The Way to Missile Defense - Dealing with Russia and ourselves.

In its twilight months, the Clinton administration finds itself in a major dilemma. If it wants smooth relations with President Vladimir Putin's Russia, it must leave the 1972 U.S.-Soviet ABM Treaty virtually untouched. But if it wants to mount an effective defense against North Korean, Iraqi, and Iranian weapons of mass destruction, and the ever- longer-range ballistic missiles these nations are developing, huge revisions in the ABM treaty will be required.

Gov. Bush's arms-control statement of May 23 recognizes this dilemma, while Vice President Gore's of May 27 ignores it.

Why has the administration been so slow to deal with this problem? One reason may be that the sharp choice it faces today was masked for several years by a National Intelligence Estimate in late 1995 that badly underestimated the rogue-state ballistic-missile threat. In 1998, the Rumsfeld Commission's report and a dramatic North Korean missile test made it impossible to deny that the impending danger was substantial. To deal with this serious strategic problem, the administration is doing what it does best: triangulate, adopting just enough of its critics' position that it can claim it has accommodated their basic concerns.

TRYING TO HIT SMALL, COLD, FAST BULLETS

The administration plans to begin its missile-defense deployment with 100 land-based interceptors in Alaska, guided by several land-based radars. Later, it may add another 100 interceptors at another site, and a few more radars. The GAO estimates that this will cost around $60 billion. To permit these ground deployments, the ABM Treaty would have to be amended in several important but relatively limited ways. As for sea-based systems, under a Protocol that the administration negotiated in 1997, but that has never been approved by the Senate, defenses on the Navy's Aegis cruisers would be restricted in effectiveness in order to accommodate Russian demands that they not be able to intercept any Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Basically, this is a school-uniform program for national defense: It does almost nothing to deal with the basic problem, but it may at least get the president some credit for trying. But unlike school uniforms, which at least don't undercut the cause of education, this approach to missile defense does undercut its ostensible goal-by impeding our efforts to deal with our growing vulnerability to rogue-state missiles.

It needn't have turned out this way. In early 1993, the administration could have chosen to continue some promising negotiations-the Ross- Mamedov talks-which were, at that point, only one year old. These negotiations had been sparked by President Boris Yeltsin's two remarkable speeches in January 1992, in which he offered to cooperate with the U.S. on missile defense.

What Yeltsin proposed was "a global system for protection of the world community." For this, a major revision-or even replacement-of the ABM Treaty would have been required. Negotiators were beginning to discuss an approach that would leave research and development unconstrained, deploy over 1,000 interceptors at multiple sites, and place a time limit on the duration of the ABM Treaty, to allow future deployment of space-based interceptors. But the new Clinton administration canceled the talks and took the position that the ABM Treaty was "the cornerstone of strategic stability" between the U.S. and Russia.

That was seven years ago, and that mistake planted the seeds of our current dilemma. Now, in the face of the newly acknowledged rogue-state threat, the administration-because it believes it must minimize the need to amend the ABM Treaty-has chosen the more difficult and expensive of two basic ways to intercept attacking ballistic missiles.

Early in its trajectory, a ballistic missile is large, hot (because the rocket engine is still burning-i.e., in "boost phase"), and relatively slow. For an ICBM with an approximate range of 6,000 miles, which takes around 30 minutes to reach its farthest target, this boost phase lasts about five minutes-until the missile is approximately 300 miles above the earth and 500 miles or so downrange. But when the boost phase ends and only the warhead is left, the remaining package is small, cold (hence hard for infra-red sensors to see), and fast-a much more difficult target. At this later stage, the target is traveling several miles a second. By this point, the customary analogy of "trying to hit a bullet with a bullet" is apt. This is what the administration's system must do-flawlessly.

To make matters worse, even relatively primitive decoys or multiple warheads can, after boost phase, bedevil a defensive system. For example, as many critics of the administration's approach have pointed out, it would be a simple thing for a rogue state to design an ICBM to release a number of small containers of biological agents immediately after boost phase. The administration's system would be worthless against this technologically simple threat, because it wouldn't have enough radar capability to find these small, cold, fast targets; or sufficient defensive missiles to intercept them even if it could find them.

