton’s own Defense Department has reportedly confirmed these judgments. According to a report in last Saturday’s Washington Post, the Pentagon believes that “sea-based national missile defenses could be built with existing technology and would add both flexibility and firepower to the land-based system proposed by President Clinton.”

Once again, the impediment turns out to be the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. Its Article V commits the two parties “not to develop, test or deploy ABM systems or components which are sea- based, air-based, space-based or mobile land-based.”

The Russians are no fools. They understand every bit as well as sentient Americans the utility of an approach to global missile defense that can — thanks to the prior $50+ billion investment in the Navy’s air defense infrastructure — begin defending U.S. forces and friends overseas and the territory of the United States people far more quickly and flexibly and at less cost than any ground-based system.

The Bottom Line

To the extent the United States will continue to allow the Kremlin to exercise a veto over American decisions concerning the nature, location and capabilities of American missile defenses and with whom their benefits and/or technology are shared, however, the Russians will do so. This American policy is all the more absurd insofar as the ABM Treaty clearly ceased to be legally binding when the Soviet Union went out of business.

The Russians will take full advantage of the fact that President Clinton is going to Moscow, to coin a phrase, not to bury the ABM Treaty but to praise it — or, in the words of Strobe Talbott (the friend-of-Bill and chief ideologist who serves as the de facto Secretary of State for Russia and arms control) to “strengthen” it. Translation: Clinton and Company intend to recommit this nation not to pursue sea-based or other, sensible approaches to global missile defense.

Clearly a different approach is required. Renegotiating, to say nothing of “strengthening,” the obsolete ABM Treaty is neither in the interest of the United States nor its friends and allies. President Clinton and Vice President Gore should not only release, but read, the report on the value and feasibility of sea-based that the Post reports “top civilian officials at the Pentagon” are deliberately withholding from Congress. That way, each of us could appreciate the opportunity to provide near-term, cost-effective missile defenses that could extend “protection” against missile attack to all “civilized” nations, including this one — but only if the Cold War ABM Treaty is relegated to the dust bin of history, where it belongs.

Sea-Based Missile Defenses — for the Allies, for the U.S.

(Washington, D.C.): As President Clinton traipses across Europe this week en route to his weekend meetings with Russian president Vladimir Putin, it is predictable that one story will dominate the headlines: America’s allies are virtually unanimous in their opposition to U.S. plans to deploy a national missile defense (NMD). And they may seem friendly to the idea compared to the reception it is likely to get from Putin and Company at the Moscow summit.

What Me, a Proponent of Missile Defense?

Unfortunately, it will fall to Mr. Clinton — who has evinced little enthusiasm over the past eight years for the deployment of even a limited anti-missile system to protect this country against ballistic missile attack — to make the case for such a deployment in the face of the objections from friendly governments and those being expressed even more vehemently by potential adversaries like Russia and China. Of course, the more the latter object, the more intense will be the formers’ concerns.

As it happens, the President has, presumably intentionally, left himself unnecessarily vulnerable to this sort of pressure campaign. In a quintessentially Clintonesque maneuver, when faced with veto-proof majorities in the House and Senate in favor of the Missile Defense Act (MDA) of 1999, he signed the bill into law. By so doing, he formally established that it is U.S. government policy to deploy an effective limited missile defense system, the sole consideration in bringing it on-line being the speed with which the necessary technology can be readied.

The Fine Print

Yet, in clear defiance of the letter and intent of the MDA, even as he put his signature on that legislation, Mr. Clinton pronounced that he had made no decision to deploy a missile defense. Worse yet, he declared that there were four conditions that would have to be factored into any decision he might ultimately make doing so:

  • First, the threat must be confirmed. Not surprisingly, the campaign to block American missile defenses has lately featured renewed claims that a threat of missile attack against this country by “rogue states” is overblown. As an article in yesterday’s Washington Post makes clear, the threat-deniers are basing their “see-no-evil” stance on several dubious propositions.

    • For example, they contend that there are no “rogue states.” Accordingly, North Korea is described not as a state in crisis, led by a certifiable lunatic, but as a “parasite” looking for a new sponsor. The implication is that, as long as the United States provides the necessary life-support to the regime in Pyongyang, it has nothing to fear from that quarter. This is, of course, a formula for blackmail and appeasement, enforced by the very threat of missile attack we are told not to fear!

  • Second, the technology must prove feasible. The opponents of anti-missile systems are returning to their favored, Luddite argument, namely that missile defense systems are not performing as advertized, cannot work and can, in any event, be easily counter-measured. The fact is that, despite the sort of developmental difficulties to be expected in mastering a challenging new technology like those used in hit-to-kill interceptions, a variety of U.S. theater and national missile defenses have proven effective and will become increasingly so as they are operationalized. While counter measures are to be expected, as they are with respect to every other military capability, there is every reason to believe that U.S. scientists and engineers can prepare and field necessary counter- counter-measures.
  • Third, the system must be “affordable.” Opponents of missile defenses are also seizing upon cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office — an institution whose hostility towards defending America against missile attack seems unchanging, irrespective of whether Republicans or Democrats control the legislative branch — to claim that the price tag for the sort of ground- based system the Clinton-Gore Administration purports to favor is excessive. Using life-cycle costs and projections of the price for a second site (that has not even been formally proposed), CBO was able to get the cost up to $60 billion. While this is a significant sum, to be sure, if an apples- to-apples comparison were made, the price of purchasing and operating modern fighter aircraft wings or a class of surface ships or submarines would significantly exceed that associated with a ground-based NMD system. Particularly when weighed against the incalculably high cost of rebuilding an American city after it has been attacked with a weapon of mass destruction, even a large investment in defending the country seems hardly unreasonable.

    • There are, moreover, other ways to provide such a defense — notably, from the sea using modified AEGIS fleet air defense ships — that could enable a national missile defense to be fielded for a fraction of the cost of the ground-based system. Estimates produced by a blue-ribbon commission sponsored in recent years by the Heritage Foundation suggest that an initial capability involving 22 AEGIS ships and 650 missiles could be acquired for as little as $2.5-3 billion (spent out over five years). Cost is but one of the arguments for adopting such an approach (see below).

Inviting a Pummeling

The fourth precondition, as described in the Clinton-Gore Administration’s December 1999 “National Security Strategy for a New Century,” invited this week’s flail: “The implications that going forward with NMD deployment would hold for the overall strategic environment and our arms control objectives.” (Emphasis added.)

Press reports, notably a lengthy article in Sunday’s New York Times, indicate that a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) scheduled for release next month has begun to be briefed to policy-makers and sympathetic journalists. According to the Times: “American intelligence officials are warning that such a system could set off a Cold War-style arms race between China, India and Pakistan.”

While no one can say for sure that this assessment is incorrect, the fact that it would appear to support a policy of inaction on missile defense that the Clinton-Gore Administration has espoused for nearly its entire term in office cannot be ignored. This is especially true insofar as the Administration has baldly used NIEs in the past to justify this policy. (For example, in December 1995, it notoriously politicized an intelligence estimate in order to ensure that the threat of missile attack to the United States was downplayed; this technique had the desired effect when the NIE was released — with much fanfare in the middle of a Senate floor debate — serving to undercut advocates of mandating an urgent deployment of a national missile defense.)

