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| May 10, 2001 |
| May 10, 2001 |
The Future of Missile Defense
Colonel Daniel Smith, USA (Ret.), Chief of Research, dmsmith@cdi.org
This week and next, emissaries from the Bush Administration are fanning out across the globe to press allies, friends, and even a few potential adversaries on the benefits of President Bush's missile defense (note: no longer national missile defense) proposal made last week. Judging from initial reactions which were heavily weighed toward fence sitting and opposition, it will be a tough sell.
Three reasons for the high degree of ambivalent negativeness from other nations are apparent. First, the President's speech was long on ambiguity and short on details. He mentioned a tripartite layered defense involving land, sea, and air systems, apparently taking a cue from the evolving theater missile defense projects of the Army, Navy, and Air Force. But he omitted completely any reference to the crown jewel of National Missile Defense advocates -- space-based systems.
Second, no mention was made of costs, those for the individual systems and for integrating and maintaining them, and the opportunity costs associated with not spending the $100 to $200 billion (estimates by outside organizations) on other pressing defense or non-defense programs.
Third, and perhaps the most significant for other countries, the President again said that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty was an anachronism.
"...we must move beyond the constraints of the 30 year old ABM Treaty. This treaty does not recognize the present, or point us to the future. It enshrines the past. No treaty that prevents us from addressing today's threats...is in our interests or in the interests of world peace."
This to many sounded like an American dictat -- no real consultation, no real listening to the views of others.
Moreover, since the President's speech, reports have surfaced that the Administration wants to field an "emergency" capability (Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld's term). This reportedly would be a "handful" of interceptors (less than the 20 proposed by Clinton, perhaps as few as 5) by 2004, a year before the 2005 deployment date under the original Clinton plan. Other reports have suggested that the crucial X-band tracking and warhead discrimination radar needed to make NMD work could be mounted on a ship or even an oil derrick and put where needed, thereby removing the constraints imposed by trying to build a radar site on Shemya Island in Alaska's Aleutian Islands.
Such a deployment scheme, whether or not the system really worked reliably, would accomplish what seems to be the main goal of NMD advocates: abrogation of the ABM treaty.
Can world peace and stability live with this American fait accompli?
Perhaps, but it will take something akin to the perfect alignment of the sun, moon, and planets to produce an outcome that will move the nuclear weapons states and those aspiring to such status to accept the "clean break with the past" called for by Mr. Bush.
The key to such acceptance lies in another statement by the President:
"I am committed to achieving a credible deterrent with the lowest-possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs, including our obligations to our allies. My goal is to move quickly to reduce nuclear forces. The United States will lead by example...."
Currently, the Joint Chiefs of Staff believe they can execute the U.S. nuclear warfighting plan with a minimum of 2,500 weapons. The President reportedly is prepared to go down to 1,500 weapons, a number suggested not too long ago by the Russians, if this reduced arsenal is complemented by a multi-layered NMD system.
What are the hurdles to creating a new Comprehensive Nuclear Weapons Reduction and Protection framework that combined both elements?
First there is the Pentagon. The Chiefs would have to revise their nuclear war plans to reflect fewer targets. This should be done anyway if the nation really believes, in the President's words, that "Today's Russia is not our enemy, but a country in transition with an opportunity to emerge as a great nation, democratic, at peace with itself and its neighbors."
Second, Congress would have to lift the ban on cutting U.S. nuclear forces below START I levels, a restriction imposed to induce the Russian Duma to ratify START II (which it did, but not in the same form as the U.S. ratification). If the ban is removed, President Bush could unilaterally reduce the U.S. arsenal without waiting for formal negotiations. Russia is being forced to cut its nuclear arsenal because it does not have the money to maintain it or to field replacements on a one-for-one basis.
Congress might seek to -- and perhaps should -- impose other conditions in exchange for lifting the ban. For example, it could insist that the Administration undertake negotiations with Russia to formalize the lower offensive nuclear weapons ceilings with provisions for periodic reviews to further reduce the 1,500 total and a verification regime. Separate agreements with Britain and France should be pursued -- with China invited to participate -- to initiate multilateral talks on reducing their nuclear arsenals once the United States and Russia go below 1,500 weapons each. Eventually, India, Pakistan, and Israel would have to be induced to accept ceilings on their arsenals as well if the larger nuclear weapons states continue with their own reductions.
