With Missile-Defense `Support' Like This, Who Needs Enemies?

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 4, 2001 | by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

It was one of the more memorable examples of the phenomenon of "damning with faint praise." Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota was talking about George W. Bush's speech to the National Defense University. The president forcefully had laid out his arguments for defending the United States, its troops and allies against ballistic-missile attack and had launched international consultations to help sell his vision.

Daschle said Bush had begun "one of the most important and consequential debates we will see in our lifetime." What he really meant, though, was that the president was making a grave mistake and that Daschle and other opponents of missile defense intended to prevent George W. from perpetrating it on the rest of us.

To be sure, Daschle likely will take exception to being called an opponent of missile defense. In so doing, however, he will underscore the disingenuousness of the debate he intends to make among the "most important and consequential" of the present era.

Specifically, what those such as Daschle and his comrades (notably, liberal Democrats such as senators Joseph Biden of Delaware, Christopher Dodd of Connecticut and John Kerry of Massachusetts and House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt of Missouri) mean when they say they support missile defenses is that they don't -- except under circumstances calculated to render such support meaningless.

Specifically, such critics tend to assert that: 1) Any U.S. antimissile system must meet some ill-defined but very exacting performance standard, yet not be so capable as to prevent Russia or even China from threatening to destroy this country; 2) it must not cost too much to deploy, although how much would be acceptable rarely is spelled out; and, perhaps most importantly, 3) the United States must not proceed "unilaterally."

Let's examine each of these conditions in turn. First, it is a safe bet that the United States can produce the technology needed for a reliable territorial antiballistic-missile system. But it only can do so if we stop trying to develop such technology within the limitations imposed by the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that explicitly forbids us from having that capability -- an idea the critics abhor.

Obviously, the costs of such a missile defense will be a function of the sort of system or, more likely, the layers of antimissile capabilities chosen for deployment. As it happens, the approach pursued half-heartedly by the Clinton administration was one of the most expensive and least capable options. Far more effective global protection could be acquired for considerably less if the Navy's existing investment in Aegis fleet air-defense ships was utilized as the basic infrastructure for near-term defense while space-based sensors and weapons were brought online. These systems are not compatible with the ABM treaty though and thus are nonstarters for many critics of missile defense.

The real catch-22, though, is the line that the United States only can go forward if our allies and potential adversaries agree. After all, in the event President Bush allowed the left-wing governments running virtually every allied government at the moment to make the call, few (if any) would give their blessings. For them, arms-control treaties are sacred writ or, in the case of the ABM treaty, "the cornerstone of strategic stability." What is more, most of them (especially the French) foolishly believe it in their nations' interests for the United States to be hobbled militarily.

Meanwhile, the Russians, Chinese and North Koreans very much fancy U.S. vulnerability that gives their missile threats strategic and commercial value. As long as they think they can exercise a veto, they will. As a result, the challenge for Bush is not merely to advocate a technically viable and affordable antimissile system worthy of broad support at home and abroad. Increasingly, he also must make the case for U.S. leadership at a time when it is vilified as "unilateralism." He must unapologetically extol U.S. exceptionalism at a moment when the nation is under growing pressure to conform to the lowest common denominator served up by the so-called international community.

The reality is that U.S. sovereignty and security cannot safely be entrusted to those who do not have this country's best interests at heart and/or who labor under delusions about the consistency of world governance and international norms. The latter group's nostrums are all the more untenable insofar as these arrangements increasingly are defined by whatever terms are agreeable to the likes of Muammar Qaddafi, Saddam Hussein and their patrons.

The emissaries President Bush has fanning out around the world to explain and promote his visionary framework must establish the United States' determination to defend its people, troops and allies, come what may.

Frank J. Gaffney Jr. is the president of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.