Leaks about the current CIA estimate are likely to prove a self-fulfilling prophesy. If President Clinton follows the model set by his first Secretary of State — the hapless Warren Christopher, who during his infamous 1994 round of “consultations” about stopping the Balkan bloodletting made a point of “asking the Europeans” what they wanted to do about it — and inquires how they feel about U.S. missile defenses, the answer will be as predictable as it is negative.
While they are justified in being upset about the Administration’s preference for an approach to NMD that would leave them vulnerable to attack, they (and the Russians) can be expected to harp on the point Messrs. Clinton and Gore, themselves, feel most strongly about: the need to preserve the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty at all costs.

Remember INF: This situation contrasts markedly with the last time the transatlantic alliance was sorely tried by the Kremlin and its instruments of political, strategic and military coercion: the 1983 deployment of Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) in Europe. At that time, President Reagan was in power in Washington, Margaret Thatcher led Great Britain and conservatives governed in virtually all of Western Europe’s other capitals (with the notable exception of Paris, where Francois Mitterand held sway). Then, despite Russia’s vociferous threats of nuclear Armageddon, mass demonstrations aimed at intimidating or, if possible toppling, friendly governments and promises of arms control sugarplums — orchestrated to varying degrees by an earlier head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov — the alliance held firm. It deployed Pershing II and Ground-Launched Cruise Missiles as planned. And the unraveling of the Soviet Union and its empire began.

Today, most NATO countries, including our own, are governed by the sort of people who were demonstrating against the INF deployments — Socialists (and in some cases, Communists) who denounced Reagan’s strategy of “peace through strength” and demanded that nothing be done to jeopardize the “peace through paper” approach so dearly beloved by arms control ideologues. It would take a far more committed advocate and courageous leader than Bill Clinton to instill in such a group a sense of common purpose and confidence in America’s direction, like that which prevailed in 1983.

A Way Ahead — Sea-Based Defenses

Even against such odds, President Clinton could greatly enhance his chances of a successful round of meetings with the allies were he, at last, to embrace a way of providing national missile defense that could protect their people and territory, as well as those of the United States — namely, by using modified AEGIS ships and, perhaps, those of allied navies equipped with U.S. anti-missile technology.

In recent days, the case for using sea-based assets for global missile defense has become ever more obvious. On Saturday, the Washington Post gave front-page, above-the-fold treatment to an article describing a Pentagon study of this option requested by Congress that reportedly “concludes that sea- based national missile defenses could be built with existing technology and would add both flexibility and firepower to the land-based system proposed by President Clinton.”

Importantly, the Post confirms reports that “top civilian officials at the Pentagon are now holding up release of the report, which was due to have gone to Congress in declassified form six weeks ago.” Members of Congress — led by House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay and freshman Louisiana Congressman David Vitter — are rightly concerned that Clinton-Gore political appointees are holding up release of this study for political, rather than technical, reasons. It would, after all, be inconvenient to have a report confirming the utility of sea-based missile defenses released to Congress just as Mr. Clinton is heading to Russia determined to secure a new agreement with Vladimir Putin that would foreclose this option.

Even by Clinton Administration standards when it comes to stonewalling the Congress, there is something extraordinary about its cavalier response to a letter sent to Secretary of Defense William Cohen by Messrs. Armey, DeLay and Vitter and twenty-four of their colleagues on 11 April. As the signatories put it: “Efforts by the Clinton-Gore Administration to pursue a treaty that could deny the Nation layers of anti-missile defenses that may prove vital to its future security only add to the need for the requested report to be released forthwith.” Six weeks later, these legislators have received no substantive reply.

Damn the Torpedoes’

Fortunately, the conclusions of this and a series of previous studies have not gone unnoticed by the U.S. Navy’s leadership. According to today’s Washington Times:

The Navy is planning a ship-based national missile defense that offers flexibility and a deterrence factor to augment a land-based program to knock out incoming long-range missiles, according to a senior military official….Internal studies have convinced senior admirals that the Navy can play a major role in supporting the developing land-based national missile defense.

This initiative is surely one of the by-products of another missive sent this year to Secretary Cohen — this one in the form of a memorandum dated 18 February from the outgoing Chief of Naval Operations, Adm. Jay Johnson. In it, the CNO made clear his view that the Navy could contribute significantly to a National Missile Defense system and should not be precluded from doing so by dint of programmatic or policy decisions. With that courageous “shot-across-the-bow,” Adm. Johnson created an opportunity for, and lent his personal prestige and support to, essential preparatory efforts on the part of his service like those reported in the Times today.

The Bottom Line

In a commencement address at the U.S. Military Academy on 27 May, Vice President Al Gore not only violated the principle of using that hallowed platform to deliver an unmistakably partisan speech. He also put on prominent public display his deeply held views about the sacrosanct nature of the ABM Treaty and the priority he attaches to protecting it — rather than providing competent, layered protection for the American people: “The Administration has been working on the technology for a National Missile Defense System designed to protect all 50 states from a limited attack at the hands of a rogue state. We believe, however, that it is essential to do this in a way that does not destroy the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty.”

In the clearly political setting of a session with reporters en route to West Point aboard Air Force Two, the Veep was even more direct in his attack on the pledge to defend all fifty states with comprehensive missile defenses unveiled by Governor George Bush last week. As the Washington Post reported on 28 May, Mr. Gore claimed that “the Bush proposal could reignite the arms race’ and that any attempt to return to a Star Wars’-style missile shield would be wildly unrealistic….The ABM Treaty is the cornerstone of strategic stability in our relationship with Russia. We need to continue on a course of deeper reductions. But it is critical that we have the right approach in doing so [i.e., within the ABM Treaty.]”

This disagreement — and the accompanying political activity by both the Gore and Bush camps — sets the stage for the sort of national debate about missile defense that the country has needed for so long. It cannot come soon enough.

Defining Issue: Bush Speech Offers Stark Alternative on Missile Defense, Nuclear Deterrence

(Washington, D.C.): For the first time in sixteen years, it appears that fundamental differences between the candidates on strategic deterrence will feature prominently in a presidential election. With remarks yesterday by Texas Governor and presumptive Republican nominee George W. Bush and responses from the camp of Vice President Al Gore, the American people seem likely to be offered the sort of stark choice last seen when President Ronald Reagan sought reelection in 1984. At that time, Mr. Reagan ran on a platform of peace through strength, a restored nuclear deterrent and a missile defense for the American people in his campaign against former Vice President Walter Mondale — who rejected both the philosophy and its applications, in favor of an unquestioning embrace of bilateral arms control with the Kremlin.

Compare and Contrast

In a speech to the National Press Club, Gov. Bush made the following key points:

A Post-Cold War Strategy

  • “The Cold War era is history. Our nation must recognize new threats, not fixate on old ones.”
  • “Russia itself is no longer our enemy. The Cold War logic that led to creation of massive stockpiles on both sides is now outdated. Our mutual security need no longer depend on a nuclear balance of terror. While deterrence remains the first line of defense against nuclear attack, the standoff of the Cold War was born of a different time.”
  • “The Clinton-Gore administration…remain[s] locked in a Cold War mentality. It is time to leave the Cold War behind and defend against the new threats of the 21st century.”

