Missile shield to be scrapped

It’s a great day. This piece of news makes me feel extremely gratified as I am sure it does many others. Missile defense against ICBMs has been an eternal bug that has bitten almost every President since 1960. The Bush administration had aggressively pushed plans to implement a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic. There has always been evidence that the efficacy of such a shield will ultimately be severely limited by the basic laws of physics, and that the adversary can essentially and cheaply overwhelm the defense with decoys and countermeasures.

I have written about these limitations and studies about them several times before (see below). The best article arguing against the European missile shield is a May 2008 article by Theodore Postol and George Lewis in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (free PDF here).

And as arms expert Pavel Podvig succinctly wrote in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists only three days back, it’s not just about the technology, but it’s about a fundamentally flawed concept:

“The fundamental problem with the argument is that missile defense will never live up to its expectations. Let me say that again: Missile defense will never make a shred of difference when it comes to its primary mission–protecting a country from the threat of a nuclear missile attack. That isn’t to say that advanced sensors and interceptors someday won’t be able to deal with sophisticated missiles and decoys. They probably will. But again, this won’t overcome the fundamental challenge of keeping a nation safe against a nuclear threat, because it would take only a small probability of success to make such a threat credible while missile defense would need to offer absolute certainty of protection to truly be effective…It’s understandable that people often talk about European missile defense as one of the ways in which to deal with the missile threat posed by Iran. Or that someday missile defense could provide insurance for nuclear disarmament–this is the vision that Ronald Reagan had. When framed in this way, missile defense seems like a promising way out of difficult situations. But this promise is false. If a real confrontation ever comes about (and let’s hope it never happens), we quickly would find out that missile defense offers no meaningful protection whatsoever”.

Now the Obama administration has decided to scrap the unworkable shield and has decided to replace it with a much more realistic defense against short-range missiles. I cannot imagine how gratified this must make the scores of scientists, engineers and policy officials who have long argued against the feasibility of the shield. It also signals a huge shift in Bush-era foreign policy. Notice how the administration has diplomatically and shrewdly avoided mentioning the basic failures of the earlier system.

Unfortunately, the sordid history of missile defense and the inherent satisfaction that seems to stem by arguing in favor of a “shield” to protect the population makes me skeptical in believing that the concept is dead forever. But for now, there is peace in our time and this is a significant breakthrough.

Past posts on missile defense:
Made For Each Other
Missile Defense: The Eternal Bug
Holes in the Whole Enterprise
Czechs halt missile shield progress

Czechs halt missile shield progress

Finally, some promising development on this front. I have talked about the futility of missile defense several times before. In a nutshell, the only time an ICBM can truly fruitfully be intercepted is in midcourse, when it is descending to earth above the atmosphere. At this point it is being guided only by gravity, and it can release thousands of simple decoys from which it will be essentially indistinguishable for an incoming warhead. Several scientists over the last three decades have written articles arguing this point (read the excellent article in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists), and yet missile defense stubbornly refuses to leave the minds of US presidents.

Plus, the underpinnings of missile defense totally miss the point and indicate vastly misplaced priorities. What in the name of Wotan is the possibility that N. Korea or Iran would attack the US with ICBMs and risk being reduced to dust? What on the other hand are the chances of someone slipping a small WMD through the incompletely guarded ports in the US? And what are the chances of alienating Russia by erecting such a shield a stone’s throw away from Russian territory?

The former administration did not believe in the laws of physics, nor in the laws of human nature. Seems this one does.

What would a missile defense system for India achieve?

Manasi alerts me to this Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists article on a possible Indian missile defense system developed with help from the US. As always, the questions to be asked are; Would it work? and What would it achieve?

I have often talked about the recurring problems with conceived US global missile defense systems as pointed out by various experts over the years and the fact that missile defense in one form or the other has been an unrealized dream for US presidents for 40 years. In India missile defense acquires a very different character from the proposed US missile defense systems against supposed ICBMs from Iran or North Korea. Pakistan is a stone’s throw away from the Indian border, and as Gopalaswamy in this essay and Mian and others in a more detailed 2003 Science and Global Security article explain, flight time for a missile to reach New Delhi from Pakistan would be about 4-7 mins. What would the Indian authorities do in such a short time? Detecting any such signal and confirming it as a true one would consume all the time needed for authorities to determine it as a hostile missile launch from Pakistan. The detection would be done by the Arrow system that India acquired from Israel that’s located about 200 kms from Delhi. But because of this very short flight time, there would be no time for further deliberation and any response would have to be a predetermined one.

As Mian and his colleagues state in their article, there are two forms which predetermined response could take; civil defense and/or retaliation. Retaliation if at all possible in such a short time would have to be very quick. Retaliation against nuclear-tipped missiles would be very difficult in the boost phase (right after the missile lifts off, which gives the defense about 90 seconds to destroy the missile) and extremely dangerous in the terminal phase (the phase before the missile hits the target during which its destruction could nonetheless cause great damage to the home territory). As both articles state, with such predetermined responses the threat of false alarms and nuclear conflict increases, an assertion borne out by several close calls during the Cold War even when the response time was much longer.

