In June, the Royal Navy announced that it was buying the U.S. Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) for seven of its Type 23 frigates and for the future Daring-class (Type 45) air defense frigate, which replaces existing British destroyers. Because the command systems of the two classes will be related, the work of adapting the system to the Type 23 will solve many of the problems likely to be encountered with Type 45. The British also plan to install CEC in the early-warning helicopters operating from their carriers, just as the U.S. Navy is installing it on board E-2C Hawkeye aircraft.
The British purchase is extremely important. To cooperate tactically, ships must share a common tactical picture. In the past, NATO ships have been able to operate together effectively because they are connected by a standard Link 11. Although Link 11 remains, the new CEC link allows ships to share radar data on a much more complete basis. At least for Aegis ships equipped with the new link, the ships literally share the same picture, to the extent that they can use other ships' data for their own fire control. For ships with short-range defensive missiles, such as large amphibious ships and carriers. CEC provides vital warning data beyond their own horizons—data precise enough that they can launch their own weapons before they can detect the targets using their own sensors. In announcing the purchase, the British emphasized that CEC would greatly improve the survivability of the Type 23 frigates, which are armed with short-range point-defense weapons, in the face of new and projected antiship missiles. For example, the ships will be able to take much better advantage of the radar on board accompanying early-warning helicopters.
It seems at least arguable that without the CEC link, British ships soon will be unable to work with their U.S. counterparts in the face of any sort of high-intensity air threat. Those who recall the enormously valuable contributions of British air-defense ships in the Gulf War would much regret any such development. When the British government published its Strategic Review, it laid special stress on the need to maintain cooperation with the United States, which it connected with the ongoing revolution in military affairs. To the extent that CEC is part of that revolution, the British decision is very much in line with the current British strategic policy.
The new Type 45 frigates will have Sampson active-array radars. CEC was developed on the basis that the SPY-1 radars of U.S. Aegis ships were so precise that ships could share radar data at the fire-control level. Presumably ships with lesser radars (and shorter-range missiles) receive data but contribute little to the overall track picture, simply because their radars are so much less precise than SPY-1s. Sampson, however, is likely to be quite comparable to SPY-1 in its performance (the British claim that it is better). The British purchase is probably the first time that CEC will unite non-Aegis radar contributions with those from Aegis ships. Sampson in turn is one of a class of new European array radars, the other main example being the Canadian-Dutch-- German APAR, which is going on board the new Dutch and German air-defense ships. It seems likely that both the Dutch and the Germans will at least seriously consider buying CEC for these ships. That also may apply to the Japanese, with their Aegis destroyers, to the Norwegians and the Spanish, who are buying Aegis systems for new frigates, and to the French and the Italians, who plan their own new-generation air-defense ships.
For the U.S. Navy, CEC has a wider significance. It is used to link a ship's Standard missiles to external antimissile sensors such as long-range radars and DSP (Defense Support Program) satellites. Indeed, CEC has gained widespread support in recent years not so much for its contribution to naval survivability as for its contribution to theater or even national missile defense. Reportedly, the vertical launcher on board the Type 45 will be able to accommodate many different kinds of missiles, including Tomahawk and, therefore, the SM-3 that the U.S. Navy is developing for theater ballistic missile defense. Buying CEC provides the British with the potential to field their own sea-based ballistic missile defense system—provided they gain access to U.S. sensors, or buy new national sensors of their own. In recent years the British government has shown much more interest than its European allies in this issue.
The missile issue is particularly hot right now, as the U.S. government ponders a national missile defense program, which might be mounted from ships equipped with CEC links. In recent weeks, the program has encountered considerable opposition within NATO Europe. The British position is particularly delicate. The system currently being proposed for the United States depends heavily on the early-warning radar at Fylingdales, in Britain. Any upgrade of the system would have to be approved by the British government.
Since the late 1960s, it has been virtually an article of faith among arms controllers and their political allies that ballistic missile defense is bad, that it cannot be effective, and that it always engenders ruinous arms races. There is little or no evidence to support this position. During the Cold War, the United States briefly fielded a defensive system, and the Russians still retain the system they fielded at the time.
Another issue is whether ballistic missile defense might somehow foster a new form of American isolationism, splitting the United States from Europe. This is a very ironic argument. In the 1960s, General Charles de Gaulle often argued that the United States would not risk nuclear destruction to save Europe; was Paris worth the loss of New York? A United States with some form of protection might be more, rather than less, willing to take essential risks. Moreover, it is not clear that it is better to spend on deterrence than on active defense. Active defense kills few, if any. If deterrence fails, it is necessary first to accept horrific casualties on our part, and then to take an even more horrible revenge. It is difficult to understand how it is more moral to risk several million lives than to invest in an alternative. An arms race in defensive weapons would eat up resources, but it would not have the potential for mass devastation that we now face.
