EDITORIAL The shield that would be a threat
Once upon a not-so-long time ago,
humankinds worst impulses were held in check by a policy, tacitly agreed
upon by the nuclear powers, known as mutually assured destruction -- MAD. We
came right to the edge of the nuclear brink, daring each other into
negotiations and holding each other at bay with the knowledge that pushing the
button could start the nuclear nightmare that would end life as we know it.
That was, we thought, the logical end to the arms race -- the only
ending that would make sense. A tie.
It is disturbing, then, to hear the old cold warrior Donald
Rumsfeld, defense secretary from 1975 to 77 and appointed to the same
position by President George W. Bush, rushing ahead, insisting that it is in
the countrys best interest to aggressively revive the once-discredited
Ronald Reagan dream of a Star Wars missile defense system.
The threat Bush wants to arm against is not a dream. Some of the
so-called rogue nations such as Iraq, Iran and North Korea, it is predicted,
could have the capacity to deliver intercontinental ballistic missiles in 10 to
15 years. Those missiles could be carrying nuclear warheads or agents of
biological or chemical warfare. Security and defense experts, though, tell us
that the most likely threat is not ballistic missiles but a terrorists
suitcase or the terrorists missiles coming from a crude delivery system
from a boat offshore. The same agents could be delivered effectively and with
far less trouble and expense than an intercontinental missile.
The problem with jumping to the level of a missile
shield, a system designed to shoot down incoming missiles, is the
wide and credible fear that the solution could actually be worse than the
original threat. For if the Cold War taught us anything, it is that nations,
even those already beset with severe economic and political problems, will make
enormous sacrifices to match military might.
Our European allies have made it clear they are nervous about
Bushs insistence on a national missile defense. Russia and China are
strongly opposed and would certainly react by investing in new rounds of
weapons to counter the shield. As a result, much of the rest of the world
considers development of the system an irresponsible if not reckless invitation
to a new arms race.
Given the enormous complexity of the system and the general
failure of components to work properly in tests performed to date, the security
the system is supposed to engender is far from being realized.
At least six highly complex systems, tied together over vast
distances by high-speed data communications, would have to work perfectly for
the shield to be successful. First, a system of satellites would have to detect
and begin tracking enemy missiles. Next, an early warning ground radar system
that receives information from the satellites would project the missiles
trajectory.
Of course, there would be more than one missile to worry about. An
enemy would fire numerous decoys and it would be the job of another group of
radar stations to determine the difference between real and fake incoming
missiles.
All of the information would be fed through the Battle Management,
Command, Control and Communications -- BMC3 -- network, the heart
of the national missile defense system. The BMC3 would ultimately launch the
interceptor booster, a rocket carrying the exoatmospheric kill
vehicle -- EKV -- to the point of interception of the incoming
missile.
If all went well, the kill vehicle would find the target at the
right spot in space and crash into it, causing an explosion by collision. One
of the unknowns, of course, is the effect of transferring the nuclear nightmare
to space.
All at a cost of who knows? Experts say it could reach $100
billion, with no guarantees it would work. Of 18 tests of the interceptor since
1982, only one has succeeded. The most severe critics in the scientific
community claim the failure was even greater because all the tests were
essentially rigged to succeed.
A greater danger than an enormously expensive non-working system
is the prospect that the Star Wars system will divert our energy and attention
from the less spectacular and far more tedious task of dogged diplomacy and
negotiations with nations that now perceive us as an arrogant enemy.
CIA director George Tenet, in recent testimony before the Senate,
said the United States is increasingly threatened today by a combustible
combination of two new forces: the failure of many nations to master modernity
-- particularly in the Middle East -- which is producing a lot of unemployed
and angry young people in those countries, combined with the spread of new
information technologies, which are super-empowering these angry people in ways
that not only threaten the stability of the states they live in but also enable
them, as individuals, to threaten America. They dont need a missile to
hit us; they can fire a nuclear mortar from a rowboat off Manhattan.
The point is that putting all our mental energy and money into the
missile shield leaves us empty to deal with what is going on now, on the ground
-- with real problems not imagined ones. The deficiency of our foreign policy
is glaringly exposed.
We have not gone very far down the road of understanding the angry
young people and the role we may have played, particularly in the Middle East,
in fueling that anger. Nor have we gone far down the road of imaginative
foreign policy, or any policy beyond military force and playing countries as if
they were pieces on a chessboard.
What good can be done by posing a new threat to the world? We
need, instead, new and innovative means of, in Bushs word, humbly
engaging a world that is casting about in post-Cold War fear and uncertainty.
Our enormous resources would be better used in non-military aid and in gaining
trust.
National Catholic Reporter, February 23,
2001
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