As the articles state, the prospect of talks on missile defense between the US and India is definitely a welcome sign of relations between the two countries, but we should think twice before spending taxpayers’ money and scientific and human capital on a system that may not really work, but which may encourage the adversary to build more offensive weapons; after all a single one getting through would be enough to cause havoc. As Gopalaswamy says, ultimately technology will decide the operational capability of such a system. Perhaps more attention should be paid to civil defense, a gesture both prudent and practical, and perhaps less threatening.

Reference:
Mian, Z., Rajaraman, R., Ramana, M.V., “Early Warning in South Asia-Constraints and Implications”. Science and Global Security, 11: 109-150, 2003

MADE FOR EACH OTHER

In spite of being technically infeasible and politically misguided, why have successive US administrations been so besotted by missile defense, with George Bush’s latest generous act being to essentially strong-arm NATO into agreeing to his demands for installing such defense systems in Eastern Europe, clearly an act that is if anything going to instigate even more antagonism against America?

Lawrence Korb writing in The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists nails down the phenomenon- Republicans have been having a love affair with missile defense since their patron saint Ronald Reagan embraced the ideal in the pseudo-delusional confines of his idealistic mind. In fact so did Reagan believe in this coveted ideal that he even went to the length of offering to share this technology with the Soviets. In his belief in missile defense Reagan displayed the classic qualities of delusional religious thinking- thinking that something that isn’t actually there is going to save us all. In spite of there being not a shred of serious scientific evidence that any such system could work in practice nor a demonstrated need for it, Reagan made up his mind that it was necessary and would work splendidly. He, Ronald Reagan, would then be known as the great prophet of peace. Through his fantasizing Reagan bequeathed an ignominious legacy to his Republican successors. Now in his rebirth as George Bush, Reagan has returned with a vengeance. He still haunts the deep recesses of space, looking for sites to install x-ray lasers, perhaps telling jokes to the little angels gently guiding CIA spy satellites.

As Korb notes, at least some Republicans may have trouble supporting some of the sacred pillars of the party for fear of losing votes; abortion and gay marriage for example. But no Republican has to fear slighting his voter base by supporting missile defense

It has become a litmus test of loyalty to the Reagan legacy. President Reagan has assumed the same iconic place for Republicans that Franklin Delano Roosevelt had for so many years for Democrats. For example, John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, often refers to himself as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution, as did his former opponents Mitt Romney and Rudolph Giuliani. This revolution was based on three pillars–pro-life as opposed to pro-choice; government as the cause of society’s problems as opposed to the solution; and a robust national missile defense as opposed to arms control negotiations or disarmament. Some Republicans have difficulty completely supporting the first two pillars: The majority of Americans want to place only a few restrictions on a woman’s right to choose and view government as a solution to many of our economic and social problems. But there is no political downside for a Republican to embrace missile defense.

To me that says as much about people’s apathy about this issue as it does about Republicans’ love for it. As Korb says, most Americans either don’t care about missile defense, consider it necessary by default, or assume that they already have it. All three beliefs are fatalistic. The US has already engendered much ill-will even among potential allies such as Russia by planning to install missile defense systems in Europe and now that he knows that he is going to leave soon, Bush seems to be obsessed with putting everything in place before the end of his regime. He and his associates are finely honing their long-acquired skills of causing the maximum damage in the minimum amount of time. Just like RAND theorists in the 1950s pleasured their intellectual apparatus by imagining global thermonuclear war, so do the current denizens of the Pentagon spend their twilight hours fantasizing about hordes of non-existent North-Korean and Iranian ICBMs. And they spend hundreds of billions of dollars on this treasured dream, more than on any single goal. As I have mentioned before, libertarians should be up in arms against this gratuitous diarrhea of taxpayer dollars.

And all this when even the basic technical feasibility of missile defense is questioned. The bottom line is simple. Almost every ABM system imagined in the US since the 1960s has focused on midcourse interception, that is trying to intercept and destroy a missile as it makes its way down through the atmosphere. Simply put, this is almost impossible to do since countless decoys dressed up in the missile’s visual and thermal signature will be making their way down at the same speed, making it more than a nightmare for any interceptor to distinguish missile from noise. Using such cheap decoys, the offense will quickly overwhelm the defense. This fact has been demonstrated time and time again, ad nauseam for the last 40 years, most notably by Richard Garwin (see Garwin’s presentation on the proposed European “shield”). So not only is the proposed system politically and internationally misguided, but it won’t even work. Many compliments to the brilliant officials at the Pentagon.

But it is wrong to feel frustrated, and prudent to understand. We should know that minor kinks like “feasibility”, “facts” and “international goodwill” have never thwarted the wishes of the current administration. So it’s probably not surprising that they would follow the path to hell inaugurated by their illustrious predecessor. But as far as foreign policy goes, this issue is as good a reason for Democrats to take power as any other. And it’s high time that Americans take as much cognizance of and express as much outrage on this issue as they do on healthcare or the war in Iraq. This issue will have as deep and perhaps more long-lasting significance for the national security of the US as anything else. Meanwhile, defenses against terrorists smuggling dirty bombs across borders remain weak.

