April 19, 2006 :: Defense News :: Analysis
“Cold War era” political thinking is threatening to undermine recent progress that has been made in U.S. ballistic missile defense, argues Keith Payne in
Defense News. From the early 1960s to the late 1970s, U.S. strategic thought was dominated by the concept of deterrence, a “balance of terror” that categorized strategic BMD as “unnecessary, useless, destabilizing, unaffordable, and an impediment to ending what was called the arms race.” Payne notes that this balance of terror “amazingly retains a powerful hold on thinking in many political and academic circles,” even though it is largely irrelevant to contemporary threats posed by Iran and North Korea. The continuing hold of this concept is unfortunate, he argues, because the shift in context from Cold War to post-Cold War has changed the “measures of merit” for missile defense. First, while effective BMD was considered “technically infeasible and practically unaffordable” again the Soviet Union, the much more limited post-Cold War threats have greatly eased these challenges. Second, while the “balance of terror” was considered predictable against the Soviet leadership and thus decreased the value of BMD, the enormous uncertainties attached to predicting the behavior of the Iranian and North Korean leadership increase the value of these defenses. Third, the Cold War logic that missile defense is destabilizing is incoherent against contemporary threats, as BMD systems cannot motivate nuclear enemies to strike first when the U.S. retains the ability to launch an annihilating second strike.
(Article)
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