Probably the real issue is the hostility expressed by the Russians and the Chinese. That is understandable. Both countries depend heavily on their nuclear weapons. The Russians still have a very large standing army, but its equipment is rapidly aging, and there is little hope of replacements. It is no great surprise that the Russians have based their remaining claim to great-power status on their substantial nuclear arsenal. They cannot welcome any technology that might reduce its efficacy. That does not make their view particularly attractive to anyone outside Russia, however. Note that any U.S. offer to share the new missile defense technology with the Russians does not offer them what they really want, which is to retain as much as possible of the military status they acquired during the Cold War. Much the same applies to China, which hopes to gain at least as much leverage from a much smaller arsenal. Again, missile defense would buy the United States increased freedom of action, which the Chinese clearly would not like.
In effect, a world in which missile defense was effective would be more like the one that existed before 1900 than the one in which we have grown up. Strategic attack in general would be nearly impossible, because no one would have the ability to do very much damage with the small number of deep-strike aircraft and missiles that now exist, and that are affordable. They can hit point targets very effectively, but they cannot do the sort of collateral damage that devastates whole countries. If this assessment is correct, then war will revert mainly to an earlier pattern in which the only reasonable goal is to destroy or neutralize the enemy's military. That sort of world does not admit of quick or total solutions, which is not really very bad news if we do not face a mortal enemy who has to be smashed altogether. It is also a world in which sea power regains much of its past primacy—and in which a country willing to invest in an effective global navy gains unmatched power. Conversely, in this world effective military power is quite expensive, so many would-be major powers cannot make the grade. That is hardly a bad thing.
Nuclear weapons cannot be disinvented, and of course it is still possible to smuggle bombs in. The ballistic missile defense systems now being touted cannot deal with cruise missiles (which are generally a less-immediate threat). Anything, however, that eliminates the threat of sudden incineration, perhaps half an hour after a hostile decision has been made, seems quite attractive. It may well be insufficient to deal with the sort of mass attack the Russians might mount, but if it neutralizes current Chinese expenditures, it may be well worth the price of admission.
But to a considerable extent the missile defense debate is really about ideology, about whether the rather aggressive policies that made for Cold War victory should have triumphed over the softer ones of earlier administrations. The British dilemma is that the Labour Party currently in power is heir to many of the strategic ideas of the pre-Reagan period. Missile defense is associated with the hard Cold War line, so it is clearly bad. So the current British administration cannot say that upgrading Fylingdales or cooperating more closely with an American missile defense program would necessarily be a particularly good thing. On the other hand, Britain is a lot closer than the United States to countries such as Libya and Iran, both of which are working on ballistic missiles that might well be used against the closest U.S. ally in Europe.
More generally, during the Cold War our European allies generally argued that the best way to control Soviet aggressiveness was to reach agreements of various kinds. Now they badly want to prevent any recurrence of a Cold War in Europe, so they want to stay on the best terms with the new Putin administration. Mr. Putin has quite logically attacked the U.S. missile defense program, because it devalues his one remaining military card. It is less clear whether appeasing him in this effort is likely to do the Europeans much good. There is a theory abroad that democracies rarely fight each other. The implication is that if the Russians build a democracy, then they will also be building peace in Europe. The trouble is that it is by no means clear that is happening. Mr. Putin is, after all, a career product of the KGB, whose job it was to ensure that the old Soviet Union never developed democratic tendencies. In recent months he has allowed his security forces to attack a major media empire, the implication being that he seeks the sort of government control the Soviets enjoyed in the past. There is considerable evidence that the average Russian is quite disenchanted with the democratic reforms the West tried to encourage; indeed, anti-Americanism is very much on the upswing. The Russians seem entirely unable to accept the reality that they ruined their own country. Surely someone else is to blame.
This would be unpleasant enough, but history makes it quite ominous. If the Cold War was World War I in slow motion, we ought to be comparing post-1991 Russia with Weimar Germany. There, too, democratic reforms were installed as a direct consequence of national collapse due to military defeat. They were certainly urged by the victors (the U.S. government may have been directly responsible for the elimination of the Kaiser), who probably had little idea of just what the significance of the changes would be. In the German case, although the Kaiser did enormous mischief, he also tended to stabilize the political system. In the German case, too, there was little or no understanding of why the war had been lost. Are we not seeing a "stab in the back" theory in modern Russia? If democracy and a sort of free market offer the average Russian too little, then the past will look better and better.
When that sort of thing happened in Germany, the Europeans' response was to offer as much as they could, on the theory that engagement was better than hostility. Putin almost certainly is not Hitler, but the idea of engagement or appeasement remains very attractive to Europeans. It is understandable; if the Cold War had gone hot, their countries would have been overrun. Right now, however, the effect of appeasing the Russians is likely to be to encourage them in their self-absorption and paranoia, with extremely unfortunate effects later on.
Perhaps the Europeans ought to rethink their position on missile defense. Perhaps it is time that the strategic arguments were reviewed, instead of holding to the half-understood positions of the past.