by Abul Fadl
The US announced on July 14 that it had successfully conducted tests of its controversial National Missile Defence system over the Pacific Ocean. KHALIL OSMAN discusses the plan and its implications
No quizzical eyebrows were raised when the United States Ballistic Missile Defence Organization announced on July 14 that it had conducted a successful test intercept of an intercontinental ballistic missile over the Pacific Ocean. Even before being elected, president George W. Bush had repeatedly stated his intention to forge ahead with National Missile Defense (NMD), despite criticism and scepticism both at home and abroad.
The test involved the launching of a modified Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missile from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, followed some 20 minutes later by the launching of a prototype interceptor from the Kawajalen Atoll in the Marshall Islands. The interceptor missile smashed into the incoming dummy missile at an altitude of more than 140 miles above the earth during the midcourse phase of the target warhead’s flight. This is only the second successful test in an ongoing series of failed tries on the so-called “hit-to-kill” system. The first successful test was conducted in October 1998. However, many scientists have argued that this test was “dumbed down” or controlled to make the target easier to hit, and thus does not indicate the missile’s likely performance in real situations.
The NMD system is designed to intercept an incoming missile warhead in space. It involves the tracking of the incoming missile’s flaming plume since its lift-off by satellite-based sensors located some 35,000 kilometres above earth. The satellite will alert an intricate network of ground-based early-warning radar systems and relay stations, which would be located in Alaska, California, Britain, Greenland and Massachusetts. The radar systems will send the data on the incoming missile’s trajectory and any decoys designed to divert the interceptor missile to the US Space Command outpost in the Cheyenne Mountains, Colorado, where a computerized “weapons task plan” will be formulated. With the help of a special X-band radar system, the interceptor missile will guide itself into a collision with the incoming missile.
The first phase of the programme, slated to become operational in 2005, would involve an array of some 100 interceptor-missiles based in Alaska. A second phase, to be completed around 2010, would involve a further 150 interceptors at a site in North Dakota.
The NMD scheme is rooted in the “arrogance of power” syndrome that inspires much of the decision-making process in American defence and national security policy. With its futurist-militarist character and space- and earth-based components, the scheme seems to be part of a broader plan for the US to hold sway over outer space, as formulated by the US Space Command in 1997, in a document entitled “Vision 2020.” The mission statement of Space Command, which directs the NMD project, leaves one with the eerie impression of an effort intended not only to militarize space with US weapons but also to secure a monopoly there. It identifies the Command’s responsibilities to include “dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interests and investment, [and] integrating Space Forces into war-fighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict.” Within such a scheme, Space Command’s “vision” conceives of the NMD project as “a mix of ground and space sensors and weapons.”
After the successful test, the Bush administration promised to press forward with its missile defence plan as quickly as possible. On July 17, an elated deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, told the US Senate Armed Services Committee: “To build on the success of this test, we will need successive tests that push the envelope even further, that are more operationally realistic, and to begin testing the many promising technologies which were not pursued in the past, but which have enormous potential to enhance our security.”
However, Washington’s decision to fast track the scheme, popularly known as “Son of Star Wars”, is expected to encounter numerous political, technical and financial hurdles. The latest successful test has raised the ire of Russia and China. During a visit to Moscow to sign a friendship treaty, Chinese president Jiang Zemin and his Russian host Vladimir Putin on July 16 issued a joint statement stressing their opposition to the US anti-missile programme and underscoring their commitment to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty as the “cornerstone of strategic stability and the basis for reducing offensive weapons.”
The US has cloaked its NMD scheme in national security concerns stemming from the proliferation of missile technology and weapons of mass destruction. American officials justify the NMD system as being designed to shield the US from small-scale, long-range missile threats from so-called “states of concern” (the “rogue states” in Washington’s jargon of yesteryear), such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran and Libya. Given that American retaliation could pulverize any country contemplating such an attack on the US, such a justification appears flawed on strategic, logical and conceptual grounds. Moreover, the utility of the NMD system as a deterrent to such attacks appears highly doubtful. Conceivably, a weapon of mass destruction could fit into a suitcase and be delivered to any US city with hardly a trace. In the light of this, one is prone to wonder why a state wishing to attack the US would prefer to use long-range missiles, identifying itself and provoking a devastating retaliatory response, instead of resorting to covert methods.
