Missile defense: the Administration's defense of the ABM treaty is threatening the defense of the country.

The Administration's defense of the ABM treaty is threatening the defense of the country.

Rep. Hunter, a Republican from the 52nd District of California, is chairman of the House National Security Committee on Military Procurement and co-chairman of the House Missile Defense Caucus.

IN the 1920s, budget cutting and a misunderstanding of new technology combined to cripple the development of military aircraft. Experts argued for the continued invincibility of the battleship. Air-power enthusiast Brig. Gen. William "Billy" Mitchell, in tests conducted between 1921 and 1923, proved them wrong by sinking four battleships, including the German Ostfriesland, which was considered "unsinkable" after surviving heavy shell hits without serious damage at the Battle of Jutland. Yet critics went to great lengths to explain away the tests. Mitchell was even court-martialed in 1925 for protesting too loudly in public about the country's lack of military preparedness. Only when Pearl Harbor was attacked 16 years later (as Mitchell had predicted) did Mitchell's reputation change from that of an eccentric to that of a prophet.

The Aircraft Age has now been succeeded by the Missile Age, and the 1990s debate on missile defense is eerily similar to the debate of Mitchell's day. As in the 1920s, critics of the new technology have tried to discredit evidence of its potential -- most notably, the performance of the Patriot missiles during the Gulf War. The Patriots certainly left much to be desired. However, they were new systems, with only a limited design potential for anti-missile purposes, and even so, they blunted the enemy's attack and did wonders for allied morale. And the technology can be expected to advance. The Patriots are as primitive compared to what is being developed in the Strategic Defense Initia-tive (SDI) as Mitchell's fabric biplanes were to the warplanes that have come since.

SDI, launched by President Reagan in 1983 to protect the U.S. from nuclear-missile attack, was an integral part of the strategy that won the Cold War. Because we are living in the Missile Age, its importance has outlasted that conflict. President Bush recognized this and proposed GPALS (Global Protection Against Limited Strikes) to protect the U.S. homeland, American troops overseas, and supporting allied assets. The system was to incorporate land-based interceptors to defend both distant military theaters and the continental United States. However, the first line of strategic defense was to be composed of one thousand space-based interceptors known as Brilliant Pebbles.

The Clinton Administration promptly scrapped GPALS and all other space-based projects. Both strategic and theater missile-defense programs were cut substantially. National missile-defense efforts are currently limited, in the words of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, to "achieving and maintaining technical readiness . . . to provide the ability to rapidly (within 2 to 4 years) develop and deploy ABM Treaty - compliant ballistic missile defenses . . . given adequate funding." President Clinton's policy, in other words, is to wait until an unambiguous threat materializes before launching a program requiring several years to counter it, and then only within the bounds of an arms-control agreement negotiated over twenty years ago.

Critics of strategic defense argue that the demise of the Soviet Union makes it unnecessary. But hundreds of Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles deployed by the governments of the former USSR are still operational, as are hundreds more submarine-launched missiles. The future of Russia and other former Soviet republics is unclear. Even if stated nuclear-reduction goals are reached, Russia will still possess some 3,500 nuclear warheads in the year 2003.

China poses similar questions for Asia. While China currently has only about a dozen ICBMs, it is building more. New designs include multiple warheads and mobile systems. In addition, China has 70 to 100 intermediate-range missiles and two submarines with 12 missiles each. Cruise missiles are under development. Peking is also exporting technology to Iran and Pakistan.

Some two dozen other countries are working on "weapons of mass destruction" (nuclear, chemical, and/or biological weapons) and over a dozen are developing ballistic missiles to deliver these weapons. The list of missile-armed states includes militant regimes like Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Libya, all of which could acquire usable nuclear weapons by the year 2000. The list also includes such would-be regional hegemons as Brazil and India. In response to the latter, Pakistan is developing its own missiles. Iraq is still trying to protect the core of its programs.

Missiles are cheaper to purchase and operate than modern combat aircraft. And, unlike conventional bombing attacks, missile strikes cannot be intercepted by fighters or standard anti-aircraft weapons. They can overcome the air supremacy that has been enjoyed by the U.S. in every conflict since World War II. Absent an effective defense, even crude weapons can thus be very useful.