Other countermeasures, too, could be used to confuse defenses and hide nuclear or biological weapons among decoys. The national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, Robert Walpole, told Congress in February that Russia and China "probably are willing" to sell some countermeasure technologies to rogue states, and that North Korea, Iran, and Iraq "could develop countermeasures" based on "readily available technology" and do so "by the time they flight-test their missiles."

It is not just actions by an enemy that limit the effectiveness of this system. The administration has purposely designed vulnerabilities into its own system in order to assure the Russians that they can penetrate it with ease. In late April, the De fense Department briefed Russian foreign minister Ivanov and accompanying military experts in the Pentagon's most secure high-level conference room ("the tank") on why the system's radars would be inherently limited to handling only a few targets, and on our consequent inability to expand capability by adding interceptors.

There must have been smiles in Pyongyang and Baghdad as their ballistic-missile designers read press reports of that meeting. These serious technical problems-some inherent in a bullet-versus-bullet system, some built in to help ease the Russians' minds-have meant that the administration has not only found its system criticized by detractors of the ABM Treaty, but also by supporters such as Sen. Joseph Biden and scientist Richard Garwin. As Biden wrote in the Wall Street Journal in late April: "If we do deploy a system, I would favor ascent-phase interceptors that could be located either at fixed sites or on ships near the countries that pose the threat." Garwin has advocated defending against rogue-state ICBMs with similar earth-based boost-phase intercept defenses.

Intellectually honest ABM Treaty supporters such as Biden and Garwin understand the fundamental problem with the administration's system, and they see the superiority of boost-phase intercept. The administration and its supporters, on the other hand, consistently ignore two essential facts: 1) that the earth is round, and 2) that, as a consequence, land-based defensive systems in the U.S. cannot target attacking missiles from rogue states when they are large, hot, and slow, but rather must wait until the warheads have come over the horizon. By then, of course, they are small, cold, and fast-and may also be masked by decoys, multiplied, and dispersed.

RUSSIA'S TEMPTATIONS: CHINA AND SCHADENFREUDE

If the administration's system will be this ineffective, why shouldn't the Russians welcome our wasting $60 billion on it? There are probably two reasons: their budding romance with China, and a bitter desire to see the U.S. fail at something-in a word, Schadenfreude.

The Russians' first motive was brought home to me this spring in a discussion with a senior general in the Russian ministry of defense. I tried out on him various possible approaches toward limited U.S. defensive deployments-the administration's, Garwin's, etc.-but he continually returned to his first concern: China. It has become a tenet of Russian military thinking over the last few years that Russia must hold the world's only superpower in check, and that a quasi-alliance with China gives them the best chance to do this. Consequently, any U.S. defensive deployment is anathema to some in the Russian military if it might be effective, even if for only a few years, against a small Chinese ICBM force.

The second point is best illustrated by an old Russian joke: A destitute peasant comes across a bear who has fallen into a pit. As he is about to shoot it, the bear speaks, says that he has magical powers, and that if the peasant will spare him, he will grant him one, but only one, wish. The poor peasant gazes into the distance at his own dilapidated shack and hungry children, and then at his neighbor's prosperous little farm. The prosperity, he knows, is entirely the result of the neighbor's having been able to buy a cow. So the poor peasant decides on his one wish: "Let his cow be dead-a simple thing, but pleasant." For some embittered Russians, it is more important to deny something-security from ballistic-missile attack-to the lucky and prosperous Americans than to obtain it for themselves.

THE ABM TREATY AS COLD-WAR ANTIQUE

That's why the Russians are prone to ABM Treaty nostalgia. What's our excuse?

