The Center for Defense Information
Center for Defense Information
1779 Massachusetts Ave., NW * Washington, DC 20036
(202)332-0600 * Fax (202)462-4559 * www.cdi.org
| November 12, 1998 |
| November 12, 1998 |
Missile Defense: "Can-Do" Responsibly
Serendipity it must have been.
The current (November 9) issue of the trade publication, Defense Week, has a guest commentary entitled "Missile Defense: 'Can't-Do Attitude is Real Enemy" by Mr. Loren Thompson, Chief Operating Officer of the non-profit Lexington Institute. Mr. Thompson's end point was that an America that could send a man to the moon and get him back again ought to be able to develop a national missile defense. That we have not, after 15 years and over $50 billion, he argues, must mean we have no confidence in ourselves -- we have the "wrong stuff."
Whatever else one might say about missile defense, congressional testimony from officials in and out of uniform conveys anything but a negative attitude about the prospects for eventual success. In fact, articles in the same issue of Defense Week undercut Mr. Thompson's premise. To quote just from one such article, on missile tracking satellites: "The one principle thus far proven more clearly than any other is that high-tech defense programs tend to be more complicated and costly than depicted at inception. Multiplied by many programs, the result is budgetary havoc."
That is exactly what the problem is with missile defenses: high technology that is attempting to push both hardware and software envelopes and multiple programs which, in addition, have had testing and risk reduction measures severely reduced.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the first ballistic missile defense program, Safeguard, underwent 111 intercept tests, including 58 successful target intercepts in 70 attempts. By contrast, the Administration is proposing to decide by 2000 on deployment of a national missile defense after only three intercept tests -- none of which have yet been attempted. Moreover, the system that is being proposed is a far cry from the 1983 Reagan proposal to protect the entire U.S. population from a large scale attack. The current goal is to be able to defend against 15-20 "simple" warhead -- that is, without decoys or other countermeasures.
Even the technologically less demanding theater missile defense programs have been largely unsuccessful. There has not been successful high altitude intercept since 1991. The Army's Theater High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system is zero for five, and the Navy is only starting on an extended series of tests for its theater upper and lower level interceptors.
With regard to funding as well as the science, Mr. Thompson wants to equate putting a man on the moon with missile defense. While there was undoubtedly waste in NASA programs leading up to the 1969 success in getting Neil Armstrong on the moon, there was also a clear scientific basis in earlier missile work that provided direction for how best to spend the money and effort. But with missile defense, money is not the problem. The top three officials in the Pentagon, including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, have told Congress they simply cannot go faster no matter how much additional money they might get.
Simply spending for the sake of spending is irresponsible. If missile defense is a top national priority, then a better use of extra money might be to redirect and hone our intelligence collection and analysis capabilities against those countries who have or who are developing theater and longer range offensive missiles.
The moon mission was fundamentally different from the current missile defense program in two other respects. While the moon landing program had successive phases, there was a unity of effort that the Pentagon, with its service rivalries, has not surmounted with missile defense -- even with the DoD level Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Second, the moon mission did not have to worry about what the "enemy" would or would not do; the challenge was to master the laws of physics. With national missile defense, the challenge is not simply to figure out how to get one bullet to hit another when the closure rate is over 8,000 miles per hour but to do so in the face of unknown guidance, evasion, and other countermeasures programmed by an enemy that is as resourceful as we are.
The point is not "can do vs. can't do." The point is "can do intelligently and responsibly."
-- Chief of Research Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), dsmith@cdi.org
West African Small Arms Moratorium Adopted
Strides to prevent the illegal proliferation of small arms were taken last week as the 16 leaders of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) met in Abuja, Nigeria to adopt a three-year moratorium on the import, export, and manufacture of small arms in the region. The moratorium went into effect on November 1, 1998 and is valid for a renewable period of three years.
The 16 ECOWAS member states -- Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, Cote D'Ivoire, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, and Togo, reached the agreement after over a year of discussion surrounding the needs of the sub-region and the feasibility of a moratorium.
The idea of a moratorium was first introduced by the President of Mali, Alpha Oumar Konare, at a UN conference in Bamako in December 1996. In the following months West African states met with weapons-producing states to discuss the concept of an arms moratorium. As a result of a meeting of 13 West African countries, 23 Wassenaar Arrangement arms exporting countries, UN organizations, NGOs, and observer nations "The Oslo Platform for a Moratorium on Small Arms in West Africa" was issued in April, 1998. The Oslo Platform set the framework for the moratorium, including the development and implementation of the Programme of Coordination and Assistance on Security and Development (PCASED), the supporting mechanism and secretariat for the moratorium.
The moratorium was declared at the 21st session of the ECOWAS heads of state and government. The purpose of the ECOWAS summit was to deal with the core objectives of "promoting regional integration, free movement of people, and a common currency," by focusing on curbing the illegal trade in firearms and narcotics.
In the final summit communique, the West African leaders explained the need for a moratorium. The communique stated that the moratorium "was part of efforts to promote peace and stability in the sub-region." In implementing the moratorium, the West Africa States considered "the fact that the proliferation of light weapons constitutes a destabilizing factor for ECOWAS Member States and a threat to the peace and security of our people."