This is why ballistic-missile use is on the rise. Egypt, Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Yemen have all used ballistic missiles in combat. Egypt and Syria fired a few, very inaccurate Frog-7 and Scud-B missiles at Israel in the 1973 war. In April 1986, Libya tried, unsuccessfully, to fire a Scud-B at the U.S. base on the Italian island of Lampedusa in retaliation for the American airstrikes sent against the Qaddafi regime the night before. Both Iran and Iraq used Scuds as strategic weapons in their "War of the Cities" in 1987 - 88. The Iraqi missile campaign had a major impact on Iranian morale, not because of the damage inflicted (which was minor) but because of the fear that the missiles might carry chemical warheads.

Recognizing the magnitude of the missile threat to U.S. interests, the House of Representatives has called for the deployment of a National Missile Defense (NMD) system at "the earliest practical date." The Senate has gone further, calling for a fully operational NMD, including space-based sensors ("Brilliant Eyes") by the year 2003, with an interim system of ground-based interceptors deployed by 1999. The House outdoes the Senate, however, on NMD spending: it would spend $822 million next year, in contrast to the Senate's $672-million proposal and the Clinton Administration's $372-million budget request.

President Clinton's National Security Advisor, Anthony Lake, has warned the Congress that Mr. Clinton would veto any bill that would "effectively abrogate" the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. To judge from this veto threat, Clinton would rather defend the treaty than the country. Indeed, the Administration has been discussing with Russia an expansion of the treaty to place technological limits on the development of theater missile-defense systems so that they do not pose a "significant" threat to missiles of intercontinental range. This so-called "demarcation" issue could hamper the effectiveness of U.S. theater defenses by dumbing down their capabilities. Furthermore, the distinction between strategic and theater categories has a large element of arbitrariness. Americans usually equate "strategic" threats with ICBMs because of the distance of our territory from potential adversaries. But South Korea, Japan, Israel, and southern Europe are all within striking distance of enemies armed with short- or intermediate-range ballistic missiles.

THE Clinton Administration has concentrated on arms control and non-proliferation agreements to reduce potential threats. Certainly, the best defense is to prevent new dangers from emerging. But it would be naive to believe that, over the long term, every threat will be so countered before it poses a danger to the United States. And it would take only one uncountered threat to trigger a chain reaction that could collapse the entire non- proliferation regime.

Clinton's commitment to the ABM treaty hinders missile defense. The treaty needs to be reconsidered, not expanded. A bilateral agreement limiting all defensive systems is ill-suited to a world with multilateral threats and dynamic technology. Why should the U.S. make an agreement with Russia to limit its (or its allies') defenses against Iran or North Korea? The Senate, responding to these concerns, has called for a select committee to review the continued value of the ABM treaty. Both Houses of Congress have called for a halt to the ABM demarcation negotiations, and urged that future negotiations with Russia focus on ways to expand the deployment of defensive systems so as to move beyond the Cold War concept of mutual assured destruction.

Lack of missile defense will hamper the foreign policy of Clinton or any other U.S. President. It must now be assumed that any act of aggression that endangers vital U.S. interests sufficiently to call forth a major intervention will involve a missile-armed adversary. Thus the formation of any coalition, the landing of troops, or the establishment of local bases will be conducted under the shadow of missile attack. If Wash-ington and its allies lack any effective means of defense, this threat could be a decisive deterrent to action.

The confrontation with North Korea over its nuclear program presented such a situation. Negotiations were conducted against the backdrop of Pyong-yang's ability to devastate Seoul and perhaps even strike U.S. bases in Japan. Though the Clinton Administration promised overwhelming retaliation, the prospect of such an exchange was less frightening to the Communist regime than to its opponents. The result was a reluctance to back demands on North Korea even with economic sanctions. The focus of talks shifted from eliminating Pyongyang's nuclear capability to "reducing tensions" on the peninsula by promoting economic development and trade. To the extent that the promise to give North Korea two new light-water nuclear reactors (worth $4 billion) looks like a reward to Pyongyang for its military buildup and advanced weapons programs (which, outside of the nuclear field, remain unconstrained), the campaign for arms control and non-proliferation has already been gravely weakened.

It is often said that a continental missile defense would be too costly. Yet the damage and loss of life resulting from even a few of these weapons, if fired at a United States that remained unprotected, would be many orders of magnitude higher than what it would cost to deploy an effective defense. America should not wait for a nuclear version of Pearl Harbor to vindicate the Billy Mitchells of missile defense.