At the time it was negotiated, the ABM Treaty had some strategic utility for the U.S. Any defense against Soviet ICBMs from sites in America faced all of the aforementioned problems of trying to intercept small, cold, fast bullets, while more capable defensive systems were little more than gleams in the eyes of a few visionaries. The Soviets had a huge nationwide deployment of antiaircraft surface-to-air missiles (SAMs) and associated radars that some of our analysts feared could also be given some capability to defend against our ballistic missiles. Importantly, the Soviets also had a substantial advantage in large, land-based ICBMs. Many of us felt then that these might be able to destroy the U.S. Minuteman ICBM force, and many of our bombers as well, by carrying enough large warheads to compensate with numbers and size for their relative lack of accuracy.

Although few of us worried much about an actual Soviet bolt-from-the- blue attack against Minuteman and the bombers, we were concerned about our European allies' confidence in us in the event of a serious crisis, e.g., over Berlin. The Europeans would already be facing massive Soviet land forces, and they would know of the Soviet threat to our ICBMs and bombers.

If they also saw a large deployment of Soviet ballistic- missile defenses that could intercept a sizeable share of any retaliatory strike from our Polaris and Poseidon submarines (this was in pre- Trident days), we might have had cause for worry about their steadfastness. All this might also have served to embolden Soviet leaders and cause them to make misjudgments. Moreover, the Nixon administration was having a very difficult time getting Congress to back even modest ABM deployments, scaled back to defend only some of the Minuteman fields. In these circumstances, many of us thought in 1972 that the treaty was reasonable. We stopped the possible Soviet deployment of large-scale ballistic-missile defenses, thus protecting our ability to retaliate after a Soviet first strike, and we did so by trading something that Congress wasn't about to approve anyway: a nationwide defense. (In 1972, however, Americans rarely praised our own resulting vulnerability. The "mutual" aspect of "mutual assured destruction" was thought to be a price we had to pay, not a benefit.)

Clearly, the world into which the ABM Treaty was born has vanished. The centerpiece of our nuclear deterrent is at sea, in the Trident submarines. There are no Russian land armies 100 miles from the Rhine; indeed, there aren't really any effective Russian land armies anywhere at all. The only crisis in Berlin is over real-estate prices. We have no need to keep the Russians from deploying ballistic-missile defense; indeed, we might very well have reason to help them do so. Europe may feel decoupled from the U.S., but that has to do with genetically modified foods and banana tariffs, not Russian strategic superiority.

It is objected that even though today's circumstances are different, in the absence of an ABM Treaty the Russians will build more offensive missiles to penetrate any defenses that we build, and that this will foster a new arms race. But let's look at the reality. Assume for a moment that the 1972 treaty is no longer in place and that the Russians, to counter American ABM deployments, begin to add to their numbers of missiles and warheads. Suppose they also withdraw from the START II Treaty they have just ratified, and refuse to continue with START III.

Let's assume all this. So what? The reason we pursued the START treaties to limit strategic-offensive launchers and, indirectly, warhead numbers is not that we worshiped numerology or thought it was inherently more dangerous to us for the Soviets to have, say, 10,000 strategic warheads instead of 5,000. The point all along was to protect our ICBMs, by limiting the Soviets' ability to attack each Minuteman with several warheads. We were trying to reduce the likelihood of Soviet generals thinking that they could succeed with a first strike against the heart of our deterrent. Today, it is much more important that custody and control of Russian nuclear weapons and material be handled properly than that Russian troops might be guarding more or fewer missiles.

The Russian strategic problem today is poverty. The reason they want to move beyond START II, with warhead ceilings of 3,000 -3,500, to START III, with ceilings of 2,000 -2,500 (the Russians would prefer 1,500), is that they can't afford to replace enough of their aging missiles and warheads to reach the START II levels. Their poverty has produced, especially among their military, a severe case of missile envy-they simply don't want us to have more warheads than they do. They crave equality, on the cheap.

The Clinton administration thwarted Yeltsin's 1992 effort to obtain strategic equality between our countries otherwise-through U.S.-Russian cooperation on ballistic- missile defenses. The next president will be in a position to try to recapture the spirit of 1992.

