ITR:
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My point on China and the other nations was to point out that their reaction shows the idea of a missile defense shield isn’t ludicrous. If it was, it wouldn’t prompt an international arms race, as they wouldn’t have to pay attention to it. Right?
Even if it does work…it’s scary.
Is anyone else concerned with the idea of the United States being able to make attacks but not be vulnerable to one? Imagine…we could have just nuked Iraq! Hours of fun!
If we are truely interested in the peace of the world we declassify all the research regarding missile defense and distribute it to everyone we can.
Given the hypothesis that the Chinese are technologically less sophisticated than the United states (as in, “That downed US spy plane is a big technological jackpot for China!”), why are you suddenly so willing to accept them as being credible experts in orbital missile defense systems, which is much more complex?
As Joe McCarthy taught us, paranoia means you follow through on any perceived threat, regardless of whether or not it’s feasible.
Are the chinese necessarily going to be more rational about accessing the effectiveness of a missile defense system than we are ? If not, they might pay attention to it regardless of ludicrous it is.
It’d be nice to see an actual functioning Patriot type system shoot down a Scud or two before we back out of the ABM treaty, much less build a space based system that would force withdrawal from the 1967 outer space treaty.
It’s rather difficult to type and suppress the desire to indulge in some good ol’ Republican bashing. But I’ll try to discuss this stupid idea as though it merits reasonable analysis. Let’s pretend!
We discover the rice wine vinegar laser before anybody else. Naturally, we gloat in public over our triumph, and start in building our impervious shield. Two years from right now, we will be immune to missile attack. Goody!
Which means that anyone who wishes us ill has two years to do it. A window of opportunity, if you will.
Luckily for them, the whole idea is triple dumb. Can you knock down a bullet with another bullet? Can you keep a flashlight trained on a bullet in flight? Of course not. Anyone who seriously proposes to spend our money on such a proposals is either fool or knave.
The fact that is mostly a Republican program is merely a coincidence.
The NMD will not have the capability to make the US invulnerable from missile attack, it will just offer some protection against extremely small numbers of missiles.
And since Iraq has no nuclear capability yet, we could have just nuked them if we had wanted too. It wasn’t deterrence that stopped us from doing this but other factors.
Not quite. The point made repeatedly by opponents of SDI/NMD/what-have-you is that even if a somewhat effective system is deployed, it would be straightforward to counter.
China currently has about 20 ICBMs according to the Sat or Sun NYT. (The US has, what, 2000?). Should the US establish a missile defense system, China would presumably vastly increase its ICBM stash in order to preserve its deterent value.
India is unlikely to sit by passively when China steps up its arms. Presumably they will respond by building more nukes. Pakistan will respond in kind to India. Thus NMD could pretty easily spark a regional (nuclear) arms race.
Without, in the end, substantially increasing US national security, I might add. Quite the opposite. In the 1960s it was thought that there would be about 20 nuclear powers by now. That there are not has a lot to do with international arms control/anti-proliferation efforts.
As China is mostly interested in building their economy, they greatly prefer the no-NMD/no regional arms race scenerio. As should we.
Good observation: for deterence to work, your enemy has to be rational or at least care a little about the well-being of its citizens. So it’s better to face Brezhnev than Stalin.
But if you want to defend yourself against a couple of nukes, SDI/NMD isn’t going to cut it, given that Iraq or Libya could always take the suitcase bomb route. That implies that the best way to defend the West against a nuclear lunatic is to deny that lunatic access to nukes in the first place. And that means that we should advance a non-proliferation agenda, one that would almost certainly require the cooperation of China and Russia.
I’ll take Brezhnev any time. S I take your point (and whole-heartedly agree) that denial of nuclear technology is the ideal route but unfortunately that’s been slipping lately. India and Pakistan have both demo’ed a nuke and North Korea surely has it in mind. Even one of the Indian/Pakistani “truck-sized” nukes could be shipped to New York harbor and detonated. Frankly I can’t think of much defense against this. On the up-side, this is a calculated attack, with various points at which it could be stopped. This might be initiated in a fit of rage by someone but there would be time for cooler heads to prevail or for the shipment to be intercepted.