Past posts on missile defense: 1, 2

RESPONSE TO ADITYANJEE: ARMS RACE IN OUTER SPACE

My post on outer-space arms conflict has been published as a letter in the latest issue of Pragati. In that post I had commented on a piece by Adityanjee in the previous issue of Pragati that encouraged development of ASAT (Anti-Satellite) capabilities by India. Mr Adityanjee responds to the letter and hence to my post in the same issue of Pragati by saying:

“Ashutosh Jogalekar presents some cogent arguments for early successful negotiations for preventing an arms race in space. This is indeed a laudable goal for all the space-faring nations. However, of the six space-faring nations (US, Russia, China, Japan, European space agency and India) currently, three nations (the US, Russia and China) already have demonstrated ASAT capabilities. In reality the race has already started. Mr Jogalekar’s arguments do not consider India’s strategic interests. States negotiate international treaties not from an altruistic point of view but to further their interests. In fact, Mr Jogalekar contradicts himself when he justifies a space weapons ban so as to permanently freeze US superiority in space-warfare capabilities. A space weapons ban might arguably be in US interests—and analysts such as Ashley Tellis argue that it is not—but India should avoid being cast out of the league of ‘legitimate’ space powers”

Since I am a little short on time this week, let me respond briefly to some of Mr Adityanjee’s objections. I will try to pen a detailed response later.

Mr Adityanjee says that I contradict myself when I justify a space weapons ban so as to permanently freeze US superiority in space. I don’t think I do. First of all, the US has had superiority in space technology and assets for a very long time now. And even if a ban freezes US space superiority, so what? The question is whether that superiority will endanger India’s strategic interests, something which Mr Adityanjee thinks I am not considering. For answering these questions, we have to also look at US interests. This is related to Ashley Tellis’s article cited by Mr Adityanjee on how the ASAT ban proposed by China and Russia may not protect US interests as it only applies to space-based ASAT weapons.

What is Tellis’s rationale for this opinion? As I understand it, he says that because the ban will not cover land or sea-launched ASAT weaponry, it would not be in the best interests of the US since it will leave the way open for other nations to develop such weaponry. But there is a second explanation which I don’t find improbable; the US opposes the space-weapons ban because it wants to leave open the possibility of developing space weapons itself in the future. This is not inconceivable, given the long history of US attempts to try to design and implement space-based weapons; Reagan’s Star Wars being the most famous example of this. In fact it’s instructive to remember that Star Wars was supposed to defend against ballistic missiles, an idea that the US is clearly still wedded to, given its recent developments in missile defense. The Bush administration might be as or more concerned about not being able to develop space-based ASAT weapons in the future as it is about other countries developing land-based ASAT weapons. Simply put, the ban is really not against US interests, but against those of the Bush administration. While the distinction is unfortunately inconsequential right now, there is a fair chance that the next President might find it compelling. As Mr Adityanjee rightly says, it is a truism that every country thinks about its own strategic interests. In reality, the US opposing the ban is actually contrary to its strategic interests. This is because any space-weapons or ASAT race might harm the US more than it harms other countries, since the US has the most number and the costliest of assets in space. Plus, space-based weapons have already shown to provide little if any defense against ballistic missiles. On the other hand, ASAT capabilities in space would be a good disguise for other countries to develop more ICBMs in the first place. In consequence, as was paradoxically the case in the early days of the Cold War (an opportunity the US lost), the US superiority in space weaponry and its strategic space interests would be best maintained by convincing other nations that this space capability would never be used. India does not need to fear a superiority that would not be functional.

Thus in my opinion, the US opposition to the ban while not entirely unwarranted, is more a product of traditional Bush administration policies than of cogent thinking about US strategic interests. Sadly, this is a further example of the administration’s misguided policies which are supposed to protect US national security, but which possibly might harm it in the long-term; recall that the administration has already withdrawn from the ABM treaty which actually makes its inertia to space-weapons bans more understandable.

Coming back to India’s strategic interests, I think it is fair to say that a country’s strategic interests should be a subset of its long-term and large-scale national security interests. These national security interests involve many peacetime activities which strengthen a country’s resources and manpower. Given the above situation, India’s strategic interests would be to do its best to prevent a space-weapons race, for basically the same reasons as it would be in US interests to do this. India more than many other nations has both the need and fortunately the capability to put satellites in space for vital purposes such as precipitation measurement and surveillance. Certainly the second objective and I dare say the first one is important for India’s long-term national security. In fact, of one thing we can be sure; any ambitious country- and ASAT-capable China and Russia would count in the forefront- would greatly value the benefits accrued from harnessing the power of satellites in space. It is in no developing country’s interests to render space hostile for its satellites. Thus the same logic that applies to India and the US applies to China and Russia; it would be in all of these countries’ strategic interests to preserve the safety of space. But if India aggressively pushes ASAT development, it may put off China and Russia from trying to advocate bans on such developments. The result most probably will be a space arms race with both space-based weapons and land-based weapons, clearly jeopardizing India’s further progress and interests.