The Russians and the Chinese have not been impressed by Washington’s specious justifications. Seemingly, they fear that the uses of a perfected and deployed US anti-missile system would vary with the vagaries of political contingency. The system could easily be transformed into a large-scale system of earth-, sea- and space-based facilities, giving the US military its long-aspired goal of a “full spectrum of dominance” and effectively neutralizing the strategic nuclear arsenals of its adversaries. The Russians and the Chinese look at the scheme as part of a US effort to develop a “first-strike” capability.
Europe is also worried (rightly so) that NMD could embroil it in another arms-race spiral at a time when defence budgets are on the decline all over the continent. Many in Europe have expressed fears that NMD will spur a new arms race as the US’s adversaries will be prompted to increase their stockpiles of ballistic missiles and develop newer missiles capable of evading and saturating the NMD system. In addition, NMD would require the use of US bases overseas to relay satellite information and warn of missile launches. Specifically, this would require upgrading radar facilities at US bases at Menwith Hill and Fylingdales (North Yorkshire, Britain) and at Thule in Greenland, as well as bases in South Korea. Although the British government seems to be leaning towards offering support to the US on this issue, the rest of Europe continues to see NMD as divisive of the international community and a threat to future continental and international security and stability. Many in Europe fear that the global militarization spurred by the scheme would undermine all the hard-won achievements in arms-control over the past 30 years. They also worry that the scheme will encourage attacks against targets in Europe because of its strong ties to the US.
Financially, the costs of the NMD scheme are enormous. The Pentagon estimates the total cost of the first phase of the programme at $24.4 billion. The Congressional Budget Office’s estimates place the cost of the system of 250 interceptors at $60 billion. Other estimates place the total cost of the project at a staggering $200 billion. In addition, a much larger sum will be consumed by the ensuing arms race.
With respect to international law, the NMD scheme stands on very thin ice. The effort to militarize space violates at least the spirit of the Outer Space Treaty, to which the US is a signatory. Moreover, the deployment even of a limited NMD system on the part of the US would contravene existing arms-control treaties such as START II and the ABM treaty, which, among other provisions, commits its signatories “not to deploy ABM systems for a defence of the territory of its country.” In May 2000 the 187 signatories of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the US and Russia, issued a statement reiterating the necessity of “preserving and strengthening the ABM treaty as a cornerstone of strategic stability.” The deployment of NMD would also jeopardize progress in negotiations on the START III accords.
The NMD programme also flouts the letter and spirit of the ABM treaty, which enshrines the principle of strategic deterrence between the superpowers. The treaty places strict limits on the ability of one side to construct defences to counter the other side’s ballistic missiles. Despite the deterioration in the balance of offensive/defensive capabilities between the US and Russia in the post-Cold War era, the Treaty continues to serve as a framework for the two sides to engage in arms control and co-operative threat-reduction measures.
The deployment of NMD breaches the Treaty’s ban on nationwide defences (Article I) and its prohibition of space-based ABM components (Article V). The necessary stationing of interceptor missiles and X-band radars in Alaska violates the Treaty’s limitations on allowed deployment areas (Article III). The necessary upgrades of the radar installations in Greenland and Britain would require alteration of the Article IX ban on deployment of ABM elements in other countries.
Implementing the programme, therefore, requires the modification or abrogation of the ABM treaty. The problem is that Russia and China resolutely rule out any changes. They have vowed to modernize their arsenals if the plan is carried out. This would mean a practical end to nuclear disarmament and arms control. By insisting on the scheme, with or without Russia’s consent, the US has set itself on a course to break the ABM treaty. Secretary of defence Donald H. Rumsfeld has described the ABM treaty as “ancient history” that should not be permitted to tie a nation’s hand from responding to new threats in changed times. Even more ominously, Wolfowitz argued that Russia’s refusal to accept the American take-it-or-leave-it proposal to amend the ABM treaty would “leave the President no choice but to walk away from the treaty unilaterally.”
The root of Washington’s NMD scheme is hubris reminiscent of the narrow-minded realpolitik worldview of the Cold War era, which conceives of security as being assured by the military superiority of one nation over others. It is driven by fear, more imagined and feigned than real, and an illusory and elusive drive to find technological solutions to essentially strategic and political problems. It is irrational and dangerous on the grounds of cost, feasibility, threat-assessment and impact on international relations, world peace and arms control. Ultimately, the NMD constituent of the latter-day version of Pax Americana might well make the world, and even the US, a far more dangerous place to live in.