A Commitment to Defending America — and Her Forces and Allies Overseas

  • “America must build effective missile defenses based on the best available options at the earliest possible date. Our missile defense must be designed to protect all 50 states and our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas from missile attacks by rogue nations or accidental launches.”
  • “The Clinton administration at first denied the need for a national missile defense system. Then it delayed. Now the approach it proposes is flawed, a system initially based on a single site, when experts say that more is needed.”
  • “A missile defense system should not only defend our country; it should defend our allies, with whom I will consult as we develop our plans. And any change in the A.B.M. Treaty must allow the technologies and experiments required to deploy adequate missile defenses.”

Letting U.S. National Security Determine Strategic Force Levels, Capabilities

  • “America should rethink the requirements for nuclear deterrence in a new security environment. The premises of Cold War nuclear targeting should no longer dictate the size of our arsenal.”
  • “As president, I will ask the secretary of defense to conduct an assessment of our nuclear force posture and determine how best to meet our security needs1. While the exact number of weapons can come only from such an assessment, I will pursue the lowest possible number consistent with our national security.”
  • “It should be possible to reduce the number of American nuclear weapons significantly further than what has been already agreed to under Start II without compromising our security in any way. We should not keep weapons that our military planners do not need.”

In His Own Words

Even more impressive, in some respects — and an even more eloquent rebuttal to pronouncements from the Gore camp that “Bush’s agenda is irresponsible and shows that he lacks the depth of experience to keep America safe and secure” — were Governor Bush’s extemporaneous responses to questions from the press.2 These included notably the following:

  • Concerning the Upcoming Moscow Summit: “I…suggest…that [Mr. Clinton] not hamstring the ability of the next president to fully develop an antiballistic missile system to protect ourselves and our allies. As I said, no treaty, no agreement, would be better than a flawed agreement. I’m concerned that this administration is not fully devoted to the development of a antiballistic missile system that will work.”
  • Concerning Missile Defense Technology: “…The world has changed a lot since the 80s. Science is evolving. Laser technology is evolving. There’s a lot of inventiveness in our society that hasn’t been unleashed on this particular subject.

    • “And…I see a treaty that makes it hard for us to fully explore the options available, the options available to keep the peace. And there needs to be an administration with a firm commitment to exploring all options and all opportunities. Be able to understand, you know, whether or not a space-based system can work, like some hope it can….I don’t think [that under this Administration] there’s been the full commitment to determining what the opportunities and options are for the country.

  • Concerning Public Misconceptions About America’s Defenselessness: “The interesting fact is a lot of people think we can defend ourselves against an accidental launch. I think if you were to ask Americans, they will tell you that we’ve got the capability of defending ourselves. But it’s not the case.” 3

  • Concerning Relations with Russia: “I look forward to working with Mr. Putin and explaining my point of view and my attitude about the post-Cold War era. I’m going to look him right in the eye and say, You’re no longer the enemy. And we’re not your enemy. Surely we can work together to bring certainty into an uncertain world.'”
    “I’ll look forward to working with the Russians. But if they don’t [reciprocate], the level of nuclear readiness is going to meet our needs. It’s going to meet the needs of the United States of America. I will never put our security at risk.”
    “As to sharing [missile defense-related] information and technologies with the Russians, it depends upon how Russia behaves, depends upon how Russia conducts itself as a member of the family of nations.”

Music to the Chiefs’ Ears

As it happened, while Governor Bush was speaking, the basic thrust of his remarks was being echoed in an important Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on START III and the ABM Treaty featuring the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Command, Admiral Richard Meis. The Nation’s top military officers testified that they believed a comprehensive national security assessment — presumably, a study very like that called for by Gov. Bush — would be required before they could recommend reductions in strategic offensive arms below the 2000-2500 levels agreed to in the Helsinki framework accord. In other words, as far as they are concerned, President Clinton would be on his own if he were to pursue such an initiative with the Russians at next week’s summit.

Like Gov. Bush, the JCS and Adm. Meis emphasized the need to stop thinking of U.S. deterrent requirements in the context of the bipolar Cold War paradigm. To be sure, their testimony and answers to Senators’ questions reflected a view that Russia may reemerge as a threat — and that U.S. forces must be sufficiently robust to constitute a hedge against that possibility. The uniformed military, though, is thinking outside of the Cold War “box” in which the Clinton-Gore Administration clearly remains.

A Case in Point: The N.P.T. RevCon

The latest evidence of the Clinton-Gore team’s commitment to a very different — indeed, truly reckless — approach to matters involving deterrence and nuclear arms can be found in the consensus it permitted to be reached at the just-concluded Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference in New York. Highlights of that agreement not only bespeak a proclivity for fatuous, unverifiable and unworkable arms control agreements. They also constitute a legacy of mischievous promises that threaten to prove a security policy nightmare to Mr. Clinton’s successors and the Nation.

For example, in the course of the NPT RevCon, the United States joined the other participants in pledging to implement a radical anti-nuclear agenda that includes the following from the joint communique:

  • [An] unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament to which all States parties are committed under Article VI [of the NPT].
  • The engagement as soon as appropriate of all the nuclear weapon States in the process leading to the total elimination of their nuclear weapons.
  • The necessity of establishing in the Conference on Disarmament an appropriate subsidiary body with a mandate to deal with nuclear disarmament. The Conference on Disarmament is urged to agree on a program of work which includes the immediate establishment of such a body.
  • The principle of irreversibility to apply to nuclear disarmament, nuclear and other related arms control and reduction measures.
  • Concrete agreed measures to further reduce the operational status of nuclear weapons systems.
  • Arrangements by all nuclear weapon States to place, as soon as practicable, fissile material designated by each of them as no longer required for military purposes under IAEA or other relevant international verification and arrangements for the disposition of such material for peaceful purposes, to ensure that such material remains permanently outside of military programs.
  • Reaffirmation that the ultimate objective of the efforts of States in the disarmament process is general and complete disarmament under effective international control.

The Bottom Line

The Gore campaign’s response to the Bush speech leaves no doubt where the Vice President stands. As the New York Times reported today:

Mr. Gore’s aides sharply criticized Mr. Bush, saying his approach to nuclear security was unrealistic, that it would not be accepted by the Russians and that it would undermine years of arms control agreements. Mr. Gore’s advisers pointed to Mr. Bush’s opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and said the Governor advocates the radical rewriting, if not outright abolition, of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty….Mr. Gore, like Mr. Clinton, favors negotiating with the Russians to change the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and make way for the more limited missile defense system.

The stage is thus set, finally, for a real choice by the American people on matters that involve, literally, national survival. Both of the presidential candidates — and, for that matter, candidates for the legislative branch — are to be encouraged to amplify upon their positions concerning missile defense and nuclear deterrence, further sharpening what could — and should — be a defining issue in Campaign 2000.