The question naturally asked in this context is; shouldn’t India build up insurance against a possible shoot-down of an Indian satellite by the US or China or Russia. This is what I call the problem with planning for worst-case scenarios. Let me digress a bit. One worst-case scenario for India would be for Pakistan to carpet the country with nuclear weapons. What would be the best planning to forestall such a scenario? Defense would not do, because no amount of defense would be sufficient against a full-scale nuclear attack. In such a case, the logical conclusion is that only a full-scale preemptive nuclear attack on Pakistan would be the correct response by India to prevent a worst-case scenario. The horror of this situation reveals the absurdity of always thinking in terms of worst-case scenarios. A Churchillian admonition comes to mind- “It is not enough to do our best. Sometimes we must do what’s required”. The questions to ask are; under what realistic circumstances would the US (highly improbable) or China (conceivable but still improbable) shoot down an Indian satellite? How many satellites would need to be shot down? And perhaps the most important question is; is an ASAT capability the only way in which India could counter such an improbable transgression? India already has adequate military resources to threaten China if it wants to. But more importantly in this age of globalization, we again come to the question asked earlier; will it be in China’s interests to do something as eminently stupid as that, when its future depends on the preservation of a delicate strategic and economic balance in Asia and around the world?

Having said all of the above, let me note that I did not say that we should not spend resources on ASAT capabilities at all. But as in any other decision, we have to consider the balance of arguments which inevitably include complex and multi-factorial issues. What I am saying is that for our own future strategic interests as well as those of others, it still makes the most sense to try to push for a ban. While we can pursue rudimentary ASAT development on the side, our primary attitude should be conciliatory and advocate an anti-ASAT treaty. In this, we must take the lead and try to include China and Russia on our side. As Adityanjee notes, countries don’t negotiate bans for altruistic purposes. And neither will we.

NO END TO MADNESS

Now it seems that NATO has also jumped onto the bandwagon of missile defense. I have no doubt that considerable weight was thrown around by American officials to achieve this goal. Looks like George Bush is doing an admirable job to cram as many misdeeds as possible in his last few months of tenure.

This surely cannot bode well for US security. No matter how many people write about it and rail against it, America is still living in the Cold War era. I have yet to understand exactly who is going to attack the US with missiles. North Korea? Iran? No matter how much the administration tries to convince the world, both these countries are not suicidal enough to risk annihilation by trying to attack the US or its European allies with such weapons.

In fact they are of course much cleverer than that. Low-level nuclear proliferation and terrorism has always been the most effective way they can damage US interests. If they really wanted to seriously affect US interests- and it’s not a foregone conclusion that they wish to- these countries would help terrorists smuggle in dirty bombs or similar weapons through the still largely unguarded US borders. And in fact the much-dreaded dirty bomb attack, when it comes (and several analysts chillingly think it is only a matter of time), will probably be found to not be connected to any one of these states. Then only will the citizens of this nation realise how George Bush was misleading them for the last seven years under the pretense of false security.

Much is made of how he has kept the country safe since 9/11 and how there’s been no terrorist attack on US soil. Maybe he has. But first of all it is all too easy to forget at what cost this has been achieved; while terrorists have not actually attacked the US since 9/11 many more have been created, forged by interventions in the Middle East and imbibed with hatred of the US, who could attack the country in the future. More importantly, we can be sure of one thing; if even a small nuclear attack occurs in a US city of any significant size in the next decade, the effects will be so horrible and so long-lasting that all the orange alerts and patriot acts of the last seven years will become a footnote to a footnote in American history.

The US continues to intervene and play games abroad and neglect its interests and borders in its own backyard. In spite of this being pointed out by a number of senior analysts, the administration is still making sure it roils the waters in foreign lands by waging invasive wars, spreading “democracy”, and putting missile defense shields against non-existent targets.

As they say, those who forget history will be condemned to relive it…again and again. What have the citizens of this great country done to deserve such a dangerous and gloomy future?

SPACE: THE VIOLENT FRONTIER?

A couple of days ago, the US quite ostensibly sent up a missile to blow up a “rogue” satellite. China had also done the same thing a year or so ago. These actions seem like ominous preludes to a possible arms race in space, the last thing the world wants.

In the latest issue of Pragati, Adityanjee has an article that exhorts India to develop its own ASAT (anti-satellite) system in response to these actions by the US and China. While developing such a system might be good insurance and a future bargaining chip, the first and most important thing we all need to do is keeping pushing for an international treaty to ban weapons in space. Not only will a failure to do this lead to a possible new Cold War, but it can also render space inhospitable for peaceful technologies, an event that will be disastrous for countries that currently use satellites for weather forecasting and precipitation for example.

Mike Moore, who is a previous editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has written a new book on the history and current status of attempts by the US to weaponise and militarise space. As in many other cases, the US- no friend of treaties for quite some time now- is unique in having vetoed and blocked attempts to forge international treaties to ban weapons in space. This is probably not too surprising considering the attempts by the US since the 19060s (when they were developing a purported system to oust Chinese ballistic missiles) to the 1980s (age of the infamous Star Wars) to the 2000s (the Bush administration’s obsession with National Missile Defense). True to other traditions, the US has constantly underscored its sovereign right to exceptionalism when the rest of the world thinks otherwise. The US satellite blowup comes close on the heels of renewed efforts of China and Russia to push for an international treaty to ban space weapons.

