Big decision, bad timing on antiballistic missile system

By Jim Anderson

WASHINGTON (DPA): A momentous nuclear arms control decision by the U.S. government is due to be made this summer at the worst possible time under the least desirable conditions.

Under a self-imposed deadline, Bill Clinton, in the final months of his presidency, says he will make up his mind by July on whether to go ahead with a limited Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) system.

The closing days of a tumultuous presidency, beset by deeply partisan feelings in Congress -- where the powerful head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has already said that any new arms control initiatives would be dead on arrival -- is not a good time to make war or peace decisions.

This is especially true for decisions involving the future relationship between the United States and Russia and China.

It is even more true for choices which have to be made before the heat of the closing days of a presidential election, where the Republican candidate, George W. Bush, has already made it a partisan issue by saying that he would go ahead with such an ABM system.

Quite literally, nobody knows how much a "modest" system -- designed to counter ballistic missiles launched from a "rogue" country such as North Korea -- would cost.

Not only is the cost unknown, it is unknowable.

The last experiment with an ABM system cost the U.S. taxpayer US$60 billion. That staggering cost, for a weapons system that was never built and never proven in action, led to the United States and the Soviet Union signing in 1972 an agreement sharply limiting such defenses.

The cost estimates, from the Pentagon and Congressional budget estimators, vary from $30 billion to $60 billion or more. Such a wide range of estimates should be a tip-off that nobody really knows, and all sides appear to be working from weak estimates that are influenced by their political positions.

The future costs depend on a series of unknowable: Who will be the aggressor? Iran or North Korea, or maybe Iraq? How much technology would such a country be able to invent or steal by the time the American system would be installed? How can anyone write the software for a system which can never be realistically tested?

In other words, who knows?

U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has assured Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov that the envisioned ABM system would not be effective against a major nuclear power like Russia, which has thousands of missiles and nuclear warheads which could overwhelm all defenses. Ivanov and the Russian government are not convinced. Why not?

Well, the American plan started out with "several dozen" missiles, and now it has grown to 100 ABM missiles. Now there is talk from the Republican side that more than 200 ABM missiles might be the right number.

The Russian government, with justifiable skepticism, says that it has no confidence in the promises made by a Clinton administration which will disappear in seven months.

In time, the Russians are saying, there could be enough American ABM missiles, as a result of partisan political pressures or changes to make the Russian nuclear deterrent ineffective.

And that could disrupt the balance of terror that has prevented a nuclear war or new nuclear arms race -- so far.

It is more than an important question. It is vital.