There is one deal-breaker in all this: the definition of "limited" missile defenses. What other world leaders focused on was Mr. Bush's reference to "an initial capability against limited threats" [emphasis added]. It is not the initial capability but the final architecture of NMD that concerns friends and competitors alike. Coupled with significant reductions in offensive weapons, an unconstrained, constantly expanding NMD would be unacceptable to other nations who would see such a combination as inherently unstable in that an invulnerable United States would be able to threaten any other nation with (or without) nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons impose an irreducible risk that is best handled -- short of enforceable abolition -- by being shared at the lowest possible level by the fewest possible nations. Just as the perfect is the enemy of the good, so too, in a world of competing nation-states, the drive for "absolute security" for one means insecurity for all.
U.S. Loses Spot on Human Rights Commission
Rachel Stohl, Senior Analyst (rstohl@cdi.org) and Michael Stohl, Professor, Purdue University (mstohl@purdue.edu)
In a vote that shocked international and U.S. diplomats, the United States lost its seat on the UN Human Rights Commission last week, a position that had been held since the Commission's founding in 1947. In a secret ballot vote, the United States received 29 votes out of a possible 54 votes from the Member States of the Economic and Social Council. Only India and Russia have served on the Commission since its creation (they face reelection in 2003).
Critics of the UN system maintain that the removal of the United States from the Commission is hardly cause for despair. They argue that the Commission is a hypocritical body that allows serious human rights abusers to participate and doesn't do anything beyond talk. But as Harold Koh, former Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, has said, the Commission is a valuable body for the furtherance of global human rights. Indeed, Koh said, "...the Commission has also showed an unrivaled capacity to spotlight abuses, develop important statements of principle, build consensus responses to emerging human rights issues and mobilize international attention by sending commissions of inquiry and special rapporteurs to investigate violations in human rights hot spots."
The United Nations describes the Commission's current work as providing states "with advisory services and technical assistance to overcome obstacles to securing the enjoyment of human rights by all. At the same time more emphasis has been put on the promotion of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to development and the right to an adequate standard of living. Increased attention is also being given to the protection of the rights of vulnerable groups in society, including minorities and indigenous people and to the protection of the rights of the child and of women, including the eradication of violence against women and the attainment of equal rights for women."
Arguing that the United States was kicked off the commission, while countries like Sudan and Pakistan remained, has been the irrelevant but politically powerful response of conservative critics of the United Nations. However, the United States wasn't competing with those states for a seat on the Commission. Under the regional representation system of the Commission, the United States was denied a seat by the election of Austria, Sweden, and France -- countries which did not bow out of the race after requests from the U.S. delegation.
This is not about "global ingratitude," as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield characterized the vote earlier this week. It's also not about the United States being "too strong on the human rights agenda" as National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice surmised. Nor was it the case that "Slavery Triumphs" as trumpeted by New York Times columnist, William Safire.
The vote should more accurately be read as the result of our friends and allies joining with those traditionally hostile to the United States to protest the unilateralism and exceptionalism that was proudly articulated in the recent presidential campaign and evidenced in the first hundred days of the new Bush Administration. While one cannot demonstrate that the vote resulted from international displeasure over United States withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on the environment, or the announcement of U.S. intentions to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty so it can build a new national missile defense system (and ignoring most of its European friends while doing so), it is clear from the comments coming from European capitals that there is great unease with the new Administration. Further, the Administration's public disinterest in the United Nations -- it has failed yet to submit its nominee for Ambassador, John Negroponte, to the Senate -- also may have left it shorthanded and vulnerable in the corridors of the United Nations. As former ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick remarked, "Somebody wasn't watching the store." The administration's claim, voiced by Secretary of State Colin Powell, that they had 43 written assurances of votes, only strengthens Kirkpatrick's critique.