1Importantly, Gov. Bush also qualified what could otherwise be a highly problematic element of his remarks — i.e., his statement that “the United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status” — by declaring that “I will ask for an assessment of what we can safely do to lower the alert status of our forces.”

2Governor Bush also addressed impressively a question unrelated to nuclear strategy concerning his willingness to revise U.S. policy toward Cuba: “I’ll review the policy toward Cuba when Fidel Castro has free elections, frees prisoners and has freedom of the press.”

3In this connection, the House Republican Conference on Capitol Hill today viewed a powerful 30-second television advertisement being aired this week by the Coalition to Protect Americans Now! designed to inform the American people about their actual, utter vulnerability to missile attack — and the responsibility the Clinton-Gore Administration bears for that dangerous situation. Part of this ad was featured in a report broadcast last night on the CBS Evening News and the text of its audio track appears in today’s Washington Post: “Where will you be when the missiles are launched? Dangerous nations like North Korea and Iran will soon have nuclear missiles that can hit our cities. But America has no defense against missile attacks — Clinton and Gore have left us unprotected. Nearing the election, they admit maybe we do need a missile defense — but only a limited system — and only with Russia’s permission. Where will you be?”

Moscow’s Overlooked Missile Defenses

By James T. Hackett
The Washington Times, 17 May 2000

It seems that everyone wants the U.S. to remain undefended against ballistic missiles. The United Nations secretary general, a former NATO secretary generals, the British prime minister, French, German, and Canadian officials, and just about everyone else in Europe is supporting Moscow and Beijing in opposing a U.S. missile defense. To be sure, our allies are polite, but it is disturbing to hear Europeans, with whom Americans fought in two world wars, saying we should not defend ourselves.

After all, the current plan is modest — to deploy just 20 interceptors by 2005 and 100 by 2007. This, we are told, will destroy the ABM treaty, threaten strategic stability, cause Moscow to withdraw from START and other arms control treaties, and lead to a new arms race. The widespread opposition is a reflection of America’s predominant position in the world today — others join in trying to hold down the most powerful.

Besides, missile defenses devalue not only Russian and Chinese missiles, but those of our allies as well. And the allies fear that if we become secure in our defenses we will abandon them. So they join our adversaries in opposing a U.S. defense.

But why do they never mention Moscow’s missile defense? It has been there for over three decades, silently defending the Russian leadership, with no adverse affects on arms reductions or global stability. It began in 1968 when 64 Galosh ABM interceptors, each armed with a nuclear weapon comparable to a million tons of TNT, were deployed at four sites some 50 miles north and west of Moscow.

The Galosh did not have to be accurate — the enormous fireball created by such a huge nuclear weapon would incinerate incoming warheads. Next came 36 Gazelle short-range interceptors, also nuclear-armed, at sites just outside Moscow, giving the city a layered defense of 100 interceptors, the same number the U.S. plans to deploy in Alaska.

In 1976, the U.S. deployed 100 Spartan and Sprint interceptors in an ABM defense at Grand Forks, N.D., but shortly thereafter deactivated the site and put the interceptors in storage. Not the Soviets. They maintained their defense of Moscow and improved it a decade ago, replacing the Galoshes with new long-range interceptors known as Gorgons. That upgraded Moscow defense, with 100 Gorgons and Gazelles armed with nuclear warheads, remains on alert today. Last November, a Gazelle was taken from its silo and flight-tested to show the system still works.

This ABM defense protects hundreds if not thousands of miles around Moscow that includes the heartland of the country — the national capital, the government and leadership, population centers and major industries — and it is supplemented by deep underground shelters for the leadership. But Russia also has thousands of SA-5, SA-10, and SA-12 surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) defending against short-and medium-range missiles such as those in the arsenals of China, North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, and other countries. And if these SAMs are connected to ABM radars, as some analysts contend, it would constitute a nationwide ABM network.

On Feb. 10, the Moscow press reported that a new SAM, the S-400 Triumph, was about to undergo a series of flight tests. The report said the S-400 was tested six times last year with results that showed it to be more capable than the newest version of the U.S. Patriot. By the end of this year, the report added, at least 10 flight tests will be completed against supersonic, maneuverable targets, and the S-400 will be ready to join the thousands of SAMs already protecting high priority locations in Russia.

The technically superior S-400, with a reach of 250 miles, can engage ballistic missiles with ranges up to 2,200 miles, and perhaps with longer ranges if it is connected to ABM radars. Today, Russia has the world’s only ABM defense around its national capital, plus thousands of SAMs defending the country, up to 3,000 around Moscow alone, and a new model soon to go into production. Yet, the world is silent about Russia’s missile defenses.

The U.S. wants similar protection against an accidental, unauthorized or rogue state launch, and against missile blackmail. But Moscow and Beijing want the U.S. to remain defenseless against their missiles, so they protest vociferously. It is ridiculous to say it is OK for Russia to defend itself, but not for the United States to do so.

Every country has the right of self-defense, especially against nuclear missiles. The U.S. should reject the foreign criticism and defend itself. Then it can expand the shield to protect the allies and lead the way to a new era in which defenses promote global stability.

James T. Hackett is a contributing writer to The Washington Times.

Convergence: More Democrats Endorse Sea-Based Missile Defenses that Clinton and Putin Hope to Ban

(Washington, D.C.): A growing consensus is emerging across the American political spectrum: The fastest, least expensive and most effective means of providing the United States with a near-term missile defense system is by utilizing sea-based assets. This conclusion is not only sharply at odds with the Clinton-Gore Administration’s programmatic plans, such as they are, for deploying national anti-missile systems. It is also diametrically opposed to the arms control proposal that Mr. Clinton hopes to get Russian President Vladimir Putin to accept in Moscow on 4 June.

According to today’s Washington Post, the latest converts to sea-based deployment of boost-phase missile defenses are three individuals who served Democratic presidents in senior Pentagon positions — former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, former Deputy Secretary of Defense (and CIA Director) John Deutch and former Deputy Secretary of Defense John White. Their critique of President Clinton’s plan to deploy only a limited ground-based missile defense in Alaska will reportedly appear in an article in the June edition of the journal Foreign Policy.

The recommendation by Messrs. Brown, Deutch and White that America be defended from the sea follows similar statements made recently by Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) and former Clinton Defense Secretary William Perry. As the New York Times reported on 9 March Sen. Biden declared in a speech at Stanford University the day before that “an Aegis sea-based system with missiles based off the North Korean coast would let the United States intercept the [North Korean] missiles in their ascents.”1 The Times went on to note that “[Mr.] Perry was in the audience….In congressional testimony, [he has] favored the sea-based system off North Korea.”2

To be sure, these proponents seem to be advancing their arguments in favor of sea-based anti-missile systems at this juncture primarily in the hope of persuading President Clinton not to decide this summer to go forward with the siting of between 20 and 100 missile interceptors in Alaska. (At the very least, this factor seems to contribute to the decision by leading newspapers to cover an alternative deployment option most have, heretofore, studiously ignored.3)

The real value of these contributions by influential Democratic figures, however, is not to the idea that the President should defer the deployment of missile defenses. To the contrary, such defenses need to be fielded at the earliest possible moment. If, as is increasingly widely recognized, this can be done first by utilizing seagoing platforms, that is obviously to be preferred.