The debate on NMD occasionally seems purposeless. An NMD is NEVER going to be 100% effective against the Russian nuclear arsenal and probably not the Chinese either. Both are technologically sophisticated and have enough missiles to throw that some will get through regardless. Both sides know this. We’re still stuck with the calculation of how many cities we’re willing to trade for a first strike when even one is way too many. The idea that NMD allows the US a first-strike capability against either of those countries is simply not true and seems to be the old, cold-war point of view. “We obliterated his country while he only killed half of OUR cities so we won.”
As an aside, the debate keeps wandering into how NMD could be designed to defend against the Russians/Chinese and I consider this somewhat of a straw man. Decoy missiles, MIRVed warheads, evasive maneuvers, etc. are WAY outside the capabilities of those nations an NMD would be effective against. As I understand it, the purpose of the NMD was to be insurance against smaller nations that would probably have only a few nuclear-armed missiles. If it’s used for that it could be made to work.
Best regards.
Testy.
No. Even if the Chinese didn’t think the system had any serious chance of working they would still react. Employing defensive weapons indicates a rejection of the logic of security through massive retaliation. MAD is mutual security. Trying to develop missile defence signals that you think you can pursue national security at the expensive of other countries (either because you think missile defence will work or because those other countries pose no threat to you).
So regardless of whether they think the system will work or is almost certain not to, the Chinese are very likely to respond to this signal of a major shift in strategy.
A few observations:
On “madness” of foreign leaders. This sort of talk is often bandied about without much reflection. I’ve long felt it mostly serves to justify stereotypes without further effort to figure out where the enemy is coming from. To the kneejerk, that does not mean accepting the other side’s POV, but getting an understanding of how they will react given their own framework of understanding. Stalin it may be noted took a very rational, from his POV and national interests, course of action. More aggressive than Brezhnev but on the other hand he did not provoke direct confrontations.
On the missile defense system. As noted here, we have a problem with consistency. Promoted as a defense against “rogue” or wild actions by a state or perhaps some faction which has gotten its hand on a ballastic missile, we find numerous issues in re this justification.
(a) diplomatically this is regarded as a treaty buster and another example of US disregard for multilateral solutions. Just the perception that lost the human rights seat. Quick rollout without addressing diplomatic issues, or rather without addressing them properly will simply contribute to an unnecessary degrading of US diplomatic standing, making achieving policy goals across the board that much more difficult.
(b) in terms of the threat addressed there appear to be several issues:
(i) actual threat - ballastic missiles are not simple affairs. To my knowledge no nations outside of the traditional club possess the capacity of hitting any major US population center. As such the vision of a madhatter North Korea or the like lobbing missiles at the USA in the immediate future is unlikely. The same goes for “terrorists” who are unlikely to possess the technical and institutional resources to be able to muster a ballastic missile launch, as opposed to some other, non-missile delivery
(ii) effectiveness of current technology in re stopping wildcat launch.
(iii) perception of old nuclear club members of same system as threat to their interests, thus a US move against them, dressed up in other clothes of course.
Given those facts, while it seems prudent and good policy to continue to research and develop systems, it seems rather premature and counter real interests to rush a roll out of systems that are
(a) unlikely to address actual threats extent
(b) likely to unnecessarily antagonize old nuclear club members and undermine an otherwise wel-functioning system of deterence
© likely to be unnecessarily expensive given current state of technology and development.
Hasty and premature decisions based on non-rational analysis is the ticket to waste and undermining actual national interests.
elucidator:
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Sounds pretty fantastic. But according to an Associated Press article that ran in papers Sunday, the idea that researchers believe has the most promise involves an air-based laser. The idea is, specially equipped U.S. planes flying in international airspace (like the South China Sea – here we go again) would have the capability to knock down missiles being launched from a country as they were in their boosting, pre-rocket-separation phase, when they are slower and more vulnerable.
