Legacy of 30-years under the 1972 ABM Treaty When in 2002 President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty with the former Soviet Union, he ended 30 years of U.S. policy which required that the United States be vulnerable to ballistic missile attack which could have killed 10s of millions of American. Many might have argued that the Treaty should have become moot when the Soviet Union dissolved in the early 1990s; but for political reasons, the United States grandfathered its commitment to the Treaty, but for another 10-years with Russia. The purpose of the Treaty was to underwrite the policy of Mutual Assured Destruction, aptly referred to as MAD. This Cold War doctrine held that the United States (and the rest of the world) was most safe when it and the Soviet Union/Russia were each held hostage to the other’s offensive nuclear forces. This mutual suicide pact was supposed to lead to limits and reductions in strategic offensive arms – ironically it ushered in the most massive arms race in history. During that 30-year period, development and testing was permitted only on limited defenses to protect our retaliatory forces – mainly our intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) – and deployment was limited to 100 ground-based interceptors at a single site in North Dakota. So for 30 years, defending offensive missiles was fine, but defending American citizens was forbidden. And research, development, testing and limited deployment of fixed ground-based defenses was permitted – but only research was permitted for other basing modes. The Treaty specifically banned development, testing and deployment of space-based, sea-based, and mobile ground-based defenses. And while there were disputes about what constituted research on “other physical principles,” negotiations were required before such systems could be deployed. The only serious research opening for any serious ballistic missile defense other than nuclear-tipped ground-based interceptors was during the period between March 23, 1083 (President Ronald Reagan’s famous speech that led to his Strategic Defense Initiative – SDI) and January 23, 1993 (the inauguration of President Bill Clinton). During that nearly 10-year period, some $30 billion was spent on research directed at finding the most effective non-nuclear ballistic missile defense system concepts, intended to protect the American people. The result of that intense 10-year period of SDI research was that the systems banned by the ABM Treaty were clearly the most effective – and the permitted ground-based systems were clearly the least effective and most expensive. This conclusion validated that the 1972 ABM Treaty negotiators achieved their purpose, which was not to permit any effective ballistic missile defense of the American people. Among the other basing modes, space-based defenses were clearly the most cost-effective, by far – and the SDI technology was sufficiently mature in 1993 to deploy such a system by the mid-1990s if the political hurdles could be overcome. But alas, the fruits of the SDI investment, which included major political benefits of encouraging the first serious negotiations to reductions in nuclear arms and many believe precipitating the breakup of the Soviet Union, did not include continuing this important work. Rather, in early 1993, Defense Secretary Les Aspin directed a 50-percent reduction in the SDI efforts, including the cancellation of all research on space-based defenses, clearly the most cost-effective way to defend all Americans and our overseas troops, friends and allies. As he said, he “Took the stars out of Star Wars.” The entire program was scuttled, including any application of its supporting cutting edge technology – and the government and industry teams working on “SDI’s best” were dispersed and sometimes purged from continuing missile defense efforts. Rather, the Clinton administration focused its attention on “strengthening the ABM Treaty,” now with Russia, and unilaterally “dumbed-down” the development of so-called Theater Missile Defenses for our overseas troops, allies and friends to assure that they could not also protect Americans at home. This was most specifically evident in the continuing development of sea-based defenses – after space-based defenses, the next most effective way to provide a global defense. While the Clinton administration sought to limit the development of sea-based defenses, they retained strong bi-partisan congressional support throughout the Clinton era. With the arrival of the George W. Bush administration in 2001, High Frontier anticipated an administration that would abandon the commitment on “strengthening the ABM Treaty” and revive development activities that would exploit the best technology developed by the $30 billion investment of the 1983-1993 SDI program. President Bush did withdraw from the Treaty; but his administration did not revive the key technology programs that supported space-based defenses, and it continued to limit the development of sea-based defenses to defending only our overseas troops, friends and allies even though those systems also have the inherent potential to defend Americans at home. This ironic continuation of Treaty restrictions is nowhere more evident than in the U.S.-Japan joint program. Ships beginning deployment in August 2006 to the Sea of Japan will be able to defend against North Korean ballistic missiles that fly overhead toward Japan but not if they are headed to Hawaii or the northwestern United States. Yet, with a simple software modification costing ~$25 million, they could do both. And all of the future destroyers and cruisers deployed around the world shoot down ballistic missiles as they are still rising – in their ascent phase. The absurdity of such constraints betray a continuing institutional legacy of an ABM Treaty mindset. A pertinent question is, “Is such continuing bias against the more effective defenses institutional inertia or policy?” Whatever the policy, the Bush administration’s continuing focus on ground-based defenses to the exclusion of other more effective ways to protect Americans at home results betrays a continuing institutional adherence to the underlying principles of the ABM Treaty even though its terms are no longer binding. In particular, it appears that U.S policymakers want to assure that U.S. defenses being built at enormous expense cannot protect American citizens against either Russian or Chinese ballistic missiles – only against a limited attack from North Korea, Iran or perhaps some other state. MAD is alive and well. |