In his book, Moore documents how President Eisenhower made spirited efforts to stop an arms race in space. However, every administration since the Reagan administration has vetoed attempts by other space-faring countries to negotiate such treaties. The Pentagon’s love affair with GPS-guided precision weapons in the 90s fueled ambitions to weaponise space. Again, it’s the US that is leading the world into a dangerous era and is interested in unilaterally pursuing belligerent aims. It seems to be still living in Cold War mode. As Moore says, China and Russia (and presumably India) have many more important problems to tackle and spend money on than building a space weapons capability. However, they can, and will, build this capability if they see the US constantly trying to do so.

The US in fact has a golden opportunity right now to preserve its superiority in weapons technology. The situation reminds me of the early days of the arms race, when an exceptional opportunity to preserve the US superiority over Russia in nuclear arms was lost because of politicking by right wing hawks and threat inflation specialists. After that, Russia soon caught up and it was too late. Similarly, now is the time for the US to talk to other nations and sign a space-weapons ban, thus preserving and possibly sealing its current technological advantage.

One of the central points of missile defense that I have often made in other posts, is that it is almost assuredly going to fail against ballistic missiles, a point which should have been emphasized in the Pragati article. This points needs to be constantly emphasized because like some annoying virus, it keeps infecting and enamoring the minds of US and world officials in every successive administration, in spite of its proven lack of feasibility. Shooting down ballistic missiles realistically has always been a pipe dream harboured by zealous government officials, and the fallibility of this has been demonstrated time and time again by distinguished scientists and other officials. Any attempt to build an anti-ballistic missile system is a huge waste of money, time and talent, and as an added insidious side-effect, it breeds hostility in other nations, something that has already happened because of the US National Missile Defense system. Missile defense should rankle the hearts of democracy and peace-lovers, libertarians and economic conservatives.

Shooting down satellites is another matter, and unfortunately easier than shooting down ballistic missiles. But as Moore points out in his book, one of the many effects of such an exchange will be an amplification of debris in low-earth orbit, debris that will likely make it impossible to use satellites for peaceful purposes, including missions to other planets in the solar system. And of course, it will add perhaps irreversibly to the hubris-laden image that the US has in the world right now.

Every attempt should be made by all space-faring countries to push for an international treaty banning any kind of weapons in space. But sadly, it’s the US again that is posing the biggest impediment to the forging of such a consensus. The next President should make it a priority to sign such a treaty, and Obama has indicated that he might be interested. Any attempt by the US to develop a space weapons capability will lead to a dangerous arms race with Russia, China, India and others, involving huge expenditures and wasted efforts. It will contribute to an already deeply dividing feeling of international resentment and animosity. But perhaps most importantly, it will send out a signal that space, that ultimate refuge that is supposed to be the equal sovereign right of every human being on the planet, can be belligerently conquered and manipulated by a few nations. After that, everything will be up for grabs.

HOLES IN THE WHOLE ENTERPRISE

I am amused by Vladimir Putin’s comparison of repurcussions of the proposed US missile shield being possibly akin to the Cuban Missile Crisis. While the analogy sounds laughable and Putin is increasingly seen as no friend of democracy, the amusement is because whatever the reason for his ramblings, they make sense.

I am a little amazed at how more people in the US are not speaking up against the missile shield which will clearly roil the region and US perceptions abroad, especially during this time when US popularity is already execrably low and everyone in the world is wary of any US intrusions abroad. It is unacceptable to allow the Bush administration to create more threat inflation (hardly a new American tactic) trespass on foreign territory and spend billions more of tax dollars by citing some ludicrous future threat about North Korean and Iranian missiles, while small terrorist groups and homegrown terror continue to thrive and remain the primary threat. I think the Iraq war is as much of a travesty as can be incurred for taxpayers’ money and it should be appalling that the administration wants to go gung-ho on more national security rhetoric and weapons spending.

I have already talked about the sordid and expensive history of US missile defense as well as its misguided purposes and technical infeasibility. What’s even worse is that in the presence of short range missiles launched from ships near the US coast (a much bigger possibility than ICBMs), the proposed missile system will be even more farther than the previously proposed National Missile Defense system, thus being unable to protect the nation. In this particular case, physicist Richard Garwin has penned an insightful article in Scientific American that’s worth reading. Garwin is an eminent scientist, protege of Enrico Fermi who worked on the hydrogen bomb, and a distinguished and dominant voice in four decades of US military and science policy. He reiterates the points above:

“What is more, the primary missile threat to the U.S. is not ICBMs. If a nation such as North Korea or Iran is intent on attacking an American city, it is far more likely to do so using short-range missiles launched from ships near the U.S. coasts. In a press briefing in 2002 Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld noted: “Countries have placed ballistic missiles in ships–dime a dozen–all over the world. At any given time, there’s any number off our coasts, coming, going. On transporter-erector-launchers, they simply erect it, fire off a ballistic missile, put it down, cover it up. Their radar signature’s not any different than 50 others in close proximity.” Despite this acknowledgment, however, the Defense Department has no system planned for deployment that could defend against these missiles.”

