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Get Four
|  | OCTOBER 13, 2004
By Stan Crock Bush: Star Wars in His Eyes His faith in a costly relic of the Cold War that has no "credible capability" makes little sense in an age of terrorist threats Any day now, I suspect President George W. Bush will unfurl another "Mission Accomplished" banner, though this one will be rhetorical, rather than one draped across an aircraft carrier. He'll be lauding the creation of a missile-defense shield two decades after President Ronald Reagan first broached the idea, which quickly became known as Star Wars. During his Sept. 30 debate with Democratic contender John Kerry, Bush tipped his hand, saying: "We'll be implementing a missile-defense system relatively quickly." Such horn-tooting will be every bit as premature as his aircraft-carrier boast about Iraq was. Many of the Star Wars system's critical parts, from ground radar to eyes in the skies, aren't ready for deployment. And inadequate testing of what's in place at Alaska's Fort Greeley and California's Vandenberg Air Force Base raises questions about those components' reliability. UNTESTED. The last of six planned ground-based interceptors for the missile-defense program is expected to be put in a hole in Alaska sometime this month. That sounds like an achievement. But the system has never been tested against a sophisticated incoming missile. The most recent test was almost two years ago. The X-band radar, a key element of the detection system, isn't finished. Likewise for the satellites designed to warn of a missile launch and track an incoming rocket's flight trajectory. "The system being deployed has no demonstrated capability against a real attack and is missing most of its major elements," Philip Coyle, the top Pentagon weapons evaluator during the Clinton Administration, said in a recent presentation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. At the same session, retired General Eugene Habiger, former head of the U.S. Strategic Command, agreed that the system "doesn't have any credible capability." "SCARECROW" DEFENSE. Missile-defense supporters acknowledge that the system is far from perfect but say it's better than nothing. Habiger, for one, wonders whether the $60 billion spent so far and the $10 billion to be spent over each of the next few years is worth it, considering the country will move from zero capability to perhaps 5% capability. Indeed, the system won't be better than nothing if it lulls the Administration and the public into a false sense of security. The danger is that Bush & Co. may rely on this -- which Coyle calls a "scarecrow" defense -- and largely ignore other strategies that actually could make Americans safer. Indeed, it's imperative that whoever wins the election in November pursue other strategies to protect the country's security. What are they? The Bush Administration, to widespread acclaim, already has moved forward with its Proliferation Security Initiative. Dozens of countries have signed up for this plan, under which they intercept suspicious cargo at sea. Centrifuges, fissile material, and the like are the choke points for nuclear-weapons development. If the bad guys can't get access to such gear, they can't make a bomb. TAMP DOWN THE RHETORIC. It's a start. But more must be done. Washington needs to expand the Nunn-Lugar program, which is aimed at securing and destroying Russia's nuclear stockpile. A new study by the National Defense University, for example, recommends extending the initiative to other countries with fissile material, such as India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran. That's the best way to minimize the odds that other nations and terrorists will get access to to key bomb-making material. Washington also should call an urgent meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency to push through rule changes so that nuke wannabes can't get spent fuel or enrichment capabilities. It may be a tough political slog, but such restrictions are something any country interested only in commercial nuclear power could live with.
PREVENTION ONLY. The next President also should arm himself with carrots as well as sticks to give Tehran and Pyongyang some incentive to give up their nuclear ambitions. Beyond trade and financial assistance, diplomatic recognition and a pledge not to attack if the other side follows through on its disarmament commitments might change a dynamic that's now in a downward spiral. My fear is that it may be too late for either inducements or diplomacy to succeed in getting Tehran and Pyongyang to cooperate. Indeed, the greatest hope may lie in the fact that most military thinkers believe nuclear bombs are militarily useless. In their book Wilson's Ghost, Robert S. McNamara and James G. Blight quote Admiral Noel Gayler, former commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific, as saying, "There's no sensible use of any of our nuclear forces. The only reasonable use is to deter our opponents from using nuclear forces." So the point in having them isn't to use them but to prevent the enemy from using theirs. BETTER ODDS. This was the essence of Cold War strategy, and the logic still probably holds for nation-states. Indeed, it appears to be the rationale North Korea and Iran are employing. Even despotic regimes care about survival, and attacking the U.S. with nukes is the surest way to end one's reign. So any nuclear programs they have may be designed to deter the U.S. from attacking the "Axis of Evil." But when it comes to terrorists, it's a different story. Keeping their hands off nukes requires the intelligence, law enforcement, and money-tracking that's being employed in the overall fight against terrorism. A portion of the funds being spent on missile defense should be diverted to these areas, as well as to the Proliferation Security Initiative and a globalized Nunn-Lugar program. Any one of these has far better odds of a payoff than Star Wars. The ugly truth is that the nuclear genie is out of the bottle. America may have to accept the notion that its task is to live with that and manage it -- not avert it. As in the Cold War, deterrence could be the best hope. Unfortunately, hope isn't a strategy. But it's something.  Crock covers national security and foreign affairs for BusinessWeek from Washington. Follow his views in Affairs of State twice a month, only on BusinessWeek Online Edited by Patricia O'Connell
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