By Angelo M. Codevilla
May 11, 1998
This year, like most other years for the past generation, the U.S. government will spend more than $3 billion in the name of defense against ballistic missiles. Since 1983, we have spent some $46 billion. And this year, exactly like every other year, this money will buy not a single solitary piece of equipment that might possibly be used to keep even one foreign missile from landing on the American people.
Some of the money will buy technology that could (but will not) be used for missile defense. Most of the $3 billion, however, will go into equipment painstakingly designed not to be useful for defending America. This is not incompetence. Since the 1972 U.S.-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, it has been the policy of the U.S. government that the American people should remain 100% without protection against missiles.
Since nearly all Americans believe such protection is the necessary and proper business of the U.S. government, politicians have a problem. Most Democratic politicians and officials want no missile defense, but fear the label “anti-defense.” Most Republicans want a missile defense, just to be labeled “pro-defense,” but fear the dominant anti-defense culture within the bureaucracy. So, Republicans and Democrats have tacitly agreed to spend lots of money, ostensibly for missile defense, on condition that not one penny of it will buy any defense.
Politicians have concealed this long-standing Washington deal by wrapping missile defense in thick jargon, giving the impression that no one without a Ph.D. in physics could legitimately touch the subject. In the 1980s the Republicans sold SDI to the public as a system to defend America. In fact SDI was only a research program, with ironclad rules against using any of the results. Republicans and Democrats engaged in pseudo-technical comparisons between imaginary missile threats and nonexistent defense technologies. Each for their own reasons did not want to discuss whether to buy any of the defensive devices available at the time.
Now, the Democrats are claiming that they are building “theater missile defense” weapons to protect troops and foreign allies against slower, shorter range missiles—such as those possessed by Iraq. But because today’s Iraqi missiles cannot reach America, the Clinton administration is in no rush to use any risky new technology to build “national missile defense” weapons for America. Instead, the administration has re-affirmed the 1972 ABM Treaty, along with its principles of total, mutual, vulnerability. The cornerstone of our military policy is an ironclad rule to ensure that the “theater defenses” we are building for foreigners will be utterly incapable of protecting America.
Today, not only are Middle Eastern countries and North Korea building long-range missiles of mass destruction, but the Chinese already have them. And the many missiles in Russia could fall into hostile hands at any time. Moreover, the very distinction between “theater” defensive systems (designed to work against slower, shorter range missiles) and “national” defenses (designed against longer range, faster ones) is bunk. In the real world, protecting populated areas against even the slowest missiles requires treating those missiles as if they were the fastest. That means hitting the missile very far away from the target.
In fact, most of the anti-missile technologies available in America would do just that, if used optimally. Well designed anti-missile systems will protect against fast missiles as well as slow, while less well designed systems will do worse against both. A case in point: in the Gulf War, the Patriot system was designed to intercept Iraqi Scuds only three miles above the target. This proximity to the target meant that falling debris from Patriots and Scuds made normal life impossible in Tel Aviv. And of course such missiles could have been carrying biological weapons—another factor that obliterates the distinction between theater and national threats.
But the Clinton administration has made its choice: since the optimal use of any given technology intended for use abroad would produce devices useful for protecting America, the Clinton Administration has prohibited the optimal use of each and every anti-missile technology.
We possess terminal guidance technology for ground-based and sea-based interceptors that would allow them to hit incoming warheads very far away. In fact, it is technically easier to make intercepts farther away than closer in. But the Administration has prohibited the early launch of these interceptors because they are too good. The external sensor data that allows them to intercept incoming missiles from far away means they could be used against long-range missiles—in contravention of the vulnerability principle at the heart of the ABM treaty.
We possess outstanding infra-red technology for satellites, capable of identifying missile targets and guiding interceptors to hit them. But the Administration has restricted the frequencies that these satellites can see, and directed that the data be sorted and transmitted with artificial time delays. If these satellites were not crippled in this way, they would help turn almost any “theater” interceptor into one capable of protecting America.
We posses outstanding chemical laser generators, optics, and the technology for aiming them. But the Administration has prohibited using them in space because from that vantage point they could easily destroy missiles heading for the U.S. Instead, it has earmarked $11 billion for putting lasers on Boeing 747 airplanes that are supposed to circle forever near enemy missile sites. Never mind that lasers don’t work well through air and that there is no way of defending 747’s on permanent station; or that putting lasers on airplanes is more difficult and expensive than putting them in orbit. The important thing for the Clinton Administration is that these airplane lasers would be useless for defending America.
All of this poses a question of conscience for members of Congress. Why spend the taxpayers’ money for weapons that have been exquisitely designed not to work as well as they might? Why sacrifice real money today and real lives tomorrow for the sake of the dead ideology of cold war mutual vulnerability? If Congress is going to spend money in the name of missile defense, taxpayers have more than a little right to demand that we actually get some.
Angelo Codevilla is a professor of international relations at Boston University and a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. He has served as an officer in the U.S. Navy, an officer in the Foreign Service, and a member of President-Elect Reagan’s Transition Teams at the State Department. Dr. Codevilla received his Ph.D. in security studies, U.S. foreign policy, and political theory from the Claremont Graduate School.