The article concedes that getting such a laser to work at 40,000 feet is proving troublesome. But as I said earlier, what that’s possible to do haven’t we eventually been able to accomplish?
I want to talk about MAD for a minute. Is there ever a realistic way to get out from under it?
ITR Champion in response to a passage from the WSJ opinion column, said this:
MAD stops working the instant your enemy is assured you don’t have the resolve to murder millions of innocents in a second strike. If your assertion is, “Oh, we can say we would do it, but having the capability assures us that we will never really have to,” I’d suggest you study the Cuban Missile Crisis and a few other tense moments in our Cold War history.
The idea that people wouldn’t attack because of our MAD capability could go out the window with a particularly fervent and radical Muslim or other religious sect viewing us as some Great Satan and themselves as receiving eternal heavenly reward for wiping us out. Suicide bombing on a huge scale, if you will.
As the WSJ editorial says, that tit-for-tat is a morally ambiguous position at best. At some point I’d like to think we as a planet will evolve past it. But complicating matters is a nearly broke Russia selling superpower military techology to any terrorist or rogue nation stopping by with enough money.
Back to a point Attrayant made a while back, about why isn’t this just a “black op,” where we build it and don’t talk about it? A similar question I have: Why doesn’t the U.S. say it is working on a missile defense designed to knock down a few missiles from a terrorist attack, even if they are working on a system that would be capable of much more than that?
I suppose the level of surveillance we all have on one another, combined with understanding the evidence, would make both impossible, and would tend to make a China even angrier. As in, “We can prove that the U.S. is lying,” or “Look at what the U.S. is up to, secretly …”
rjung:
Oh, I don’t know – because of the technology and know-how Clinton and large contributors to his campaign sold to them, perhaps?
(Start paying particular attention around 1996 on the timeline.)
And typically you don’t want other countries to know how you’re spying on them. Spies are sneaky like that. So yeah, capturing one of our surveillance planes was rather a boon for the Chinese. If you don’t understand that, can’t help ya.
You’re still trying to have it both ways – either the Chinese are technologically behind (in which case we reuse all that hand-wringing from the spy plane incident) or the Chinese are technologically saavy (in which case we have to build a NMD before they do it first). If you’re trying to say that a NMD/SDI system is technologically feasible because the Chinese are afraid of it (and implying along the way that they know something we don’t), then your argument is undercut by the spy plane hand-wringing from last month (along with assorted earlier dismissals of China being a technological backwater). As they say on the multiple-choice exams, “Choose one answer”.
And as I said earlier, while I do believe a working and reliable NMD system can be developed eventually, I don’t see it happening any time in the near future. Using the paranoia of the PRC as some sort of supporting argument is questionable at best.
rjung -
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Is someone doing that?
If you have some information that the proposed missile defense is designed with China specifically in mind, you have information to which I am not privy. That China has been used as an example in some scenarios of discussion here doesn’t equal: “This system is being designed to keep the evil Chinese from nuking us.”
And if it is your contention that the U.S. should not approach China with concern, given its sabre-rattling both regionally and with the U.S., I’ll wonder about where your head was this spring.
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This makes no sense at all. You’re comparing apples to rocks.
China (and no other country, I’m sure) has full knowledge of how we undertake surveillance of them, as it is a necessarily covert thing. What does that have to do with China’s technological capabilities? What does that have to do with the notion that, if the U.S. views missile defense shields as an inevitability, even if a century or more down the road, they want to be leading the race to build an effective one?
elucidator:
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Actually, as noted in that Sunday AP article* I referenced a post or two ago, a particular type of missile-defense laser was in development throughout the Clinton presidency.
The idea of having something credible in place in just a few years is a curious one, I agree.
(*I haven’t figured out how to link articles from the Associated Press’ website. If you’d like, try going to wire.ap.org and using their search function under the word ‘missile.’ I got it that way yesterday.)