Small arms and light weapons have been the primary weapons involved in the multitude of conflicts that have plagued West Africa in the past decade, most notably in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and recently Guinea Bissau.
Although the communique called for a moratorium, it did not provide a detailed list of the weapons covered by the moratorium, nor explain enforcement mechanisms.
The ECOWAS states were quick to call for international support of the moratorium, for the whole of Africa and the international community. The leaders called upon the Organization for African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations to adopt similar measures in other regions of Africa. The West African Moratorium was not intended to be only a moratorium for West Africa, but a model for similar initiatives throughout the continent which would reduce the proliferation of light weapons.
To succeed, the West African moratorium must be adhered to and supported not only by the signatories, but also the arms producing countries around the world. Furthermore, financial support for PCASED is crucial to the development of an infrastructure for implementing the moratorium. As PCASED evolves, enforcement mechanisms and early warning systems must be created.
Although there are some definite limitations and unanswered questions surrounding the feasibility of a light weapons moratorium, the steps taken in Abuja are welcome, and are clearly significant in preventing the excessive accumulation of small arms and light weapons. The possibility that such a moratorium might be replicated in other regions of the world makes support for the West African Moratorium a high priority for governments around the world. Such efforts should be encouraged and applauded.
For the full text of the "Declaration of a Moratorium on Importation, Exportation, and Manufacture of Light Weapons in West Africa," please email rstohl@cdi.org.
-- Research Analyst Rachel Stohl, rstohl@cdi.org
At NATO, Actions Speak Louder Than Words
NATO's activities in the Balkans are making the ongoing review of the Alliance's Strategic Concept increasingly irrelevant. While experts are hammering out the geographic and political limits on NATO missions, the Alliance is already acting outside the parameters discussed in Brussels. The new version of the Strategic Concept, when adopted at the April 1999 Washington Summit, may be undermined by the precedents that NATO sets in Kosovo.
One of the most hotly debated issues surrounding the Strategic Concept is the need for UN Security Council authorization for NATO missions. The very fact that the point is debated is surprising.
NATO's own founding document, the Washington Treaty of 1949, clearly obligates the allied nations to "refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations." The UN Charter allows a military intervention only "should the Security Council consider that [less forceful measures] would be inadequate or have been proven inadequate" (Article 42, Chapter VII of the UN Charter). Finally, NATO's 1991 Strategic Concept states that NATO's purpose is to "safeguard the freedom and security of all its members...in accordance with the principles of the United Nations Charter."
But even before the last paragraph gets a fair hearing in the Strategic Concept revision debates, the Alliance has all but destroyed it.
While NATO has not intervened in Kosovo so far, the events of September - October 1998 established that the Alliance is willing to mount a military operation without the necessary UN authorization. None of the UN Security Council resolutions on Kosovo approved use of force. Nevertheless, only a last minute deal by Richard Holbrooke stopped NATO from bombing Yugoslavia. U.S. officials dismissed a UN Security Council resolution as "desirable but not necessary."
Equally controversial in the UN's relationship to NATO activities is the legality of allied missions out of the area of the 16 NATO nations. The U.S. position on "out of area" operations can be summed up in the words of Senator William Roth, chairman of the North Atlantic Assembly. In his just released report, "NATO in the 21st Century," Senator Roth said that "the NATO allies should neither suggest that NATO missions will assume a 'global' character nor put artificial geographic limits on such missions."
The 1991 Strategic Concept only calls for consultations in cases where out of area "risks of a wider nature, including proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, disruption of the flow of vital resources and actions of terrorism and sabotage" threaten the security of NATO states. But the collapse of the Balkan states has already prompted NATO to stretch the traditional meaning of "security" to its limits as the Alliance embarked on a peacekeeping mission in Bosnia and threatened an intervention in Kosovo.
The revision of the Strategic Concept would give a clear idea of NATO's future missions and also bestow on the Alliance a sense of legitimacy, which its recent actions in Kosovo lacked. The debate provides an opportunity to define NATO's relation with the UN and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and to divide responsibilities between the respective security organizations. Ideally, it would task the OSCE with trying to mediate and prevent tensions in Europe from turning into open conflicts. NATO would step in militarily only when all other efforts failed and ensuing violence actually threatens European security.
In this interregnum period, where old agreements have clearly been outlived but no new ground rules have been laid out, conflicts such as Kosovo are ignored for years until it is too late for preventive diplomacy efforts. And when NATO steps in, it often acts without a mandate, causing friction among the allies states themselves and with powers outside the Alliance as well.
It will be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. Once NATO establishes a precedent for action outside of its territory and without a UN resolution, there will be a more temptation and less resistance to embark on a similar mission in the future. As Richard Holbrooke told the Washington Post, "people will continue to say that Kosovo was not a precedent for the alliance, but everybody realizes that it is really true." But it is the responsibility of the U.S. government and those of the allied nations to define a framework for NATO's activities, one that would assure coordination among the different security agencies and dispel the fears of non-NATO nations that the alliance has offensive intentions. And that will require delegating some of the responsibilities that NATO has reserved for itself during the Balkan crises to the UN and the OSCE.
-- Analyst Tomas Valasek, tvalasek@cdi.org