Missile offense?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if the United States and other countries could defend themselves against nuclear attack by obliterating the warheads rather than the people of an attacking country? Wouldn't it be terrific if India and Pakistan, instead of competing to build and test nuclear weapons, could shield themselves from attack and bypass the expensive and dangerous arms race in which they are engaged? Wouldn't it be spectacular if the world could abandon the current nuclear deterrence policy and the massive and surely immoral destruction of human life that it threatens? That is the simple, hopeful idea lying behind a national missile defense (NMD) system. It is an idea that cannot be dismissed out of hand, and yet as the idea weaves its way through election-year politics in the United States, it seems anything but simple or hopeful; it looks more like Alice's Red Queen playing a shell game in the Land of Oz. Reality keeps slipping away.

At present, the stated reason for pursuing NMD is to protect the United States from nuclear attack by so-called rogue nations. Until the administration softened its language a few weeks ago, these included North Korea, Iran, and Iraq. The argument goes this way: Since the leaders of these countries have proved so pitiless in the treatment of their own people and so apparently self-destructive in their conduct, how can we be confident that they would be deterred from attacking the United States by a threat of massive retaliation?

In fact, the rogue nation or rogue leader problem did not start with these nations, nor is it limited to them. There have always been fears that the rationality on which deterrence depends could break down in an internal or international crisis or with an accidental missile launching. And there have always been the fundamental moral qualms about deterrence itself, which, especially when confronting nations lacking significant military targets, can only rest on a naked intention to devastate cities. This is the rationale for the current plan to devise what is being advertised as a limited, land-based missile defense system that would shoot down attacking weapons in midflight.

Sounds good--except for all of the problems. These are both diplomatic and technical.

The proposed system violates the 1972 ABM Treaty, which does not permit deployment of any territorial missile defense beyond those already protecting Washington and Moscow and one ICBM launch site in each country. Were the United States to build one, it would be a unilateral violation of the ABM Treaty, and would almost certainly derail Russian cooperation on arms reduction, if in fact it wouldn't start a new arms race.

China has denounced the proposed system charging that its 20-ICBM nuclear deterrent would be overwhelmed. Were the United States to proceed, China would likely use NMD as an excuse, if it needs one, for building even more missiles.

Our allies in Europe object to NMD because it leaves them outside the U.S. defensive umbrella. The system's genealogy in the isolationist and ill-fated Strategic Defense Initiative (Star Wars) conjured up by the Reagan administration exacerbates Europe's fear that NMD is only a first step toward an ever more inward-looking American super power.

All of this ill will and suspicion is unfortunate, and it is probably unnecessary since there is no evidence that the land-based system will work and a good deal to suggest that it will not. Enter the alternative of a boost-phase system. In contrast to the land-based system, which would track and shoot down an ICBM on reentry from space, a boost-phase defense would shoot down a missile just after it is launched. Experts claim that this has two technical advantages: it is much easier to hit an ICBM in boost phase, and the missile is destroyed before it is capable of setting off decoys--one test the land-based system has consistently failed.

Pursuit of the boost-phase alternative would require specific amendment of the ABM Treaty. That could happen. Russian President Vladimir Putin recently proposed a joint boost-phase program with the United States that would protect Europe as well. It is gaining supporters across the political spectrum, including former defense advisors from both the Reagan and Clinton administrations. Of course, the boost-phase alternative has its own limitations. The system has only two minutes to shoot down an ICBM after launching, and a sea-based system could not target missiles fired far inland and across land. As a consequence, the Navy acknowledges that it could not assume the entire missile-defense role.

Whether and how to pursue missile defense is probably the most pressing national security issue of the presidential campaign. Vice President Al Gore supports limited NMD, as does President Bill Clinton, because both want to rein in the far larger system that many Republicans favor. Texas Governor George W. Bush supports a boost-phase missile defense system. But to what end? Richard Perle, one of his advisors, sees the boost-phase system as a first step toward a far more extensive sea- and space-based system than is now being proposed. This is likely to trouble the diplomatic waters as thoroughly as the proposed land-based one.

The reaction of our allies and former cold-war foes alike make any unilateral action on the part of the United States highly risky because it will unravel a web of arms-control agreements, practices, and expectations that work. We are poised to overthrow the logic of nuclear deterrence without knowing what, if anything, will replace it. If we are to proceed, there can only be multilateral discussions and agreements that step-by-step allow everyone to defend themselves against nuclear attack without increasing the risk of nuclear war.

The current presidential campaign is one place to air these questions, but more serious venues, where these intricate moral and political issues can be examined, are also needed. The Catholic bishops' conference should consider an encore of the hearings and discussions that led to its 1983 letter on war and peace.