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Why National Missile Defense is a bad idea: An international perspective By
Leon D'souza The Bush administration's national security policy has everyone concerned. Earlier this year, the president called for a missile defense system to help protect the United States and its allies against attacks by so-called "rogue states" with chemical weapons. Bush has spoken of the need for a "new framework that allows us to counter the different threats of today's world." National Missile Defense, in the eyes of the Bush administration, is the new nirvana. For the unapprised, here's how a national missile defense shield is supposed to work. Space-based early warning systems and infrared sensors will detect a missile launched at the United States or its allies. Ground-based radar systems will track the missile, and interceptor rockets will then be launched to destroy it. Sensors will determine the success of the interception. To make missile defense happen, the current administration has said that it will withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. What the president and his cohorts seem to have ignored are the grave consequences that a U.S. missile defense could have for other regions of the world, particularly South Asia. Junking the ABM treaty and proceeding with missile defense will create a security dilemma. Some history. The first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks agreement of 1972 (SALT I) was negotiated in tandem with the ABM treaty as complementary measures. Subsequently, the SALT II agreement and the Strategic Arms Reduction treaties (START I and II) were erected on the SALT I/ABM foundation. Consequently, there exists a comprehensive arms control structure within which the individual treaties governing arms control are interdependent. The ABM treaty is the cornerstone of this security framework. Abolishing the ABM treaty will do severe damage to the global nonproliferation regime and dangerously destabilize the prevailing international security order. International relations specialists warn that an adversary could construe what one state considers indemnity as encirclement. Any state with global interests, such as the United States, cannot avoid being perceived as having the power to menace other states. Following the deployment of a national missile defense, other nations, especially China and Russia, will seek to enhance their own nuclear capabilities. An arms race is the obvious manifestation of this spiral. Missile defense will force China to accelerate the modernization and quantitative expansion of its arsenal, effectively reversing that country's commitment to nuclear arms reduction. NMD will also force changes in China's deployment posture. Some pundits suggest that one of the possible Chinese reactions to a U.S. missile defense could be a joint Chinese-Russian or an independent Chinese decision to develop its own version of a national missile defense system. A move such as this would increase the threat perception in India and challenge the moderates who have thus far prevailed in the domestic nuclear debate. Analyst Gaurav Kampani of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said an Indian government that finds the credibility of its strategic deterrent reduced by Chinese missile defense capability would be less amenable to any form of nuclear arms control. India's nuclear decisions will affect Pakistan's strategic response. For both India and Pakistan, NMD could create pressures to modernize nuclear arsenals through resumption of nuclear testing, thereby getting in the way of efforts to bring the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty into force. Thus, a modernized Chinese nuclear force and more robust posture will set off a detrimental, cascading effect in South Asia. The Chinese question is complicated by the Bush administration's controversial shift in policy on Taiwan. The president indicated earlier this year that the United States would use military force if necessary to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack. The United States and Taiwan are cooperating on the development of a Theater Missile Defense system, which would complement a national missile defense. A chagrined China could interpret this as a violation of the Missile Technology Control Regime and retaliate by resuming missile sales to South Asia and the Middle East. A security dilemma of this nature can not only create conflicts and tensions but also provide the dynamics triggering war. NMD representatively signals an absence of confidence in global nonproliferation norms, institutions and regimes. It will usher in an era of parochialism in international security, shifting the focus from a common global community of security interests to an approach constrained by self-centeredness in which states must rely on their own resources and technical means to deter and fend off threats to national security. This approach is inconsistent with the nature of our world today. In an era of unprecedented interconnectedness and interdependence, the interests of states will be better served if they cooperate with each other. NMD will be a bar to progress on future arms control agreements, which are essential to achieve genuine reductions in still bloated nuclear arsenals. In short, amending the ABM treaty in search of national missile defense, or worse still, pulling out of the accord altogether, will tip the global balance, start a new arms race and put world and regional stability at risk. This is why NMD is a bad idea.
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