A NEW BASIS FOR U.S.-RUSSIAN RELATIONS

While the 1992 approach would be very promising, it cannot now be pursued, if it ever could, through amendments to the ABM Treaty. This is because the administration and the Russians have, in effect, made the treaty unamendable. When it ratified the START II Treaty this April, the Russian Duma attached to it a Protocol to the ABM Treaty- negotiated in 1997, at the Clinton administration's insistence-that makes Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan the four ABM Treaty successors to the USSR. Thus, the administration and the Russians have now joined forces against the U.S. Senate: If the Senate wants the Russian missile cuts under START II to take place, it must agree to make all four of these states the new parties to the ABM Treaty. Since the execrable Luk ashenko regime in Belarus is the corrupt partner of the most unreconstructed parts of the old Soviet military- industrial complex, it (and they) would have a veto over any ABM Treaty amendments.

Before this power play took place, the ABM Treaty succession issue was essentially one of U.S. constitutional law, and it was one in which the Senate had an excellent case: that neither Russia alone nor Russia plus the other three states could become the ABM Treaty successor(s) to the USSR unless the Senate so approved by a two-thirds vote. It has been clear for well over a century that any "substantive" change to a bilateral treaty of this sort requires Senate approval-and substituting either Russia or all four new parties for the USSR is most definitely substantive. But the legal issues are now largely moot. The Senate must either buy the package of the four ABM Treaty successor states and Russia's START II cuts, or forgo both.

In my view, the Senate should opt for the latter. We should invest a great deal of effort in trying to preserve a cordial working relationship with Russia-without the ABM Treaty. One extremely important objective should be to continue to help the Russians place their fissionable material under secure control, through the Nunn-Lugar program. We also need to help prevent other dangerous military capabilities and know-how from being transferred to rogue states. Anti- terrorist steps, cooperation against crime and corruption, debt management, promoting outside investment:There is an important agenda.

But there is one area where we, and only we, can help the Russians regain something that is vital to them: their national pride. They desperately want to be regarded as retaining at least a share of the former Soviet Union's superpower status, and our history of arms- control negotiations creates an understandable expectation on their part that we will consult with them about strategic programs. The key question is, How might the new president both defend the country effectively against rogue-state threats and still let Russia maintain a sense of strategic equality?

A PACKAGE RUSSIA SHOULDN'T REFUSE

Our principal concern is not really a bolt out of the blue fired by a North Korean or Iraqi madman, but nuclear blackmail. Much of the importance of ballistic-missile defense is that it can take away the tool that a Kim Jong Il or a Saddam Hussein could use to threaten us or our allies, and thus check our ability to prevent rogue states' aggression against their neighbors.

We therefore have to be certain that a rogue state would know that our defenses could be used in times of political tension. For this reason, localizing a deployment of boost-phase interceptors by putting them on land or aircraft near the rogue state is not a sound approach over the long run, since we can't be sure that we can maintain such deployments in all places where they might be needed. The U.S. is developing an aircraft-carried laser for boost-phase intercept of ballistic missiles on a battlefield such as that in the Gulf War, and it may well be quite useful in that context. But the basing requirements and the areas over which the big laser-carrying aircraft would need to fly on a day-to-day basis, such as Central Asia, severely limit their potential to deal with rogue-state threats in many potential crises. Basing boost-phase interceptors on the ground-even in Turkey, much less Russia-would create uncertainties about whether we would be able to use them when needed. The degree to which the space station is now bogged down owing to our dependence on Russia for key components may be instructive in this regard. A sea-based interceptor might be fine to deal with North Korea, but if you want to see an American naval officer collapse with laughter, talk to him about operating in the Caspian Sea.

One is thus driven to consider basing boost-phase defenses in space. Although it was precisely the possibility of space-based lasers or other directed-energy weapons that drew the derisory label "Star Wars" following President Reagan's famous March 1983 speech, there has been on the drawing boards for some time a considerably less exotic version of space-based boost-phase intercept: kinetic-energy interceptors. These would be very small satellites placed in low earth orbit and equipped with enough fuel that they could move into the path of a ballistic missile in boost phase as it rises, when the missile is big, hot, and slow. The collision would destroy the missile.