What I always feel is ironic and tragic is that in the midst of all the proposals of the Bush administration to increase national security, not only is American credibility being further eroded in the world and taxpayers’ dollars being sapped from valuable domestic programs, but the country is actually becoming less safe than before because of the misguided policies and perceived belligerence of its government.

MISSILE DEFENSE: THE ETERNAL BUG Some bugs never …

MISSILE DEFENSE: THE ETERNAL BUG

Some bugs never seem to die, especially those of the Presidential type. The missile defence bug is surely one of these. It has bitten almost every President from JFK to GWB, sapped away billions of taxpayer dollars from the nation’s coffers, and regularly evaded the attempts of dozens of eminent experts to declare it futile and ominous.

It started in 1957, when Sputnik blazed across the sky. For the next thirty years or so, US Presidents projected a false ‘missile gap’ to the nation, and devoted manpower and an immense amount of money to building bigger and better missiles that could carry thermonuclear warheads across continents and initiate global nuclear conflict. This was inspite of the fact that the perceived missile gap was never a gap in the middle days of the Cold War. By banning the development of ballistic missiles as well as nuclear weapons, the United States could have retained a clear advantage over its opponents. But bugs as we know can be all-pervasive and recalcitrant. In the 60s, the Cold War reached new heights with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the testing of many new missiles. Mercifully, nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space were banned in an important 1963 test ban.

The Chinese had been engaged in nuclear weapons research since the 1950s, and affairs had come to a head in 1950 during the Korean War. In 1964, China had detonated its first atomic bomb. After the Soviet Union, it was seen as the biggest threat to the US. Sometime in the 1960s, the bug caught the imagination of Washington, and plans were made to employ a huge anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that could deflect a potential Chinese nuclear attack. The plans were first conducted in secret, and then, even before China really had the requisite technology to engage in such attacks, were heavily publicised by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, thus giving the Chinese carte blanche to go ahead.

Missile defense can be a tricky concept. On the face of it, it seems to guarantee a nation’s safety from first nuclear strikes. But this sense of safety is misleading, for several reasons. First of all, technical ones; it was shown repeatedly, most strikingly in 1968 in a Scientific American article by the great physicist Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin, that almost any countermeasure that the US could take against such an attack could be defeated by ‘countercountermeasures’ by the enemy. This could include the use of any number of decoys, from aluminium foil to fake explosions and warheads, to mislead defensive missiles. On a very local scale, missile defense could be partially successful, but the authors showed that the marginal expense necessary for deflecting missile attacks was much more for the US than for the enemy. In other words, it was relatively easier for the enemy to thwart defensive missiles than for the US to thwart offensive ones.
The more important problem with missile defense is political. By employing such a defense, the US gives out a signal to other countries that since it is now securely defended, it may not have a problem launching a first nuclear strike itself. The result of such an impression is predictable; the enemy would put even more resources into developing more and better missiles and weapons to penetrate the system. If there is a good way to initiate another nuclear arms race, this way would be close to the top of the list. For example, in 1968, one could not have blamed the Chinese for accelerating their own missile development after hearing of US plans to develop such a defense system. In fact, it would have been a nice excuse for them.

In any case, the 1960s system fortunately did not work out, but not before millions of dollars were spent on it. A respite came in 1972, when Richard Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, that limited the numbers of deployable ballistic missiles on both sides. But like other treaties, this treaty also contained a slippery slope, because it said nothing about developing more sophisticated missiles, simply about deploying them. Also, it did not say anything about the number of nuclear warheads that a single missile could carry. This loophole (probably intentionally left in) led to one of the most dangerous developments of the Cold War; Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), in which a single missile such as the Minuteman could carry upto 10, independently targetable warheads. This probably was not much better than the situation before the treaty.

But the icing on the cake was laid by the charismatic Ronald Reagan, with his espousal of a really ridiculous, unfeasible, and prvocative system- the famous “Star Wars”, or Strategic Defense Initiative. Star Wars envisioned hundreds of missiles and weapons based in space. It got rescued from early demise by a new invention, the X-ray laser, which could shoot its gigawatt beam across miles of space and supposedly blow out missiles and thermonuclear warheads into oblivion.
However, after Reagan enthusiastically took up the gospel, it began to become apparent that the project had been oversold, and scientists who worked on it had been pressured into remaining silent about its limitations. While hawkish Edward Teller lobbied for it, the resourceful Hans Bethe and his colleagues again rose to the cause, and published another article in Scientific American on the same lines as before, arguing yet again that the enemy could always emply suitable decoys and defeat the system, and that it would lead again to an accelerated arms race.

Nuclear weapons have been brought in check somewhat by various treaties since then. But needless to say, George Bush has inherited the mantle from his esteemed Cold War predecessor and has gloriously validated it. In 2002, after honouring the anti-ballistic missile treaty for 30 years, the administration withdrew from it in an ominous development. Part of the reason was a short-lived but dangerous resurgence of “small” nuclear weapons R & D. These “low-yield” weapons called “bunker busters” were intended to bust underground enemy bunkers. However, it was convincingly argued that contrary to what their proponents would have everyone believe, they were no “safer” or “contained” than conventional nukes, and in some respects even less so.