Rather, what President Clinton, Vice President Gore and members of the Senate Armed Services Committee — who will hear important testimony tomorrow afternoon from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Commander-in-Chief of Strategic Command, General Richard Meis — should appreciate is a point at least implicit in the views being expressed by these worthies: If America is to be properly defended against long-range missile attack, steps must be taken that are wholly incompatible with the obsolete, extinct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Put differently, the Clinton-Gore Administration’s determination to allow negotiating considerations — aimed at “preserving” the ABM Treaty, rather than system optimization from a military perspective — to dictate the type, placement and capabilities of the United States’ National Missile Defense system is a formula for foreclosing the sort of flexible, near-term and cost-effective system the country requires.

Tomorrow’s congressional hearing will also afford a valuable opportunity for Senators to confirm what has been reported in the press4: The best professional military judgment of the Nation’s senior commanders holds that — under present and foreseeable circumstances — U.S. deterrence requirements dictate that the Nation retain no fewer than 2000-2500 START-accountable weapons. Efforts by the Clinton-Gore Administration to press for a bilateral accord that would allow for far fewer weapons in the face of objections from the Joint Chiefs and CINCSTRATCOM should only intensify the opposition already expressed in writing last month by Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and twenty-four of his colleagues.5

The Bottom Line

Clearly, the Clinton-Gore Administration is increasingly out of touch with not only the views of long-time supporters of missile defense and its own military6 but even many of the Democratic Party’s most prominent national security experts. If the President will not reverse course, it behooves the Congress and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to take to the American people the compelling reasons for abandoning Mr. Clinton’s pursuit of the so-called “Grand Bargain” at his upcoming summit in Moscow. The Senate Armed Services Committee’s hearing tomorrow offers an excellent opportunity to begin that educational process.

While they are at it, Senators and the Nation’s military leaders should address another important, but largely neglected, aspect of the debate about missile defense: Russia’s hypocrisy in denouncing American efforts to protect its people and territory — even as the Kremlin continues its upgrading of the sort of nationwide defense explicitly prohibited by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In this connection, the attached op.ed. in today’s Washington Times by the former Acting Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, James Hackett, should be considered required reading.




1While Senator Biden appears to have endorsed the “AEGIS Option” long favored by the Center for Security Policy and the Blue-Ribbon Commission on Missile Defense sponsored since 1995 by the Heritage Foundation, others are proposing different approaches. Notably, contrary to earlier reports, Drs. Richard Garwin and Theodore Postel favor a boost-phase system with interceptors based on U.S. military cargo ships in the Japan Basin. Obviously, the question of precisely how best to utilize sea-based assets in national missile defense should be the focus of the debate on defending America. But such a debate that can only be fully and constructively engaged in if President Clinton refrains from foreclosing all sea-based and many other promising missile defense options.

2See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Influential Democrats Appear to Endorse the ‘AEGIS Option’ for Quickly Defending America (No. 00-D 22, 10 March 2000).

3Several notable exceptions include: the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, the Washington Times, the San Diego Union and Investors Business Daily.

4See Hallelujah: Joint Chiefs, Strategic Command Oppose Reckless Clinton Disarmament Initiatives (No. 00-D 44, 11 May 2000).

5See There Must be No ‘Grand Compromise’ of U.S. National Security (No. 00-F 28, 21 April 2000).

5Notably, the Director of President Clinton’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Gen. Ronald Kadish, has called for a “layered” missile defense — likely involving sea-, air- and space-based weapons and sensors, as well as a ground-based anti-missile system.

Clinton Must Cease and Desist’ Efforts to Conclude Flawed Arms Control Accords

(Washington, D.C.): Recent evidence of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s wholesale mismanagement of nuclear strategy and related matters adds urgency to what amounted to a recent “stop-work” order conveyed in a letter to the President from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and twenty-four of his colleagues. At this rate, Congress may feel compelled to issue an actual injunction directing Mr. Clinton to cease and desist before this pursuit of a presidential “legacy” — at seemingly any price — translates into additional, real and lasting harm to America’s capability to deter and, if necessary, to defeat attacks on its vital interests.

A Bill of Particulars

  • Last Monday, representatives of what is, arguably, the most anti-nuclear American administration in history agreed to a joint statement with Russia, China, Britain and France to ban the bomb. To be sure, the utterly addled idea of ridding the planet of nuclear arms has been a rhetorical goal of the U.S. government for some time. This pointed affirmation of an “unequivocal commitment to complete disarmament,” however, is certain going to greatly intensify pressure on the United States to take concrete, near-term steps in this direction — and, thus, set an example for others to follow.

    Notably, at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York where this statement was unveiled, some among the roughly 500 participating non- governmental organizations (NGOs) declared their intention to ask the World Court to order the nuclear weapon states to set a timetable for complete nuclear disarmament. These groups take full advantage of their accreditation (some of their representatives are even part of official national delegations!) to influence the deliberations and outcomes of such multilateral forums. They reportedly are planning to gain jurisdiction over the United States by bringing a case against one of its NATO partners (perhaps Germany, whose Green Party Foreign Minister might readily agree to jurisdiction) on the grounds that U.S. allies participate in setting nuclear policy for NATO.

    Never mind that others will not follow America’s lead, should it make the mistake of actually eliminating its nuclear arsenal — certainly not the rogue nuclear wannabes we currently have to be most worried about deterring. It is, moreover, inconceivable that Russia and China would actually comply with such an obligation, either, given its inherent unverifiability.

    But now, as always, for the West’s anti-nuclear crowd, the idea is to disarm the one you’re with. And the United States’ actual or potential adversaries are only too happy cynically to promise to do the same. After all, they stand to benefit from a huge shift in what the Soviets used to call the strategic “correlation of forces” should America actually follow through with this sort of unilateral disarmament.

  • Last week, the New York Times released the text of the “Grand Compromise” to which the Clinton- Gore Administration hopes the Russians will agree. It proposes to purchase Moscow’s assent to a ground-based U.S. “national missile defense” that is so limited it will not cover all of the country or protect against more than a handful of incoming ballistic missiles. The price: reductions in U.S. nuclear forces to such low levels that it would be impracticable to maintain a strategic “Triad,” long understood to be essential to a robust deterrent posture.

    Worse yet, in their effort to sell the Russians on such a “compromise,” the Administration is resorting — whether out of incompetence or by design is unclear — to arguments likely to make it even harder either to provide credible nuclear deterrence or competent missile defenses.

    Specifically, the Administration has advised the Russians that they can always rely upon a “launch on warning” strategy to mitigate stated concerns that American defenses could presage and enable a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike. By dignifying this absurd proposition — even before the end of the Cold War made such fears preposterous, the idea was inconceivable — the Clinton-Gore team is only reinforcing the Kremlin’s propaganda line that nuclear war will be made more imminent by our pursuit of protection against missile attack.