These small satellite-interceptors were termed "Burros" by one of their inventors, Los Alamos physicist Greg Canavan, because they were to perform only one task dependably, and were not to have sophisticated electronics on board. Burros were designed to defeat most missiles of more than a few hundred miles in range as well as their countermeasures (but not, let it be noted, advanced Soviet missiles). A more ambitious version of this small satellite-interceptor program, termed "Brilliant Pebbles," designed to deal with advanced Soviet threats such as ICBMs with shortened boost phases, was receiving major emphasis by the end of the Bush administration.

The Clinton administration canceled all work on any small satellite- interceptor programs as soon as it came into office, but there has been progress anyway. In recent years, the development of commercial launch systems to deploy low-earth-orbit satellites, and improvements in micro- electronics, have been sufficiently dramatic that, if a Burro program were started, such a system could probably be deployed without the need to invent much technology. The technology of launching many small satellites into precise low earth orbits with one launch vehicle has been perfected over the last decade by several American communications companies such as Iridium and Teledesic.

A defense system such as Burros would have some major advantages in relations with our allies. One problem with the administration's current land-based defense system is that some allies see it as an expression of a Fortress America mentality, since it would protect us but no one else. Burros, on the other hand, could intercept in boost phase any ballistic missile of more than a few hundred miles in range, as long the missile were launched within latitudes over which the small satellites were passing.

The same system that was protecting the U.S. could thus deal with threats to Europe from the Mideast, or threats to Japan from North Korea: no Fortress America.

In addition, the fact that this type of space-based system can be localized-designed to cover only part of the globe-leaves open the possibility of an agreement with Russia.

Since the small satellites would be in low earth orbits, they would be continually circumnavigating the earth with their maximum distance above and below the equator determined by the inclination of their orbits. A Burro in an orbit designed to cover the northern tip of North Korea, for example, about 43 degrees north, would not pass over any part of the globe north of that line (nor any part south of 43 degrees south), and could not be diverted to perform interceptions substantially north of it either.

Virtually all of Russia lies north of 43 degrees north, and the areas where its ICBMs and submarines are deployed are generally well north of that. All other countries against which we are likely to want to deploy defenses lie south of 43 degrees north, except for portions of China that extend north another ten degrees.

These facts raise some interesting possibilities. In a recent issue of Naval Institute Proceedings, veteran strategist Leon Sloss and his coauthor, Benson Adams, have proposed replacing the 1972 treaty with a new U.S.-Russian "ABM Reassurance Treaty" having essentially only one component: that the two countries agree not to deploy ballistic-missile defenses against each other. There would be exchanges of information and a joint U.S.-Russian early-warning center, but sensors, R&D, and deployments against third parties would all be unconstrained.

Combining this proposal with Canavan's ideas, the following package might be possible: We could propose to the Russians, under a new ABM Reassurance Treaty, that we would not deploy space-based kinetic interceptors north of some selected latitude. They would also agree not to deploy defenses against us. The limitations on Russia would perhaps have to do with radar locations and orientations, or with a similar limitation on satellite orbits.

As part of this package, we could offer some employment to the Russian military-industrial complex; for example, we could launch some of the satellites on Russian boosters. We could also offer to help Russia with its own defenses, e.g., against threats from the Mideast. It is very much in our interest that Russian early-warning systems operate reliably and don't mistake some other country's attack, much less the launch of an innocent Norwegian research rocket (as once temporarily occurred), as an American attack. Indeed, if Russian leaders wanted it as an interim measure before their own defenses were deployed, we could use Burros to protect Russia, since our system would cover launches from virtually any nation that might be a threat to it.

We could also agree, as part of an overall package, to be flexible about some aspects of Russian offensive-missile deployments under START. The Trident ballistic-missile submarines are now the heart of our deterrent, and multiple-warhead ICBMs do Russia no good against Trident. With Trident, and in the absence of Russian conventional-force dominance in Europe-the situation that drove our concern about Minuteman survivability during the Cold War-we do not need to be overly concerned about a Russian bolt-from-the-blue attack on Minuteman. If we look at our real strategic interests in the post-Cold War world, we have flexibility on such matters as offensive-force configuration and numbers.