The most important reason for withdrawing from the treaty obviously is the renewed interest in another missile defense system, “Son of Star Wars”, this time ostensibly against North Korea and Iran, and this time based in both Europe and the US.
Yet another article was published by Bethe’s collaborator Richard Garwin in Scientific American in 2004, arguing against the proposed system. Again, the most important objection is political. What kind of signal is the US giving to N. Korea and Iran? It’s clearly an invitation for these nations to become even more suspicious of the US, and get the perfect pretext for developing their own missiles.

Perhaps the US wants to adopt the Cold War strategy to try to economically bleed these nations out by making them spend huge sums on missiles, a justification that is often made in support of this endeavor. But this strategy is not only dubious but misguided. Firstly, there is no guarantee that another nation would not atack the US in any way until it faces economic collapse, so that the overall risk to the US increases. Secondly, even if it does not attack, it would develop any number of weapons and missile systems and possibly help them proliferate. This brings us to the third and most pertinent point. In this age of nuclear terrorism, it is highly unfeasible that Iran or N. Korea wil use nuclear warheads on missiles to attack the US if they really wanted to wage war against it. It would be suicide for them. Instead, as the late Carl Sagan, an outspoken opponent of missile defense used to point out, these states would smuggle in a low yield or dirty bomb through a suitcase or through diplomatic pouch. Graham Allison also affirms this in his highly readable Nuclear Terrorism. In fact, it is highly unlikely that these states would do something like this that would threaten to drop the curtain on their own existence. The real threat is from independent terrorist groups with no return labels and fear of retaliation. And it is almost impossible and ludicrous that they would use missiles to attack the US. However, nations like N. Korea and Iran would happily and anonymously provide the technology which they have developed to these terrorists.

In the latest developments, the US is pressurizing Vladimir Putin and other European leaders to employ missile defense in Europe. I commend Putin and these leaders for not giving in to this inane and misguided demand. One must not forget that it was the presence of Jupiter missiles in Turkey which threatened the Soviet Union in 1961, and became one of the causes of the missile crisis. By again employing missiles in Europe, the US is only going to make itself and the world a less safer place.

Times have changed, but the US still very much seems to be living in Cold War times. It still has about 10,000 warheads, many on hair-trigger 15 minute launch alerts. The threatening nature of this state of affairs has been certified by both conservatives and liberals. The strategies of missile defense that it’s trying to employ are Cold War era tactics. And they were unworkable and dangerous during the Cold War, and are dangerous right now. One would think that statesmen would have learnt from such a long experience of dealing with possible death and destruction. But, like bacteria, these bugs don’t die out. They can be resisted and rooted out though, but statesmen don’t have the intelligence and conviction to resist them, and would rather let the bugs turn them into zombies.

MISSILE DEFENSE: THE ETERNAL BUG

Some bugs never seem to die, especially those of the Presidential type. The missile defence bug is surely one of these. It has bitten almost every President from JFK to GWB, sapped away billions of taxpayer dollars from the nation’s coffers, and regularly evaded the attempts of dozens of eminent experts to declare it futile and ominous.

It started in 1957, when Sputnik blazed across the sky. For the next thirty years or so, US Presidents projected a false ‘missile gap’ to the nation, and devoted manpower and an immense amount of money to building bigger and better missiles that could carry thermonuclear warheads across continents and initiate global nuclear conflict. This was inspite of the fact that the perceived missile gap was never a gap in the middle days of the Cold War. By banning the development of ballistic missiles as well as nuclear weapons, the United States could have retained a clear advantage over its opponents. But bugs as we know can be all-pervasive and recalcitrant. In the 60s, the Cold War reached new heights with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the testing of many new missiles. Mercifully, nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space were banned in an important 1963 test ban.

The Chinese had been engaged in nuclear weapons research since the 1950s, and affairs had come to a head in 1950 during the Korean War. In 1964, China had detonated its first atomic bomb. After the Soviet Union, it was seen as the biggest threat to the US. Sometime in the 1960s, the bug caught the imagination of Washington, and plans were made to employ a huge anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that could deflect a potential Chinese nuclear attack. The plans were first conducted in secret, and then, even before China really had the requisite technology to engage in such attacks, were heavily publicised by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, thus giving the Chinese carte blanche to go ahead.

Missile defense can be a tricky concept. On the face of it, it seems to guarantee a nation’s safety from first nuclear strikes. But this sense of safety is misleading, for several reasons. First of all, technical ones; it was shown repeatedly, most strikingly in 1968 in a Scientific American article by the great physicist Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin, that almost any countermeasure that the US could take against such an attack could be defeated by ‘countercountermeasures’ by the enemy. This could include the use of any number of decoys, from aluminium foil to fake explosions and warheads, to mislead defensive missiles. On a very local scale, missile defense could be partially successful, but the authors showed that the marginal expense necessary for deflecting missile attacks was much more for the US than for the enemy. In other words, it was relatively easier for the enemy to thwart defensive missiles than for the US to thwart offensive ones.
The more important problem with missile defense is political. By employing such a defense, the US gives out a signal to other countries that since it is now securely defended, it may not have a problem launching a first nuclear strike itself. The result of such an impression is predictable; the enemy would put even more resources into developing more and better missiles and weapons to penetrate the system. If there is a good way to initiate another nuclear arms race, this way would be close to the top of the list. For example, in 1968, one could not have blamed the Chinese for accelerating their own missile development after hearing of US plans to develop such a defense system. In fact, it would have been a nice excuse for them.

