National Missile Defense System example essay topic

Should the U.S. build a National Missile Defense System?" What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security didn't depend upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter an enemy attack?" Ronald Reagan; 1983 In his speech of March 23, 1983, President Reagan presented his vision of a future where a Nation's security did not rest upon the threat of nuclear retaliation, but on the ability to protect and defend against such attacks. The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) research program was designed to tell whether, and how, advanced defense technologies could contribute to the feasibility of this vision. 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. Is a NMD a good thing for the United States? I believe the United States should not develop and deploy a NMD system.

How does the NMD work? According to the Federation of American Scientists at fas. org, there are five elements involved in the missile defense system. The first rudiment is the Ground Based Interceptors (GBI). These are the weapons of the system. Their job is to intercept ballistic missile warheads and through the force of impact, destroy them. The GBI includes the interceptor, its launch and support equipment, missile silos, and personnel.

The missile is make of an EV and boosters, and the GBI sites would be capable of holding 20 missiles with eventual upgrade to 100. The next part of the system is called the Battle Management Command and Control (BMC 2). This is the brains of the system and it controls and operates the missile defense system. It provides decisive support systems, battle management systems and displays, and also situation awareness information.

Satellites and radar would feed their information into this. The next part of the system works hand in hand with the BMC 2. It consists of a collection of sensor satellites that would obtain and track the missiles during their trajectory path, giving the BMC 2 the earliest trajectory estimate. The third element is called the In-flight Interceptor Communications System. This is the strategically located ground system that links to the GBI for in-flight targeting.

Up to seven pairs of these stations would be created. The next part, X-band / Ground-Based Radar, performs tracking, discrimination, and kill assessments of incoming missiles, providing real-time continuous tracking data to the BMC 2. The final part of the missile defense system is the Upgraded Early Warning Radar. These are phased-array surveillance radars, used to detect and track the ballistic missiles. By upgrading the software of existing early warning radars, they would meet the missile defense requirements. It has been said that the Missile Defense System is like "shooting a bullet down with a bullet" This leads one to believe that it cannot be done.

If you can imagine a gun firing a bullet out of it heading up into the air, than someone else firing a gun into the air trying to hit the first bullet that just fired than you have just pictured what happens in a ground-based inception system. Also, many people question the effectiveness of the system. If the system proves to be ineffective, then the billions of dollars that was spent on it are wasted. These are real concerns that many people have and in the past may have been worthwhile. For prior to 1999, there have been many failed tests for a NMD system but there have also been some successful ones according to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization. Although there are potentially ways of foiling the system, perhaps the best one is called shrouding of a warhead.

Shrouding is a way of blinding the defense system. By placing a liquid nitrogen shroud on the warhead, interceptors using infrared sensors to target room temperature warheads would pick up an infrared signal one-millionth as intense. This would render it invisible up until only a few hundred meters, far too late to be successful. The many proponents of a NMD such as Presidents Clinton, Bush, 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 unfurled 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. What is security then?

What does it take for a nation to be secure and defended? In the Cold war what it took to be secure was having the most nuclear weapons. The concept of NMD was a concept of defense and of deterrence. Security was having first and second nuclear strike capabilities.

It was about being able to defend your nation against attack, and if attacked being able to fight back. The real question is: Has anything changed since then? The security of America is still a top priority. However, now in the dawn of a new era, at a time when the World is supposedly "demilitarizing" itself, there a conflict of interests at stake when looking at creating a Missile Defense program.

Many Counties are accusing America of starting back up the arms race and hindering the well being of the Global Community. Countries accuse America of being self-motivated in this issue and acting too unilaterally in this. However acting unilaterally is exactly what the other counties of the world are doing. Right now twenty-six states have ballistic missiles at their disposal, and it is estimated that thirty more countries are working on getting them or enhancing that ones that they have. These countries are acting in there self-interest. Take China for an example.

So far they have accused the U.S. of "aggressive deterrence". They are proposing that we are being aggressive in our defense. However the very nature of defense is non-aggression. The BGI missiles that the US is using do not carry any explosives on them in any way; their purpose is for defense.

The main reason that other actors in the world do not wish for the US to complete the Missile Defense System is because if this happens than there ICBM's would become obsolete. This now no longer is in the military arena, but the political one. If the rest of the World's ICBMs were obsolete against the United States they would lose a lot of persuasion that they had before. 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 Craig 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 Anti ballistic 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 reported "Russian military warned that it would consider an American decision to withdraw from the accord as a move that would free Moscow from its arms-control obligations". Recently, Russia, China, and Belarus submitted a draft resolution to the United Nations "stressing the paramount importance of full and strict compliance with the ABM Treaty by the parties". It is obvious that attempts to alter the ABM Treaty, or pull out of it completely, would severely hinder the United States' image in the world and relations with other states. The cost of developing a NMD and deploying one is overwhelming (See Appendix A). The United States has "spent $99 billion overall since 1962" on ballistic missile defense programs (Cirincione and Von Hippel 2).