Suppose Russia agreed to such a package, and we signed a new ABM Reassurance Treaty-and Russia subsequently turned totalitarian and hostile. We would still have the ability to withdraw from the treaty under the standard provision permitting withdrawal if an "extraordinary event" jeopardizes a nation's "supreme interest." We could then move to more effective boost-phase defenses, such as Brilliant Pebbles or directed-energy weapons, in order to be able to defend ourselves against Russia as well as rogue states.

In the meantime, we would want to continue the current plans to deploy theater missile defenses, particularly on Aegis ships. These should not be limited by the demarcation agreement the administration negotiated with the Russians in 1997, which has never been approved by the Senate. If the program were given high priority, Aegis missile defense could become available before Burros, because a number of Aegis air-defense ships are already at sea. Aegis might, for a time, defend the U.S. against early- generation rogue-state ICBMs, principally North Korean, as well as protect our forces and allies overseas.

As for Mr. Putin, he will need to decide where Russia's interests lie. He cannot both help Chinese missiles obtain free passage across the Pacific and accommodate our need to protect ourselves from the likes of North Korea and Iraq. For our part, we owe China nothing on this point. We have no moral, political, or any other reason to make life easy for Chinese missileers. China is simply seeking a free ride across the Pacific for its ballistic missiles, on the back of an old U.S.-Soviet treaty. How do you say chutzpah in Mandarin?

If we deployed space-based defenses of any kind, China would, of course, threaten to build more ballistic missiles. But this would be a costly race for them, and one from which, in all probability, they would rapidly turn away-because we could add Burros much more cheaply than they could add missiles. This point applies to rogue nations as well. Critics of ballistic-missile defense are fond of claiming that if we defend ourselves, other countries will just be encouraged to build more offensive missiles to overwhelm the defenses.

The administration's easily defeated system is indeed subject to exactly that objection. But if defenses are relatively cheap and highly effective, the incentives are reversed. Today, every two-bit rogue is moving sharply to build up his ballistic-missile force because he can be assured that nothing will interfere with such missiles in reaching their targets. Once launched, they are invulnerable. Hence, they are very valuable. Effective defenses, however, would discourage, not encourage, investment in offensive missiles.

Mr. Putin's other major concern would be that such a deployment by the U.S. obviously puts us in a position to decide who else in the world gets to launch ballistic missiles, including space-launch vehicles. Even when Britain ruled the waves in the 19th century after its victory over Napoleon, the Royal Navy did not have the capability to sail back and forth in front of all the world's ports and decide who did and did not get to use the seas. Yet a space-based kinetic-intercept system would give us a capacity akin to that-the ability to limit others' access to space. And Russian leaders would know that we could maintain the ability to launch enough small satellites in relatively short order to cover northern latitudes as well, if we were to withdraw from the treaty.

There is just no avoiding the fact that for the next president to defend the country effectively, he will need to decide that this is his first priority, and that matters such as avoiding other nations' envy come further down the list. He will have to decide that he is first and foremost, in political scientist Walter Russell Mead's terms, a Jacksonian (ensuring that we can defend ourselves with complete effectiveness), and only secondarily a Wilsonian (working toward an ideal international legal regime). A Jacksonian would say, in short, that as strategic circumstances change, so must strategy-and arms- control agreements must conform to strategy, not the other way around. After eight years of a president more Wilsonian than Wilson himself, this would be a substantial change.

Would Mr. Putin eventually-in spite of the above concerns-buy this package? He would have to choose. Option A: unique treatment as a superpower in a new treaty- guaranteed relationship with us-one in which we do not defend against Russian missiles; investment from the West; being welcomed into the Western family of nations; and protection of Russia's territory from ballistic-missile attack by other states. Option B: quasi-alliance with China; cool relations with us, across the board; and the risk that the new U.S. president and Congress will refuse to accept any Clinton administration-Russian changes to the ABM Treaty, and simply go ahead and deploy what defenses they want against Russia as well as rogue states.

In defending our country, the next American president has plenty of cards to play, if he will but play them.