To be fair to the Bush Administration their new positions and lack of ambassador alone weren't the entire story. The reaction against the U.S. position is the result of a longer United States abrogation of collaborative international leadership and reluctance to participate in international human rights treaties. Until the last possible day for eligibility, the United States had not signed on to the International Criminal Court Statute. The United States will soon be (after the pending ratification by Turkey) the only NATO member not to be a party to the Landmine Convention. The United States is the only country in the world, besides Somalia, a country with no functioning government, to have not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child which has such controversial declarations as children have a right to a name, a religion, and a home. And, the United States hasn't ratified the Optional Protocols on the Involvement of Children in Armed Conflict and the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution, and Child Pornography. Further, while ambassador Holbrooke brokered a compromise payment plan for overdue assessments owed to the United Nations (but leaving $582 million still in arrears) by the United States, the current Congress has yet to move the agreement along.
Mr. Bush, Ms. Rice, General Powell and other Administration spokesmen, throughout the campaign and in their opening days in office, have argued that the United States needs to more clearly identify and pursue its own national interests. If they do not recognize that national interests require working more closely with friends, allies and the international community, continually renewing friendships and earning respect, and choose to stress American unilateralism, exceptionalism, and build America's military might, we can expect many more snubs, slaps and diplomatic losses in the next four years.
In a footnote to last week's vote, U.S. officials confirmed Monday that the seat of Herbert Okun on the International Narcotics Control Board was also lost last week in a secret ballot by the same 54 member UN Economic and Social Council.
100 Members of UK Parliament Oppose NMD -- More than 100 members of the British parliament, most of them members of the ruling Labour party, signed a letter expressing "grave doubts" about U.S. plans to deploy a global missile defense system. The MPs urged the U.S. government to explore other ways of fighting proliferation of missiles and weapons of mass destruction. The letter was circulated on the same day as a U.S. delegation, headed by U.S. Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, made a pitch to U.K. government officials on benefits of NMD. The delegation was dispatched by President Bush as a part of his pledge to consult friends and allies before making a decision on NMD deployment.
Macedonia Crisis Deepens -- Nearly 8,000 ethnic Albanians arrived in Kosovo from Macedonia, displaced by fighting between government troops and militant Albanian forces. Government troops have been bombarding a cluster of villages in Macedonia's north for over a week with artillery and helicopter gunships. The villages were taken over by underground forces fighting for more rights or outright independence for ethnic Albanians in Macedonia. The republic's government is also seeking to create a grand coalition between parties representing the Slav majority and the three main ethnic Albanian parties in hopes of diffusing the crisis and marginalizing the militants.
US Accidentally Shells German School -- The U.S. Army reported that two artillery training rounds fell on the roof of an elementary school on Tuesday. Classes were over for the day at the school and no one was injured, although children were in the school yard at the time of the incident. The school is located in the town of Kirchenthumbach in Bavaria, a half-mile from the Army's Grafenwoehr training range, the largest U.S. Army training range in Europe. According to Capt. Jeff Settle, the public affairs officer of the 7th Army Training Command, the rounds, fired about two miles from the school, "went in the wrong direction." An Army investigation has been ordered.
TRW Cleared in Missile Defense Testing Fraud Case -- The FBI has cleared TRW Inc. of charges of fraud and cover-up stemming from the 1997 flight test of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system. The FBI launched the investigation at the urging of 53 members of Congress after MIT scientist Theodore Postol and former TRW expert Dr. Nina Schwartz alleged that TRW manipulated data to produce a successful test result. The FBI dismissed the lawsuit saying that it is a scientific dispute with no criminal basis.
Quotation of the Week -- "Yes, sir, if you want one," Lt. Gen. Russell C. Davis (USAF), Chief, National Guard Bureau, in response to a question by Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV) whether it would be "prudent" to have a National Guard terrorism response team assigned to West Virginia, Senate Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities hearing, May 1, 2001.
This Week On America's Defense Monitor: "Military Nuclear Mess: Out of Sight, Out of
Mind?"
For the past fifty years, the United States government has produced hundreds of thousands of cubic meters of nuclear waste. With the Cold War over, it is time to begin the process of disposing this military nuclear mess. The Department of Energy has created an underground disposal facility called the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant to permanently store military generated waste which contains, among other deadly toxins, plutonium. However, whether this facility will safely store the nuclear material for the 24,000 years dictated by the half-life of plutonium, is greatly debated. Is WIPP the answer to our nuclear disposal problem, or is it simply a way to bury it out of sight and out of mind?
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