Milo: *Back to a point Attrayant made a while back, about why isn’t this just a “black op,” where we build it and don’t talk about it? A similar question I have: Why doesn’t the U.S. say it is working on a missile defense designed to knock down a few missiles from a terrorist attack, even if they are working on a system that would be capable of much more than that? *
I was thinking about that after my first post to this thread. I think there’s a combination of fiscal realpolitik and leftover Reagan-era illusions at work here. Back when I worked on an SDI-related DoD project as a systems engineer in the mid- to late '80s (before reincarnating as a historian of science :)), I think the concept of a truly effective near-term implementation of missile defense had a lot more general credibility. Many scientists were skeptical and vocally opposed, but there were also a lot of people who were enthused about the idea—automated systems and AI designs were starting an incredible burst of increasing complexity and sophistication then, and many people figured “Wow! In another year or two, who knows what we’ll be able to do? This is so crazy it just might work!”
Well, we (if I may speak for the bulk of the military-industrial complex here :)) worked on such projects for several years, without really solving the key problems, and with the additional cumulative headaches of ever-more-obsolescent technology mounting up. (You ever tried designing and building a major technical system over several years while the cutting edge of performance just keeps running away from your original plans? Ain’t it a bitch trying to balance the need to waste as little as possible of your existing achievement with the demands of ever-more-stringent current performance standards? Remember sneering at all the old sleds of mainframes still running COBOL applications during the Y2K flap? Big systems—or even medium-sized ones—just develop an incredible amount of inertia. When I left my project in 1989 after nearly four years, we were still programming in PASCAL—nuf sed.)
So a lot of us who went up against some of the serious problems of the NMD concept got seriously disillusioned. But I think that some people on the military/executive side, such as Rumsfeld and Cheney, still have faith that people can be roused to excitement about this again. That’s why some proponents are dusting off the old rhetoric about an “invincible missile shield” and “freedom from the terror of MAD” and so forth, instead of just saying (or not saying) that we’ll investigate the feasibility of limited missile defense strategies and letting it go at that.
Moreover (and here’s where the realpolitik comes in), if the leaders really have got stars in their eyes about true effectiveness and near-term deployment for NMD, making their dreams bear fruit (or trying to make them, at least) is gonna cost mondo buxo. Lordy, this is N billion dollars over the next decade that we’re talking about! No way you can just slip something like that into the Pentagon budget and hope that people won’t notice! AFAIK, the last military R&D of similar significance that even came close to being a “black op” was the Manhattan Project, and that was when we were already at war and had other things to think about.
*The idea that people wouldn’t attack because of our MAD capability could go out the window with a particularly fervent and radical Muslim or other religious sect viewing us as some Great Satan and themselves as receiving eternal heavenly reward for wiping us out. Suicide bombing on a huge scale, if you will. *
Mmm, sounds kind of like what Collounsbury describes as unreflective stereotyping. I do recognize that there are religious fanatics in the world who actually consider us the Great Satan (as well as quite a number of non-fanatics who are nonetheless mildly to moderately pissed off at us about one thing or another). But I think that using them as bogeymen to discourage rational geopolitical understanding or diplomacy will eventually backfire on NMD proponents.
As the WSJ editorial says, that tit-for-tat is a morally ambiguous position at best. At some point I’d like to think we as a planet will evolve past it.
Well, hell, there are a whole lot of morally ambiguous aspects of world politics I’d like to see us as a planet evolve past—but I don’t support basing present-day political decisions on that kind of wishful thinking! Me, I’d like to see us evolve past the whole tragically flawed technique of violent conflict between nation-states, but I’m not agitating for immediate disbanding of the armed forces on that account! I’m touched by the WSJ’s concern for our national moral purity and spiritual growth, but I thought they were supposed to be one of those hard-headed, pragmatic conservative journals?
