National Missile Defense Essay Research Paper Recently

National Missile Defense Essay, Research Paper

Recently, President Clinton signed into law the National Missile Defense Act of 1999. What is a national missile defense (NMD). A NMD is in theory a technological shield that could destroy all incoming missiles (Cirincione and Von Hippel 1). A NMD would most likely employ ground-based missiles that would intercept and destroy incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). ICBMs are missiles that are capable of hitting targets thousands of miles away from their launch site. The National Missile Defense Act calls for developing a missile-defense system that could protect the United States from an attack by a handful of nuclear armed ballistic missiles (Ballistic Missile Defenses). It is important to realize the proposed NMD would not be designed to protect against an all out nuclear attack featuring hundreds of missiles. President Clinton is expected to make a decision on whether or not to deploy a NMD as early as June of 2000. Is a NMD a good thing for the United States. I believe the United States should not develop and deploy a NMD system.

The many proponents of a NMD such as President Clinton, Congress, and various military officials have devised a number of reasons why a NMD is needed. According to Michael Krepon, the president of the Henry L. Stimson Center, nuclear threats have become more diffuse and more troubling now that the cold war is over (31). The United States is no longer only threatened by Russia; it also has to be concerned over emerging rogue-states such as North Korea, Iraq, Iran, and Syria. Is a NMD really an effective countermeasure to these new threats. Currently, there is no rogue-state long range missile threat it is unlikely that one will emerge in the next decade (Mendelsohn 30). In a statement written for the House National Security Committee, Richard Cooper, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, stated that in the next fifteen years no country other than the major declared nuclear powers [Russia and China] will develop a ballistic missile that could threaten the contiguous forty-eight states (Cooper).

Advocates also argue that a NMD would help protect the United States from an accidental launch from Russia, former republics of Russia, and China. According to the Central Intelligence Agency, Russia employs an extensive array of technical and procedural safeguards and China keeps its missiles unfueled and without warheads mated (Mendelsohn 30). Even if there were some type of accidental launch from, it would be hard to determine the number of missiles that would be launched. Any significant amount would overwhelm a NMD and it therefore be rendered useless. Also, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine have transferred to Russia all the strategic and tactical nuclear warheads they inherited following the collapse of the Soviet Union (Ray 324). These weapons are now under the safeguards utilized by the Russian government and therefore are protected against an unauthorized launch.

Nuclear weapons have been used as a deterrent from their inception. Backers of the NMD allege that rogue states that acquire ICBMs while also possessing nuclear capabilities could use this for coercive purposes (Krepon 31). This is true; however, would this coercion really be effective against the United States. As discussed by Graig and George, there are three conditions which must be met for a successful coercive diplomacy policy: the coercing power must create in the opponent s mind a sense of urgency for compliance a belief that the coercing power is more highly motivated to achieve its stated demand and a fear of unacceptable escalation if the demand is not met (197). The first two of these conditions might easily be met by a rogue state, but a rogue state would have trouble meeting the third condition because it would only have a few ICBMs. Thus, it could not escalate the threats if the demand was not met. Without satisfying all three of the conditions, the coercive power of a rogue state would be very small.

Members of Congress as well as the President have called for swift development of a NMD. They assert that the new threats to the United States require immediate action. The truth is the U.S. has faced a threat from long-range missiles for forty years. Policies of deterrence worked then, and will almost certainly work against the new threats (What Proponents). These threats are nothing new to the United States and if the policies we have used in the past have worked, we should continue to use them.

There are many powerful arguments as to why the United States should not pursue the deployment of a NMD. Before the United States could even deploy a NMD, they would have to either renegotiate the Antiballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) or pull out of the treaty. The ABM Treaty was signed between the United States and the former Soviet Union in May of 1972. The purpose behind the ABM Treaty was to constrain the Parties from deploying territory-wide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles (ABM: Anti-Ballistic). In 1974 the ABM Treaty was amended to restrict defense deployment to a single site with no more than one hundred interceptor missiles. The type of NMD that is being proposed would violate this amendment. The writers of the ABM Treaty realized a NMD would encourage the development of increasingly powerful offensive weapons to penetrate them (Selling Russia). Michael Gordon