Dear David:
Following is my line-by-line critique of your defense of National Missile Defense. I agree that the liberal arguments against it are foolish, but there are serious conservative ones as well that you do not appear to see:
“It is the debate over whether we are going to build a missile defense that will provide our citizens with a shield against attack…”
How will we know that it will provide a shield against attack? If we validate it on a simulator but it fails in real life, can we sue the simulator company for enough money to rebuild our cities? If we test it with the equivalent of an SS-20 and it fails when confronted with an SS-200 that the Russians have secretly constructed, will “we didn’t know” be an acceptable excuse? How will we ever know the system really works? MAD, in contrast, has a long track record.
“by weapons of mass destruction.”
Ballistic missiles are not the only weapons of mass destruction, and Star Wars does nothing about the others. If I were Russia or China, I would have already pre-positioned a nuclear device in Washington.
“What is at issue, as in all questions that are political,”
It is not only a political question; it is also a technological one. What if NMD turns out to be like artificial intelligence or fusion power, i.e. something that takes 30 years (or more) longer to achieve than we expected? Go back and read discussions of these two things written by serious people around 1971 to see how hard it is to predict such things.
“This is the doctrine known as MAD. The arms-control advocates in the Clinton-Gore camp claim that this arrangement “worked” in the past to preserve nuclear peace during the Cold War, and, therefore, should work in the future as well.”
Didn’t it?
“Opponents of this doctrine — let’s call them the “deterrence” camp — believe that the history of 20th century conflicts, including the Cold War, shows that MAD is a dangerous illusion in a world composed of sovereign states, whose interests are profoundly at odds and whose reliability in keeping agreements is problematic to say the least.”
MAD doesn’t depend on the other side keeping agreements. It depends on their being vulnerable.
“History shows us that the arms-control approach to national security frequently fails.”
Irrelevant, because MAD doesn’t depend on arms control.
“The same pattern was evident during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union systematically violated its arms control agreements, most particularly the very same Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 that Clinton and Gore regard as the “cornerstone of strategic stability,” and whose terms the United States did observe.”
This would tend to suggest that MAD survives some amount of violation of the ABM treaty.
“In contrast to the arms-control enthusiasts on the Clinton-Gore team, deterrence advocates, including George W. Bush, believe that in a world of sovereign states (most of which are ruled by dictators), American security must rest not on unenforceable agreements, but on America’s ability to maintain a superiority of arms that will discourage potential aggressors.”
Why do we need superiority? Why not just the ability to nuke them to kingdom come? As Kissinger once said, “What, in the name of God, is strategic superiority? What does one do with it?” Are we out to conquer the world? Sometimes I think so.
“Is there any other way to guarantee our security?”
Yes: maintain the capability to nuke anyone who attacks us.
“The United States, today, has no defense against North Korea’s Taepo Dong missile.”
The ability to nuke Pyongyang?
The key disagreement between us is that you believe (as I do not) that MAD depends on observance of the ABM treaty by our adversaries, and that since they can’t be trusted, MAD cannot be relied upon and must therefore be replaced by NMD. I argue that in fact, MAD depends only on our adversaries remaining vulnerable to our counterstrike. This vulnerability does not disappear simply because they violate the ABM treaty. It would only disappear if they had a fully operational and verified NMD. I concede that if they get one, it would follow that we could not rely on our counterstrike capability deterring them and therefore that we would need an NMD of our own. But since we are years from having one, they must be too, and therefore so long as they don’t deploy one, we are safe without one. I contend four things at this point:
- Absent our developing NMD, our adversaries will not do so.
- To keep them that way, they can be offered the deal: we won’t if you won’t.
- If they cheat, they can’t hide it, and we can just match them when they do, negating whatever they could achieve by cheating and therefore giving them an incentive not to do so.
- Furthermore, they have a strong incentive not to cheat because if it provokes us into developing a full-blown NMD, they’d have to match it, which they aren’t sure they can do and which they know would be expensive and possibly destabilizing.
This all does not depend on their moral probity in keeping an agreement; it depends on their self-interest. It gives them a structural incentive not to build an NMD. Because it permits a graduated response on our part and repeated challenge-response cycles short of war, it promises to be a stable and robust security structure. So your position is that we must build NMD because the other guy will. Mine is, let’s build it if the other guys do, but not otherwise. Holding the threat to build NMD over everyone else’s heads is also a strong card to have. Reagan brought down the USSR with it, so don’t sniff at it. There is a saying in Russian chess that a threat is more powerful than its execution.
Note on two small points: You write that: “To this day, Russia has a deployed anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow, in violation of the treaty.” This is not so. The treaty as originally written permitted two “theatre” ABM sites, reduced to one by emendation in 1974. The Russians protected Moscow; we built an ABM system using nuclear-tipped missiles to defend a missile silo field at Grand Forks, ND. We dismantled it when we concluded, almost certainly correctly at the time, that it wouldn’t work. It is said that the Russians also know theirs won’t work, but keep it as a defense against vulnerability against cruise missiles and bombers in case of an East-West land war in Eastern Europe. In 1997, further amendments were made delineating the nature of permitted theatre defenses but not prohibiting them. These have not been approved by the US Senate. (See http://www.pugwash.org/reports/nw/op2_2/opv2n2_2.htm and http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/fdales/fdabmt.htm for analysis on this point. See http://www.state.gov/www/global/arms/treaties/abmpage.html for the treaty itself.)
It is unclear whether you intend to imply that the ABM treaty is disposable because it was signed by the USSR, which you refer to as "defunct," but since this argument is making the rounds, I would like to dispose of it. Upon the demise of the USSR in 1991, Boris Yeltsin and President Bush recognized Russia as the continuing party to all Soviet treaties, an action subsequently confirmed by President Clinton. It is contrary to settled international law, and to our conduct with respect to the myriad other treaties we have with Russia that date from Soviet days, to suggest that the ABM treaty is nullified by the change in regime. (I have already conceded that insofar as the Russians abrogate this treaty, we should too, but that is an entirely separate issue.)
August 9, 2001
