The Flying Garbage Can

The official U.S. designation is "exoatmospheric kill vehicle" (EKV). Among other unflattering names, its critics have dubbed it "the flying garbage can," based on its shape and, one suspects, their estimation of its value. The object is a 55-inch long, 120-pound canister full of sensors, explosives, and rocket thrusters. It is meant to be launched by missile, then to separate and hurtle through space at 14,000 mph to intercept and destroy enemy warheads streaking toward the United States. The commonly used name for the overall program is the national missile defense system (NMDS).

The simmering debate over whether to try again to build a BMD system once again gained full force in 1998 after a report by the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States chaired by former secretary of defense (1975-1977) Donald Rumsfeld. The so-called Rumsfeld Report concluded that: (1) "Concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United States"; (2) "The threat to the U.S. posed by these emerging capabilities is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than [previously estimated];" and (3) "The warning times the U.S. can expect of new, threatening ballistic missile deployments are being reduced."¹

The Clinton administration was pushed toward going ahead with the development and deployment of the NMDS by the concerns expressed in the Rumsfeld report, by the threat that the Republicans would make the supposed vulnerability of the United States an issue in the 2000 presidential campaign, by a strong push for the system from the military, and by other factors.

The arguments for building a limited BMD system rest on the three basic points made by the Rumsfeld report. Those who oppose the system claim that it will cost too much, will not work, and should not be built even it could work because it will harm national security.

Cost. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that infrared building the proposed NMDS, including 250 missiles and an early warning system radar and infrared detection and tracking capabilities, will cost $60 billion. The cost is perhaps the least salient criticism, given the fact that U.S. liquor stores took in almost that amount in 1999.

Reliability. A more cogent criticism centers on whether the system can work. Through mid-2000 the progress was not promising. The first test in October 1999 was successful, but critics point out that the interceptor had been preprogrammed with the path of the supposed attacking warhead. Two later tests in 2000 failed completely. More important than these early problems, however, is the contention that it will be easy for potential enemies to develop countermeasures to render the EKVs ineffective. One approach would be to deploy ionized balloons along with the real warheads to confuse the EKVs sensors. "What advocates of the system want you to believe is that adversaries will be smart enough to build intercontinental ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads but not smart enough to figure out ways of foiling the EKV," contends MIT's Professor Ted Postol. "That doesn't sound plausible."² Advocates of the NMDS say they can overcome its current technical flaws and future enemy countermeasures; critics doubt it.

President Clinton cited cost and reliability when, in September 2000, he told his military advisers that he would support an immediate effort to deploy the NMDS. According to one adviser, "[Clinton] said he did not want to pay the big front-end costs if he was not sure this thing would work."³ The White House treated the announcement as a major decision but, in truth, it was not. Testing will continue, and what Clinton really did was to leave the ultimate prickly difficult decision on deployment to his successor.

Negative Impact on National Security. The most important debate about the proposed NMDS is whether it will improve or harm national security. The Rumsfeld report did not advocate building a missile defense system. Nevertheless, the report, in the view of others, does lead inexorably to the conclusion that such a system is needed. In this "new strategic environment," two analysts argue, the United States should hasten "to develop and to deploy ballistic-missile defenses. Such defenses would inure us to the threat of an attack on American soil and enable us to protect our forces and our allies overseas" (Kagan & Schmitt, 1998.23.).

Critics charge that deploying the NMDS would harm national security because, in the opinion of most experts, it would mean a U.S. unilateral breaking of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty of 1972, which forbade the deployment of such systems. That would put all other arms reduction treaties in jeopardy and set off an arms race.

Russia's foreign minister, Igor Ivanov, has taken this view, pointing out that "the prevailing system of arms control agreements is a complex and quite fragile structure" Therefore, he has aruged, "Once one of its key elements has been weakened, the entire system is destabilized. The collapse of the ABM treaty would, therefore, undermine the entirety of disarmament agreements concluded over the last 30 years."⁴ On behalf of China, Sha Zukang, the director general for arms control, has commented that the NMDS would destroy the "balance of terror" which has arguably deterred nuclear war for decades. "We will not sit on our hands," Sha told U.S. diplomats. Instead, he said, "To defeat your defenses we'll have to spend a lot of money, and we don't want to do this. But otherwise, the United States will feel it can attack anyone at any time, and that isn't tolerable. We hope you'll give this up. If not, we'll be ready."⁵

It is easy to write off these views of those of past and potential U.S. enemies. But most of the rest of the world and the U.S. intelligence community also agree that an NMDS could reignite a nuclear arms race. In January 2000, a resolution in the UN General Assembly supporting the ABM Treaty passed by a lopsided vote. That was followed in August 2000 by a worrisome, highly classified intelligence report, "Foreign Responses to U.S. National Missile Defense Deployment," authored by the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies. The National Intelligence Estimate reportedly warned that deploying the NMDS could lead China to expand its nuclear arsenal ten-fold and prompt Russia to place multiple warheads on ballistic missiles that now carry only one.⁶ It may be then, given the odd logic of deterrence, that no defense is the best defense.

Notes

1. "Executive Summary of the [Rumsfeld] Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States," available on the Web at: http://fedbbs.access.gpo.gov/.

2. Washington Post, January 17, 2000.

3. Washington Post, September 3, 2000.

4. New York Times, April 26, 2000.

5. New York Times, May 11, 2000.

6. New York Times, August 9, 2000.