Last July, a U.S. prototype anti-ballistic missile weapon failed to destroy its target, a Minuteman ballistic missile, thereby causing President Clinton to make the politically pragmatic decision to pass on to the next administration the tough choice of whether or not to proceed with deploying an unproven missile defense system. With the start of the Bush administration, the "shooting" really will begin. Many countries, including several of this nation's European allies, oppose deployment of a missile defense system, claiming that any such U.S. missile shield would violate the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, lead the United States to act unilaterally in the foreign affairs, and leave them exposed to retaliation.
To salve some of the objections, President George W. Bush has proposed that any U.S. missile shield also cover U.S. allies, perhaps by shipboard missile defense systems such as those advocated by the U.S. Navy. Yet expanding the anti-missile umbrella will not ease the concerns of many nations. Because the European allies' real objections are often not the same as those raised in public, designing a missile defense shield to protect both the United States and its allies will make some of the allies even more uncomfortable. Bush's proposal is, nonetheless, a good idea that will enhance U.S. national security and global stability. Furthermore, it will enhance national security without taking the United States to the "100 %Io effectiveness" level that many missile defense critics insist is necessary.
At first glance, the international debate over whether the United States should alter or even abrogate the ABM Treaty with the now-defunct Soviet Union seems strange. For one thing, the treaty stands between the United States and (perhaps) the Russian successor-state to the U.S.S.R. It does not involve China, Germany, France, or any other country currently expressing outrage over the U.S. proposal to modify the pact. While one might expect Russia to express some displeasure, none of the defense systems now planned could withstand an attack of even a hundred missiles-the Russians could launch thousands.
Why then the furor? China's concerns are obvious. Even though officials always cite "states of concern" (a.k.a. "rogue states") as the reason we need a missile defense, such a network, which is designed to shoot down a handful of missiles, might also protect the United States from China's two-dozen or so intercontinental missiles. But, what of our European allies? Europe does not militarily threaten the United States, and it is hard to see how a U.S. missile shield will make Europe any more vulnerable than it is today. Part of the answer to why countries such as France and Germany-and China and Russia-oppose a missile defense system has to do with the diplomatic power such a shield would give the United States.
In reality, neither nuclear weapons nor ballistic missiles are terribly effective military tools. The ballistic missiles deployed by most countries are direct descendents of the inaccurate V-2 rockets with which Germany failed to cow the British in World War II. Unless armed with nuclear or other unconventional warheads, such weapons cause more fear than damage. During the Gulf War, Iraq launched more than 80 conventional ballistic missiles against targets in Israel and Saudi Arabia; while they killed dozens of people, they were hardly super weapons. Likewise, nuclear weapons, while manifestly destructive, have not been used since 1945, nor likely will be used unless a country's very existence is at stake. In almost any other situation, a country launching a nuclear strike faces massive retaliation. Rather than being tools of war, these weapons' value derives from the fear they strike in others that, just perhaps, they may be used anyway. As Jaswant Singh, a member of India's parliament, wrote in Foreign Affairs shortly after India tested several nuclear devices, nuclear bombs are not actual weapons but rather tools of diplomatic coercion and the "international currency of force and power." In short, possession of either nuclear weapons or ballistic missiles provides political influence and power disproportionate to their actual military utility.
A missile defense system, especially a mobile, ship-borne missile defense system as proposed by the U.S. Navy, counters this political and diplomatic power directly, and does so without actually having to be totally effective from the technical perspective. Since the power of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons lies mostly in the fear they generate, a plausible missile shield can dissipate part of this fear and thus lessen the diplomatic power of the threatening state. More disconcerting, in the view of countries such as France and Germany, a mobile missile defense greatly strengthens the international political influence of the United States. Suddenly, in an international environment where hostile neighbors make periodic and loud threats by launching the occasional test missile across another's territory, the value of securing U.S. friendship skyrockets. In zerosum fashion, Germany, France, China, and Russia cannot help but interpret this as diminishing their own influence.
Of course, these countries claim publicly that a U.S. missile defense system will spark a new and destabilizing arms race that will imperil their own national security. China, for example, claims it will need to build new nuclear missiles to counter the U.S. missile shield, and this, others suggest, will cause India and then Pakistan to do the same. As China's strategic ambitions grow, can it be assured that a handful of nuclear missiles deters the United States from interfering with these ambitions when the Soviet Union felt compelled to build thousands of missiles to do the same? Perhaps, but only if China believes there is no real threat to it, which, of course, begs the question of why it would feel more threatened by a limited U.S. missile defense system.
The truth is that neither ballistic missiles nor a ballistic missile defense will do much to change the military balance. However, the diplomatic and political shifts in power may be enormous. If the United States builds a limited mobile missile defense system, it will secure its already dominant influence in those parts of the world where regional "rogue states" or "bullies" seek to enhance their power by acquiring destabilizing and relatively inexpensive ballistic missiles. Some of the more developed countries-China, in particular-may respond by building more advanced missiles capable of circumventing U.S. defenses. But this, in turn, is expensive. Although a missile shield is expensive to build, it will raise costs for regional bullies significantly. Consequently, it will exert a stabilizing effect internationally by dissuading bullies from building such weapons in the first place, or at least contain regional situations by convincing the victims not to up the ante through a local arms race. If this comes about at the expense of the political influence of our allies, then so be it.