Strategic opening

National Review, August 26, 1991 by Dov S. Zakheim

THE Washington Post is again making life awkward for conservatives. By voicing its support for the Nunn--Warner strategic-defense amendment, the Post has reinforced the suspicion that the plan is merely a ploy to forestall a more aggressive program for fielding the Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptor system. After all, Sam Nunn is not universally revered by SDI supporters, many of whom view his past discourses on strategic defense as a threat to their program. And since there are those within the Administration who have never warmed to the idea of strategic defense, Administration support for Nunn--Warner offers little solace.

Regardless of their suspicions, conservatives should look very closely at what the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee have put forward. The compromise approved by the committee as the Missile Defense Act of 1991 provides $4.6 billion for both SDI and theater missile defenses. It commits the United States to deploying a treaty-compliant anti-ballistic-missile system at a single site by fiscal year 1996 (i.e., September 30, 1995). It sets forth the goal of deploying in subsequent years an ABM system that would include space-based sensors (such as the Brilliant Eyes system) and that would have sufficient sites to defend the entire United States, which a single-site system simply cannot do.

The bill also commits $625.3 million to fund Brilliant Pebbles space-based interceptors and other follow-on technologies. To foster the program post 1996, the bill directs the Administration to open negotiations with the Soviets immediately on amending the ABM treaty to allow for multiplesite deployment. Should the Soviets refuse, the U.S. would consider withdrawing from the treaty (which the treaty itself permits us to do).

The Nunn--Warner package is far from perfect. The committee's emphasis appears to be primarily on ground-based systems. This emphasis mirrors the longtime behavior patterns of those who have opposed any changes to the treaty. For years, such people have stressed their commitment to "theater" missile defense--meaning defenses outside the United States--which has enabled them to fund programs such as Israel's Arrow anti-tactical-ballistic-missile system without developing a guilty conscience about the ABM treaty. And less virulent opponents of SDI, Senator Nunn among them, nevertheless have at best favored only ground-based defenses for the United States. Space-based defenses have always been taboo.

The Nunn--Warner compromise, by legitimizing changes in the treaty even as research on space-based defenses proceeds apace, has for the first time opened the door to full deployment of such defenses around the turn of the century. No decision needs to be made at this time regarding deployment of Brilliant Pebbles. The program is at an early stage in its development, and the greatest danger is congressionally induced infant mortality. Under Nunn--Warner, its viability, and that of the concept of space-based active defenses that it represents, is assured.

Still, the greatest significance of Nunn--Warner is that, for the first time, it challenges the principle, so cherished by arms controllers, that the ABM treaty must be inviolate, a fact that has not been lost upon Senators Gore, Levin, and other treaty diehards. Nunn--Warner may tempt the Soviet to make adjustments in the treaty to their benefit: allowing for additional sites would enable the central government, seeking to win the confidence of its restive republics, to offer protection to cities other than Moscow. But the go-it-alone abrogation provision in Nunn--Warner is still more significant. For the first time, the Soviet stranglehold on the treaty, so carefully nourished by its American proponents, will have been broken, at least in principle. And in the theology of arms control, principle is everything.

Conservatives should throw their support behind the Nunn--Warner Missile Defense Act. To do anything less would be to fritter away a major breakthrough on the ABM treaty, and to condemn Brilliant Pebbles, Brillant Eyes, and all the other key elements of a viable strategic defense to the dusty shelves of think-tank libraries.

Mr. Zakheim, a former Deputy Under Secretary of Defense, is CEO of SPC International, in Arlington, Va.