In any case, the 1960s system fortunately did not work out, but not before millions of dollars were spent on it. A respite came in 1972, when Richard Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, that limited the numbers of deployable ballistic missiles on both sides. But like other treaties, this treaty also contained a slippery slope, because it said nothing about developing more sophisticated missiles, simply about deploying them. Also, it did not say anything about the number of nuclear warheads that a single missile could carry. This loophole (probably intentionally left in) led to one of the most dangerous developments of the Cold War; Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), in which a single missile such as the Minuteman could carry upto 10, independently targetable warheads. This probably was not much better than the situation before the treaty.

But the icing on the cake was laid by the charismatic Ronald Reagan, with his espousal of a really ridiculous, unfeasible, and prvocative system- the famous “Star Wars”, or Strategic Defense Initiative. Star Wars envisioned hundreds of missiles and weapons based in space. It got rescued from early demise by a new invention, the X-ray laser, which could shoot its gigawatt beam across miles of space and supposedly blow out missiles and thermonuclear warheads into oblivion.
However, after Reagan enthusiastically took up the gospel, it began to become apparent that the project had been oversold, and scientists who worked on it had been pressured into remaining silent about its limitations. While hawkish Edward Teller lobbied for it, the resourceful Hans Bethe and his colleagues again rose to the cause, and published another article in Scientific American on the same lines as before, arguing yet again that the enemy could always emply suitable decoys and defeat the system, and that it would lead again to an accelerated arms race.

Nuclear weapons have been brought in check somewhat by various treaties since then. But needless to say, George Bush has inherited the mantle from his esteemed Cold War predecessor and has gloriously validated it. In 2002, after honouring the anti-ballistic missile treaty for 30 years, the administration withdrew from it in an ominous development. Part of the reason was a short-lived but dangerous resurgence of “small” nuclear weapons R & D. These “low-yield” weapons called “bunker busters” were intended to bust underground enemy bunkers. However, it was convincingly argued that contrary to what their proponents would have everyone believe, they were no “safer” or “contained” than conventional nukes, and in some respects even less so.

The most important reason for withdrawing from the treaty obviously is the renewed interest in another missile defense system, “Son of Star Wars”, this time ostensibly against North Korea and Iran, and this time based in both Europe and the US.
Yet another article was published by Bethe’s collaborator Richard Garwin in Scientific American in 2004, arguing against the proposed system. Again, the most important objection is political. What kind of signal is the US giving to N. Korea and Iran? It’s clearly an invitation for these nations to become even more suspicious of the US, and get the perfect pretext for developing their own missiles.

Perhaps the US wants to adopt the Cold War strategy to try to economically bleed these nations out by making them spend huge sums on missiles, a justification that is often made in support of this endeavor. But this strategy is not only dubious but misguided. Firstly, there is no guarantee that another nation would not atack the US in any way until it faces economic collapse, so that the overall risk to the US increases. Secondly, even if it does not attack, it would develop any number of weapons and missile systems and possibly help them proliferate. This brings us to the third and most pertinent point. In this age of nuclear terrorism, it is highly unfeasible that Iran or N. Korea wil use nuclear warheads on missiles to attack the US if they really wanted to wage war against it. It would be suicide for them. Instead, as the late Carl Sagan, an outspoken opponent of missile defense used to point out, these states would smuggle in a low yield or dirty bomb through a suitcase or through diplomatic pouch. Graham Allison also affirms this in his highly readable Nuclear Terrorism. In fact, it is highly unlikely that these states would do something like this that would threaten to drop the curtain on their own existence. The real threat is from independent terrorist groups with no return labels and fear of retaliation. And it is almost impossible and ludicrous that they would use missiles to attack the US. However, nations like N. Korea and Iran would happily and anonymously provide the technology which they have developed to these terrorists.

In the latest developments, the US is pressurizing Vladimir Putin and other European leaders to employ missile defense in Europe. I commend Putin and these leaders for not giving in to this inane and misguided demand. One must not forget that it was the presence of Jupiter missiles in Turkey which threatened the Soviet Union in 1961, and became one of the causes of the missile crisis. By again employing missiles in Europe, the US is only going to make itself and the world a less safer place.

Times have changed, but the US still very much seems to be living in Cold War times. It still has about 10,000 warheads, many on hair-trigger 15 minute launch alerts. The threatening nature of this state of affairs has been certified by both conservatives and liberals. The strategies of missile defense that it’s trying to employ are Cold War era tactics. And they were unworkable and dangerous during the Cold War, and are dangerous right now. One would think that statesmen would have learnt from such a long experience of dealing with possible death and destruction. But, like bacteria, these bugs don’t die out. They can be resisted and rooted out though, but statesmen don’t have the intelligence and conviction to resist them, and would rather let the bugs turn them into zombies.