Anyway, why should NMD be considered intrinsically more “moral” than MAD? Does the WSJ expect that if we somehow manage to employ truly effective missile defense and some frothing fanatic fires warheads at us, we’re just going to sit there benevolently smiling in the lotus posture and counseling the aggressor not to be a poisoned dragon? Does anybody imagine that we’re not going to administer some serious military retaliation of our own? Sure, if it’s not an MAD-type “second strike” it’s likely to be a lot less destructive and undiscriminating—possibly not even a nuclear attack—but that doesn’t automatically make it a whole lot more “moral”, IMHO.
Here is a link to that elusive AP article I was referencing.
Kimstu:
How can you accuse me of “unreflective stereotyping” in one sentence, and then say, “I do recognize that there are religious fanatics in the world who actually consider us the Great Satan” in the next?
Bash-and-agree. Is this sort of like good cop-bad cop?
I agree with you on your latter point, however. The fact that there are fanatic groups of people who may eventually develop weapons of mass destruction capability and who might be willing to use it even in the face of second-strike annihilation requires a lot more diligence and pre-emptive intervention than a missile shield. (I think that was your point, anyway.)
I also agree with your “black op” assessment, but take it a step further. Not only would it not be something that could be hidden in a budget, it’s not as if those other countries aren’t going to be monitoring what we’re up to.
Milo,
I don’t get the impression that anyone here is arguing that we will never ever be able to deploy a somewhat workable missile defense system and that we should therefore just forget about the entire concept. What most people here clearly do object to is actually going ahead with a plan to deploy one now, when we know with some large degree of certainty that it is technically unfeasible, that it is prohibitively expensive, and that even our allies don’t want us to do it. We can also hypothesize – quite plausibly, I might add – that a NMD would be destabilizing.
You yourself have admitted to doubts about the current feasibility of a NMD . . . but what is stopping you from opposing it outright? Would you have a problem with a proposal to continue with (relatively cheap) research of such a system, but to withhold the actual deployment of said until it might actually work? Would anyone? Why?
– Jer
I bet all of these countries bitching about the Missile defense shield are secretly hoping that the US spends trillions of dollars on it. It’s patently obvious that it doesn’t work now and never will in the foreseeable future. The US budget deficit will expand, taxes will go up, US companies will become less competitive, ad nauseum.
Be a great way for a country, say the media favorite up and coming yellow peril China, to distract the US and get a leg up in international trade while America wastes it’s energy and tax dollars.
Just a thought…
Milo replied to me: *How can you accuse me of “unreflective stereotyping” in one sentence, and then say, “I do recognize that there are religious fanatics in the world who actually consider us the Great Satan” in the next?
Bash-and-agree. Is this sort of like good cop-bad cop? *
There there there, I didn’t mean to “bash” or “accuse” you, and I’m sorry if I wasn’t sufficiently clear. I was just pointing out that phrases like “a particularly fervent and radical Muslim or other religious sect viewing us as some Great Satan” sound very like the sort of fuzzy forebodings that Collounsbury objected to. As he noted, the question is how opponents will react in their own framework of understanding.
No, it doesn’t contradict that point to agree that there are religious fanatics in the world, some of whom hate the US. But if we’re making serious policy decisions here, we have to look more closely: Whom are we calling “fanatics” and what are they actually being fanatical about, and why? Do we have a sober and factual assessment of their possible roles in international nuclear threat, or merely a mental picture of a bunch of towel-headed extras from Lawrence of Arabia clutching an ICBM and yelling “Allahu akbar!”?
Come now Milo, if I were worrying publicly about the possibility of Christian-right extremists in the US putting together a militia to purge the land of “heathens”, you wouldn’t let me get away with simply pointing to the undeniable fact that there are some such extremists who would look favorably on such a plan. You’d be after me to tell you how numerous and influential these people really are, how close they are to genuine power, how they might be reasoned or negotiated with. Certainly, you wouldn’t make major policy decisions in response to the “threat” they pose without lots of hard and specific data about it. If I expected you to talk about serious national policy choices on the basis of such fuzzy forebodings, you’d be accusing me of unreflective stereotyping, and rightly too.