Defend America Act proposed

By Brahma Chellaney

NEW DELHI (JP): Republican leaders have proposed the "Defend America Act" in an effort to commit the Clinton administration to a national missile defense (NMD) system. The NMD will be a mini- star-wars program, employing space-based sensors to identify and track incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) with interceptor missiles and radars on land.

The administration has already unveiled a "three-plus-three" concept to develop an anti-missile technological shield over the next three years. Once acquired, the NMD capability could be operationalized another three years -- but only after the government finds some tangible threats. The Republicans, led by Senate majority leader Bob Dole and House Speaker Newt Gingrich, however, believe that the existing threat scenarios already warrant a decision now to start deploying the system in three years.

Dole has made America's lack of missile defenses against ICBMs an issue in the presidential campaign, and bringing the NMD bill to a vote will be the first step in focusing national attention on a subject that has put President Bill Clinton on the defensive. By tabling the Defend America Act, the Republicans wish to avoid the kind of bitter legislative fight over the defense authorization bill witnessed last year when Clinton vetoed it in reaction to its missile defense language.

The rising political demand for ICBM defenses is a natural corollary to the Clinton administration's original "cry wolf" approach. The Clinton team spent its first two years conjuring up all sorts of missile threats to the United States, its overseas forces and its allies.

Since last year, however, the team has been trying to pour cold water on the threat scenarios it had earlier advanced. The latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) suggests that emerging missile threats are still 15 years away. Americans are now being told that the missile-carrying Abominable Snowmen identified in the past have yet to be born.

Shortly before Clinton took office, Central Intelligence Director Robert Gates told Congress that missile threats from new proliferants were "at least a decade away." The Clinton team, however, consciously conjured up threats from the Third World. The "rogue-states doctrine" came handy to shield defense spending from deep cuts and fashion a military strategy aimed at concurrently waging and winning two major regional conflicts, or MRCs in "Pentagonese."

The doctrine has also spawned the counter-proliferation initiative, premised on America's "duty" to deny other nations, through military means if necessary, the right to develop weapons it has in its own arsenal. The nation which still maintains a first-use nuclear doctrine to deter not only a nuclear attack but also a conventional strike on its forces is today developing special technologies to counter prospective proliferation. These technologies include nuclear and non-nuclear munitions to destroy hardened targets.

The irony is that after having shifted from strategic to theater defenses, the Clinton administration is under pressure to reemphasize defenses against long-range ("strategic") missiles. The administration's current top priority is the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) program, which seeks to protect limited areas (or theaters) from the shorter-range, slower ("tactical") missiles.

TMD includes the development of more advanced Patriots and Navy missile defenses, as well as a new generation of anti- tactical ballistic missiles known as THAAD (Theater High Altitude Area Defense) to shield an entire city or Army division. Clinton is now being asked to concentrate on the strategic option that was conceived only as a hedge against a future ICBM threat.

With THAAD itself geared to meeting ill-defined "emerging" threats, U.S. Policy is fighting shy of a time-specific NMD deployment commitment. The ballistic missile defense program has been pursued on the basis of "potential threats" from "potential enemies", not concrete threats from identifiable enemies. As Defense Secretary Les Aspin put it memorably in 1993, "All the potential threat nations... might not have usable weapons yet, and they might not use them if they do. But our commanders will have to assume that U.S. forces are threatened."

The only countries armed with THAAD-relevant missiles or likely to possess them the end of this century are America's allies Israel and Saudi Arabia, and its emerging strategic partner, India. Crude Scud missiles of the type employed by Iraq cannot threaten U.S regional interests.

The one country that should rouse genuine concern is China, which recently demonstrated how ballistic missiles can be used as instruments of terror and blackmail without arming them with a conventional or non-conventional warhead. China can not only threaten vital U.S. interests in Asia but also strike American cities on the west coast, as it reportedly warned Washington during the height of its missile maneuvers against Taiwan.

But the planned NMD system will not be able to address the Chinese menace. The NMD research and development effort is focused on countering a rogue missile attack and an unauthorized or accidentally launched missile. With a fast-growing nuclear arsenal and increasingly sophisticated capabilities, China could defeat any NMD or even THAAD system saturating its defenses.

One cannot fault U.S. policy-makers for looking at ways to meet future missile challenges. A prudent policy should always look ahead and anticipate threats. U.S. policy makers and lawmakers, however, have to carefully weigh the strategic benefits and costs of erecting ambitious missile defenses against hypothetical threats.

A major casualty would be the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, designed to discourage arms racing by prohibiting the building of anti-missile defenses against each other's nuclear armories. To allow for THAAD deployment, Clinton has already sought from Moscow a permissive interpretation of the treaty. The U.S. proposal suggests that a five-kilometer-per- second intercept speed, which translates roughly to a missile with a 3,000-km range, be used to distinguish between tactical and strategic systems.

However, THAAD, with a capability against five-kilometer-per- second theater targets, could easily be employed against seven- kilometer-per-second strategic targets. A decision now to deploy an NMD system would certainly trigger the collapse of the ABM Treaty.

A unilateral U.S. deployment commitment will also prompt Russia to cease implementing START I and not ratify START II, freeing 3,200 Russian warheads from dismantlement. More than 40 months after it was signed, the process of implementing START II is yet to begin.

The United States has also to consider that no system it builds may be completely effective in intercepting incoming missiles. A single missile breaching its defenses could wreak havoc. The Gulf War showed that defending against even unsophisticated tactical missiles is problematic, with the Patriots causing most of the damage in civilian areas in attempts to intercept incoming Scuds. Yet. Arab oil sheikhdoms have bought billions of dollars worth of Patriots.

The writer is professor of security studies at the Center for Policy Research, New Delhi.