S.
257 was reported favorably from the Armed Services Committee and
soon will come before the full Senate, which twice last year
rejected a motion to allow debate and a vote on an identical
measure, also co-sponsored by Senators Cochran and Inouye. The
motion failed by a single vote each time. As a result, the American
people were denied the chance to consider, through their elected
representatives, a simple but profoundly important question: Shall
Americans be protected from ballistic missiles as soon as
technology permits, or shall they remain vulnerable to the dire and
growing threat of weapons of mass destruction delivered by
long-range missiles?
Why Bring It Up
Again?
Critics of a national missile defense (NMD) suggest that it is
pointless to bring up the unsuccessful measure once again. However,
the current Senate includes new members who may view the issue
differently. Moreover, awareness of the danger of ballistic missile
has increased. In July 1998, the bipartisan (Rumsfeld) Commission
to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, which
included members known for their opposition to national missile
defense, found unanimously that the U.S. could face a missile
threat from a hostile state with little or no warning.
Underscoring these findings, both Iran and
North Korea tested new-generation missiles within weeks of the
release of the Commission's report. Many former skeptics in
Congress and the defense community have now begun to think
seriously about the NMD option. S. 257 does not look at
contentious, ancillary issues like mandating a system
"architecture" or establishing a funding level. Debate on the
measure would focus only on the fundamental policy choice.
What
S. 257 Can Achieve. Some critics say a mere policy decision is
unnecessary and superfluous. If that were true, there would seem to
be no objection to allowing it to come to a vote. But a clear and
powerful policy statement of this nature could have a number of
positive effects. It would send a message to:
-
Rogue regimes and
dictators.
Hostile states which are assiduously building long-range missiles
and weapons of mass destruction will see their efforts in danger of
being "trumped." If America deploys a missile defense, rogue states
will not be able to use these weapons to attack or blackmail the
U.S. with any assurance of success. Missile protection for America
may convince such regimes that they would do better--in the case of
North Korea, for example--to spend scarce resources on feeding
their starving people rather than on weapons of war whose utility
has been diminished.
-
The U.S. defense
industry.
America's engineers, scientists, and technologists will see that
their NMD efforts are not in vain. Companies will be more confident
about allocating resources and assigning their best people to the
NMD mission without fear of the investment's being wasted.
-
America's
allies.
They will be more confident of America's reliability if the U.S.
ends its vulnerability to coercion from rogue states. Allies under
attack need not fear that an adversary's threat of missile strikes
on the U.S. homeland will deter America from coming to their
aid.
-
The American
people.
They will observe their government--finally--deciding to fulfill
its number one moral and constitutional obligation: "to provide for
the common defense."
Finally, an unambiguous policy mandate
like that in S. 257 will give meaning, purpose, and direction to
subsequent congressional action on missile defense--for example,
the fiscal year 2000 defense authorization and appropriation bills.
An NMD policy decision will guide decisions on funding, program
priorities, and timetables. Until there is a clear policy that
demonstrates a genuine commitment to NMD, Pentagon programs to
protect Americans will continue to languish.
The Clinton Administration
Alternative.
In contrast to the sensible policy embodied in the Cochran-Inouye
missile defense bill, the Clinton Administration continues its
posture of inaction on NMD while obfuscating the fundamental choice
facing the nation. In a February 3 letter to Senator Carl Levin
(D-MI), the ranking Democratic member of the Armed Services
Committee, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Samuel L.
Berger, wrote: "[If] S.257 were presented to the President in its
present form, his senior national security advisors would recommend
that the bill be vetoed."
The
Clinton alternative to national missile defense is to continue to
adhere to the now irrelevant Cold War paradigm of arms control with
Russia. Berger's letter pledges fealty to the ABM treaty, which
makes utter vulnerability the law of the land and which the
Administration stubbornly insists is the "cornerstone of strategic
stability." But treaties are meant to serve, not degrade, national
security, and the ABM treaty--created for another purpose in
another era--cannot continue to stand in the way of America's
self-defense.
Conclusion. The Senate has an historic
opportunity to mandate a common-sense and much-needed policy to
defend the nation against the most destructive weapons in the world
today. It would be a lamentable failure of leadership and public
duty to fail to do so in order to preserve a treaty that died with
the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to indulge specious and
outmoded notions of arms control with Russia while China, North
Korea, Iran, Iraq, and a host of other potentially hostile states
build or perfect weapons that can destroy the lives of millions of
Americans.
Thomas Moore is the former Director of the
Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis International Studies Center at The
Heritage Foundation.