    One upshot of this gambit is renewed energy behind another hardy perennial on the anti-nuclear community’s agenda: the idea of “de-alerting” of U.S. — and, ostensibly, Russian — nuclear forces. Were American weapons on day-to-day alert to be dismantled or otherwise disabled, however, more than a “launch on warning” option would be foreclosed: The deterrent value of the United States’ arsenal would be eviscerated since, as a practical matter, it would be politically (if not technically) problematic to restore these weapons to operational status.

  • The Clinton-Gore Administration is also inflicting unnecessary injury on America’s alliance relationships with its approach to missile defense. This is the effect of allowing the desire to preserve the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty to drive policy and programmatic decisions, rather than a goal of optimizing the coverage, cost-effectiveness or speed with which anti-missile systems can be deployed.

    The latter considerations argue for an aggressive near-term effort to adapt the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense ships for this purpose. By so doing, the United States could make clear that its “national” missile defense system will actually be a global capability, thus denying critics and those who would divide America from her allies the argument that the former will be protected at the latters’ expense. These risks could be even further reduced if, thanks to the generally excellent ties maintained by our Navy with those of allied nations, opportunities for cooperation in adapting various friendly countries’ ships for missile defense purposes are fully exploited.

The Bottom Line

It looks as though differences between the Gore and Bush camps on foreign and defense policy are going to feature prominently in the 2000 election, after all. The radical and/or reckless disarmament policies being pursued by President Clinton, with the aggressive support of his Vice President, offer the Texas governor a particularly promising opportunity to showcase a contrasting vision of an American deterrent that remains strong and credible and that is complemented as quickly as possible with a global, anti-missile defense, starting at sea. In the meantime, it behooves Gov. Bush and like-minded Members of Congress to find ways of compelling President Clinton to refrain from further compounding the damaging legacy in these areas now being left to his successor.

Missile Defense: Cheap at Twice the Price

(Washington, D.C.): In the face of confirmation from even the Clinton Administration that the threat of ballistic missile attack is sufficiently grave as to justify the deployment of at least limited anti-missile defenses, opponents of such a deployment are scrambling to shore up their positions. The latest straw at which they are grasping is a new Congressional Budget Office study that asserts the total price tag, over fifteen years, for the Clinton Administration’s ground-based missile defense system could be as high as $60 billion.

The fact is that the CBO figure include projected costs for upgrades to the initial system that the Administration has yet to define, let alone propose. What is more, the very fact that the costs CBO anticipates would be spread out over fifteen years — during which time defense budgets may total as much as $4.5 trillion. Consequently, even if the current CBO estimates are correct, the annual outlay for this expanded (but still “limited”) national missile defense system would be less than 1% of then-year budgets. At that rate, a missile defense capable of sparing even a single American city from attack by missile-delivered weapons of mass destruction, to say nothing of perhaps all of them, would be cheap at twice the CBO’s price.

If cost were really the issue, though, it would argue not for scrapping the putative Clinton-Gore plan but for pursuing more aggressively other missile defense systems that might be able to provide as much (if not better) missile coverage, more flexibly, more quickly and at significantly less cost. Such a system would involve adapting the U.S. Navy’s existing $50-plus billion AEGIS fleet air defense infrastructure.

A study completed last year by the blue-ribbon Commission on Missile Defense, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, chaired by President Bush’s Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, Ambassador Henry Cooper, has claimed since 1995 that the Navy’s AEGIS cruisers could be given NMD capability within four years for less than $3 billion above the amount already programmed for the Administration’s missile defense programs. The Administration has repeatedly studied this proposal since then. Without exception, those studies have recognized that the AEGIS Option could make a valuable contribution to meeting the Nation’s missile defense requirements.

The latest of these reports was due to be submitted to the Congress by the Pentagon on 15 March 2000. Although the study was reportedly completed by the Navy and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization in time to meet that deadline, officials in the White House and Office of the Secretary of Defense apparently thought it would be unhelpful to have a study confirming the value of sea-based defenses arriving on Capitol Hill just as the Administration was trying to cut a deal permanently precluding that option. To their credit, twenty-seven members of the House Representatives have recently written Secretary of Defense William Cohen(1) demanding that the overdue report be released forthwith.

The Bottom Line

Armed with this fresh evidence of the folly of the Clinton-Gore approach to strategic arms control, the vehemence of congressional opposition to the so-called “Grand Compromise” now being negotiated with Vladimir Putin’s government can only intensify. And, as a letter dated 17 April(2) from twenty-five of the most influential members of the U.S. Senate to President Clinton makes clear, the opposition is already sufficiently high as to make such a deal Dead on Arrival:

“[I]n our judgement, any agreement along the lines you have proposed to Russia would have little hope of gaining Senate consent to ratification….The single-site, 100 interceptor system deployed in Alaska…cannot effectively protect the United States. More than a single site is necessary to defend against anticipated threats.”

In the end, the most effective and most cost-effective missile defense system will be layered, with land-, sea-, space- and air-based components — a point made recently by Clinton’s own Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization Lt. Gen. Ronald Kadish. Every effort should now be made to get started with what can be brought to bear most readily and at least cost — the AEGIS Option.

Clinton Legacy Watch # 47: The Arms Control Scam

(Washington, D.C.): The coming days are likely to produce paroxysms in diplomatic circles, the media and advocacy groups over the need to preserve and enhance various international arms control agreements. Specifically, with the opening today of the quadrennial Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) review conference in New York, the United States faces a multi-week thrash over its failure to do more to disarm.

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore Administration’s response to such criticism has generally been to grovel, apologize and pander. It refuses to make the case (and presumably does not believe) that the world is a safer place thanks to America’s preeminent military strength. It recoils from acknowledging that arms control is utterly failing to keep dangerous nations from acquiring deadly weapons of mass destruction — and the means to deliver them against the United States and/or its friends and forces overseas.

The Benighted Clinton-Gore Approach

Instead, the Administration proposes to redouble its efforts to secure still further, ineffectual agreements. For example, it makes no effort to conceal its contempt for the majority of the U.S. Senate that voted last fall to reject the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). It ignores the Senate’s conclusion that that accord was unverifiable, unenforceable and would have precluded the United States from maintaining the sort of safe, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent the Nation will need for the foreseeable future. (If any further confirmation of these deficiencies were needed, it can be found in the Russian Duma’s ratification of the CTBT last week.)(1) To the contrary, President Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright assert that the Senate vote has no impact on the status of that accord, that the United States will continue to be bound by it and that the CTBT should be brought into force at the earliest possible time.

In addition to banning all nuclear tests, the Clinton-Gore team aspires to make the existing, widely breached ban on biological weapons “verifiable” by adding to it arrangements that will not catch any violators — but will assuredly result in the compromise of the U.S. biotech industry’s highly coveted proprietary information and manufacturing processes. It seeks a universal ban on fissile materials even though most Russian nuclear power plants generate such potentially deadly stuff as a by-product. And it is pursuing negotiations on prohibiting information warfare and weapons in space that will not prevent either from being used against us, but may deny the U.S. possibly decisive warfighting capabilities against prospective adversaries.

The Missile Defense Deal to End All U.S. Missile Defenses

The Clinton-Gore Administration’s failure to recognize — and speak the truth about — the futility of arms control under present and future circumstances seems likely to bear its bitterest fruit, however, in the area of missile defense.

In an op.ed. article in today’s New York Times, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov telegraphed the punch he intends to deliver during remarks at what arms controllers call the NPT RevCon and in bilateral negotiations with the Clinton Administration: “There is [an] important issue: the close connection between the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II) and the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which bans the signatories from deploying national anti-ballistic missile systems. The United States is considering the creation of such a system, which would be an open violation of the treaty.” (Emphasis added.)

Here again, the Clinton-Gore Administration’s lack of integrity about arms control matters has subjected the United States unnecessarily, if not dangerously, to Russian blackmail. Like a crazy aunt in the parlor whose family studiously ignores her presence, the Administration has simply refused to acknowledge reality: There is no ABM Treaty in legal force today.

As former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Douglas Feith and former Justice Department official George Miron put it in the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis to date concerning the legal status of the ABM Treaty: “The ABM Treaty lapsed by operation of law — that is, automatically — when the USSR dissolved in 1991. It did not become a treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation.”(2)

As a result, the “protocols” Foreign Minister Ivanov wants the U.S. to ratify so START II can go into effect cannot be amendments to an existing treaty. They must, instead, be seen as free-standing undertakings, designed to bind the United States to a new anti-anti-missile defense accords whose scope and terms will make it even more difficult to deploy effective American missile defenses.

More ‘Amendments’?

For this reason, the Senate should demand that President Clinton promptly submit for its “advice and consent” the protocols recently ratified by the Russian Duma — something he promised to do more than two years ago. If, as seems likely, the Senate were to reject these defective agreements, the United States could avoid the trap now being laid for it: a “Grand Compromise” that would trade radical and ill-advised reductions in U.S. nuclear forces (calculated to appeal not only to arms control ideologues but to a Russian military whose budget shortfalls are obliging it, with or without corresponding American reductions, to cut back on deployed nuclear arms) for yet another “amendment” to the ABM Treaty.

The latter would, at best, lock the United States into the deployment of only a very limited “national” missile defense (NMD) system in Alaska. Importantly, twenty-five influential Senators, including the Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott and the Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (who happens to represent Alaska in the Senate), wrote President Clinton last week to warn against such an arms control deal:

The “initial NMD architecture” chosen by your Administration — a single-site, 100 interceptor system deployed in Alaska beginning not sooner than 2005 — cannot effectively protect the United States. More than a single site is necessary to defend against anticipated threats….The approach fails to permit the deployment of other promising missile defense technologies — including space-based sensors, sufficient numbers of ground-based radars and additional interceptor basing modes, like Navy systems and the Airborne Laser — that we believe are necessary to achieve a fully effective defense against the full range of possible threats.

Given the desirability of discussing these issues with Russia in a way that accurately reflects the views of both the Senate and your Administration, our advice is that you reconsider your Administration’s current approach to NMD policy and arms control and consult further with us. Without significant changes to your approach, we do not believe an agreement submitted to the Senate for consideration should be ratified.(3) (Emphasis added.)

The Bottom Line

This is the stuff of which momentous national elections are made. President Clinton, Vice President Gore and their allies are clearly hoping that their security policy approach will not be properly seen by the American people for what it is: a scam, combining ersatz arms control and real, largely unilateral U.S. disarmament. The Senate leadership has taken an important step towards framing the issue and offering the voters an alternative approach that relies, in the words of Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ), on “peace through strength, not pieces of paper.”

Putin’s Non-STARTer

(Washington, D.C.): Vladimir Putin’s opening foreign policy gambit after his victory at the polls last month says a lot about what sort of leader of Russia he will be. President Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and others have been quick to portray the newly elected President’s success in securing ratification of the START II Treaty — after seven years of studied inaction by the Duma — as evidence that Putin is a man with whom we can safely do business.

Not So Fast

On closer inspection, however, this action is evidence less of a heartening sea-change in Russia than the sort of maneuver — jujitsu — that one would expect from a man who prides himself not only on his black belt in martial arts, but on his career in the front lines of Soviet intelligence’s Cold War operations against the West. We should take little comfort from signs that the most dangerous master of the Kremlin since the last KGB man to rule there, Yuri Andropov, is now able to bend the Duma to his will as he shrewdly works to undermine our advantages and turn Russia’s liabilities into strengths.

Take, for example, Putin’s machinations on the START II Treaty. In its original form, this accord — while defective in important respects — could be said to have had some redeeming features from the American point of view. In particular, it was supposed to result in the early elimination of all of the former Soviet Union’s vast arsenal of SS-18s, heavy ballistic missiles capable of preemptively attacking the United States with large numbers of independently targetable warheads. This was the treaty ratified by the U.S. Senate in January 1996.

Unfortunately, the Clinton-Gore Administration agreed in September 1997 to defer the dismantling of these and other threatening Russian missiles until as late as 2007. And that was the arrangement the Duma approved last Friday. Lest the impact of this change be lost on anyone, Putin subsequently indicated that none of Russia’s long-range missiles will be retired until they reach the end of their useful service life. Some deal.

Making Matters Worse on Missile Defense

What is more, Putin has asserted that Russia will not implement the START II Treaty at all unless and until the U.S. ratifies what the Duma has just done. That would mean accepting several other troubling provisions, notably steps aimed at breathing new life into the strategically obsolete, legally defunct 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

For example, the Russians have attached to their resolution of ratification two other ill-advised agreements also signed by the Clinton-Gore Administration in September 1997. One would effect an extraordinary make-over of the ABM Treaty, from the bilateral accord signed with the USSR — a country that ceased to exist nine years ago — into a multilateral accord between Russia, Ukraine and Belarus on the one hand and the United States on the other. An insight into the Clinton-Gore Administration’s actual attitude towards defending the United States against missile attack may be found in its motivation for seeking this change: Creating multiple foreign vetoes would make it even more difficult to modify the ABM treaty so as to permit U.S. missile defenses to be deployed.

The second agreement addresses the question of “demarcationn”: Where is the technological line to be drawn between so-called “theater” missile defenses that were not supposed to be covered by the ABM Treaty and “strategic” defenses that were? In practice, this accord would have the effect of imposing new limitations on a whole class of promising anti-missile systems. It has already contributed to actions that have “dumbed-down” the Navy’s sea-based Theater Wide missile defense program, rendering it less capable of providing near-term protection for U.S. forces and allies overseas than it could — and than it needs to do.

What ABM Treaty?

In addition, at Putin’s direction, the Duma has served notice that if the United States withdraws from the ABM Treaty, Russia will abrogate not only the START I and II Treaties but from other arms control accords as well. This audacious move takes advantage of the Clinton-Gore Administration’s refusal to acknowledge the fact that the ABM Treaty is no longer in effect as a matter of international law — the ineluctable conclusion of a comprehensive review of legal precedents and practice performed for the Center for Security Policy by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Negotiations Policy Douglas J. Feith and former Justice Department attorney George Miron.1 It also would, as a practical matter, eliminate a right the United States was explicitly afforded by the ABM Treaty, namely that of withdrawing from the accord on six months’ notice if the Nation’s “supreme interests are jeopardized.”

As the New York Times reported on Saturday:

“Washington has a choice, [Putin] said. The United States will have to renounce its plans to develop a national ABM system in order to preserve START II and the agreement limiting conventional forces in Europe. If it does not and discards the ABM treaty, Mr. Putin said, the United States will ‘become in the eyes of the world the party that is guilty for destroying the foundations of strategic stability.'”

In the interest of promoting that view “in the eyes of the world,” Putin immediately set off for London. To be sure, a focus for the trip is to sell the idea notion that his vision of what might be called a “less kind, less gentle” Russian government will be good for foreign investors. He is also bent, however, on fostering opposition among U.S. allies to any American effort to deploy effective anti-missile defenses. This divide-and-conquer strategy is reminiscent of one that nearly worked in the early 1980s when Andropov ran the Kremlin’s campaign to oppose the deployment of intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe.

The Bottom Line

It remains to be seen what Putin’s jujitsu will mean for the Clinton-Gore Administration’s highest foreign policy priority: negotiation of a “Grand Compromise” on strategic arms. This would package a follow-on START III agreement (involving far more radical, unverifiable and ill-advised reductions in U.S. offensive nuclear arms) together with Russian permission for an exceedingly limited American anti-missile deployment in Alaska, provided Washington foreswears any interest in more comprehensive “layered” defenses.

Before President Clinton makes matters worse — either in negotiations leading up to or during the summit he plans to hold with Putin sometime next month — he should heed a lesson offered by the bruising fight that led to rejection of his 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty2: Under the U.S. Constitution, the Senate is a coequal partner with the executive branch in the making of international treaties. It would be a serious mistake to enroll, without serious debate let alone prior agreement from the Senate, in a new agreement effecting dubious reductions in U.S. nuclear forces and precluding the sort of layered missile defenses that even the director of the Clinton Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish, says are likely to be necessary.

Alas, a President more interested in securing an arms control “legacy” irrespective of the cost is likely to prove an easy mark for a cunning, ruthless operative like Vladimir Putin. The U.S. Senate must therefore promptly step into the breach, performing the vital check-and-balance role envisioned for it by the Founding Fathers. It should insist upon President Clinton finally submitting for the Senate’s “advice and consent” the September 1997 agreements the Duma has now approved. By rejecting these accords on the grounds that they will make it harder for America to achieve the missile defense required by it and its forces and allies overseas, the Senate can make clear the unacceptability of the “Grand Compromise” President Clinton now seeks — a deal that might just be sufficiently inimical to U.S. national security interests to be acceptable to President-elect Putin.




1See the Center’s Press Release entitled Message to Albright, Primakov: New Legal Analysis Establishes that the A.B.M. Treaty Died with the Soviet Union (No. 99-P 11, 22 January 1999).

2See the Center’s Decision Brief entitled Senate Majority’s Defeat of C.T.B.T. Represents Triumph of Sound Security Policy Over Placebo Arms Control (No. 99-D 116, 14 October 1999).

Critics’ Study Makes Case for ‘Layered’ Missile Defense

(Washington, D.C.): A new study, prepared by opponents of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system now under consideration by the Clinton-Gore Administration for deployment in 2005, claims that such a system could be easily defeated by “simple” enemy countermeasures and should not be built. In fact, descriptions of this study’s findings prominently featured in the morning newspapers seem to support the judgment of the man charged with developing that NMD system — Lieutenant General Ronald Kadish (USAF), the Director of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization — who has recently argued in public for a “layered” anti-missile system to protect the American people.

Gen. Kadish: Ground-based System Not Likely to Be Sufficient Over Time

In remarks at a breakfast meeting on 30 March co-sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation and the National Defense Industrial Association, Gen. Kadish declared that such a layered system, comprised over time of a range of systems to address an evolving threat, would likely utilize sea- and space-based missile defense “layers” to complement and add robustness to the ground-based capability he is preparing for deployment in Alaska.

Specifically, Gen. Kadish observed that the inherent mobility of naval systems, in concert with ground-based Army systems, makes a lot of sense from a theater or national missile defense perspective. He also emphasized the need for boost-phase defenses, for which sea-, air- and space-based weapons will be necessary. Such defenses have the potential to intercept ballistic missiles early in their flight, i.e., before they can deploy the multiple payloads and other countermeasures about which the inveterate critics of missile defense whose study was sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Union of Concerned Scientists profess grave concern.

If the critics are right — a significant “if” — about the imminence of effective countermeasures falling into the hands of potential adversaries, the argument is only reinforced for pursuing multiple means of acquiring layered missile defenses at the earliest possible time. Specifically, this would mean adapting the Navy’s AEGIS fleet air defense system as quickly as possible to permit it to intercept long-range missiles, especially in the boost or ascent phase where geography permits (as in the case, for example, of North Korea and perhaps Iraq or Iran). Interestingly, two of the most vocal of critics of missile defense — MIT’s Professor Theodore Postol and IBM’s Richard Garwin — have been recently sighted recommending that AEGIS ships be adapted for sea-based missile defenses precisely to address this mission.

Will a Layered Defense be Strangled by Clinton’s Grand Compromise?

The only thing that appears to stand in the way of deploying layered anti-missile defenses capable of ensuring the protection of the American people against present and emerging ballistic missile threats is the Clinton-Gore Administration: It is determined to reach an agreement with Vladimir Putin’s Russia that would foreclose such a possibility by condemning the United States to precisely the sort of limited, ground-based defensive system that the critics now contend would be incapable of dealing with countermeasures, and therefore unjustifiable.

This initiative will surely be given a powerful boost if, as has been reported, the Russian Duma ratifies START II this week. That step will be seen as clearing the way, at last, for the “Grand Compromise” long sought by President Clinton — a two-part deal that would eviscerate the U.S. nuclear deterrent (by agreeing to unverifiable reductions in offensive nuclear arms to perhaps as few as 1,000-1,500 strategic warheads) and strangle in the crib the sorts of promising missile defense options the U.S. needs today and even more so tomorrow. The argument for an early and rigorous debate on the wisdom of this compromise, most especially by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is advanced by the Center’s President, Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., in the attached Defense News editorial.

The Bottom Line

The arguments now being advanced to delay a deployment decision on the Alaska anti-missile system should, instead, lead to an acceleration of the steps needed to bring to bear more comprehensive and robust defenses, starting with a layer utilizing the Navy’s existing $50 billion AEGIS infrastructure. These capabilities will complement the strengths and offset any weaknesses of the ground-based deployment.

If their latest complaints are other than a smokescreen for rationalizing long-standing opposition to the defense of the American people against growing missile threats, the critics should join with proponents of missile defenses in arguing — not for a delay in the deployment of missile defenses — but for an open-ended postponement on any arms control negotiation that would impede the United States’ acquisition and deployment of needed boost- and/or ascent-phase defenses.