Even after spending this exurbanite amount of money, the United States has no working NMD to show for it. President Clinton proposed spending an additional 6.6 billion dollars on research for the NMD Program. Mendolsohn approximates it will cost an additional "28 billion dollars to deploy NMD at one site by 2006" (30). How long are we going to continue to waste taxpayers' money? This money should be used for defense programs that actually work and would be utilized. The deployment of a NMD would create an escalation of arms throughout the world and it would also hamper arms control.

A NMD would undermine Arms Race Stability. Arms Race Stability is a "situation where the arming decision of one side doesn't provide incentive for the other side to escalate its arms acquisitions" (Hulme). Hulme also discussed that if the United States were to build a NMD, it will compromise Arms Race Stability. This would happen because Russia would either have to increase its nuclear armament or construct and deploy its own NMD. A never-ending escalation would occur because, as better defenses were built, the other side would construct even more weapons, followed by construction of even better defenses to counter the increase in arms.

According to Mendelsohn, Chinese officials have already threatened this very thing. Ambassador Sha Zu kang, China's top arms control official, stated "the U.S. deployment of a 'light' NMD will inevitably force China to increase the size of its long-range missile forces"; China has also said that a NMD would be a "deliberate effort to marginalize that country's nuclear deterrent" (31). The implications deploying a NMD on the world are immeasurable. The National Academy of Sciences summarizes quite effectively the implications a NMD would have on arms control: A possible strategic defense against a small number of nuclear warheads bought at the price of foreclosing further reductions in offensive nuclear arms-thus locking into place thousands of warheads capable of being aimed at the United States-would be a very poor investment.

(46) A NMD would not really bring much security to the citizens of the United States because of the increase in nuclear weapons of other countries caused by the construction of the NMD. We have worked so hard for nuclear arms reductions to throw all it all away by deploying a NMD. The proposed NMD system is primarily concerned with the evolving threats from rogue-states such as North Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. However, an attack by a rogue-state would probably be delivered in ways not defended by a NMD. Building and deploying workable ICBMs is very expensive and as previously stated, there is evidence to indicate these "threatening" states will not be able to develop these capabilities in the next fifteen years.

If a state wanted to inflict severe damage to the United States, it would seem probable to use methods other than ICBMs to do so. For one thing, by launching an ICBM against the United States, a state is guaranteeing itself a complete and thorough retaliation by the United States. Also, deployment of a NMD "would encourage adversaries to use other means of delivery" (Fetter 9). These other means could include smuggling weapons of mass destruction into the United States by a plane or ship and utilizing them in the same fashion as did the terrorist bombers used to inflict damage against the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. Congressman Chat Edwards put it quite frankly when saying "building a NMD is like putting a $5,000 burglar alarm on the front door of your house, while leaving the back door of your house unlocked" (Mendolsohn 30). It would seem more productive to spend money to counter more probable non-ICBM threats as previously described.

Another problem with the proposed NMD is that it would not be tested in real life conditions. The American Public would be putting our faith in a system that hadn't yet proved its real life effectiveness. "It is far easier for the attacker to deploy effective countermeasures against defenses than it is for the defense to respond to such countermeasures" (Countermeasures). States would be able to devise ways of countering a NMD if it were truly serious about inflicting damage upon the United States. Current tests of proposed missile interceptors only have a success rate of twenty-two percent. Do we really want to depend on NMD that would only protect us twenty-two percent of the time?

Spending a considerable amount of money for something that was successful only one out of every five times does not seem very rational. Deploying a NMD would be a very costly action for the United States not only in terms of dollars, but also in terms of the impact it would have on the international community. Russia and China are not hiding their feelings regarding the United States proposed NMD; we know how they feel and how they would act if a deployment occurred. We do not need to cause these reactions because of threats that do not yet exist or will exist in the near future. A NMD would provide a false sense of security for the people of the United States as it ineffective and easily circumvented. When you couple the effects of diplomatic repercussions with the possible counter-measures and enormous costs that the U.S. will incur to make the system a reality, it just doesn't make sense to undertake this project.

When doing a cost-benefit analysis of NMD, it is easy to see that the costs outweigh the benefits. A NMD does have some merit, but the implications of deploying a NMD far outnumber the small benefits. The United States could be considered the lone superpower in the world; however, that distinction should not allow the United States to ignore the weight of the world's opinion. Deployment of a NMD would be devastating to international relations and the ramifications of such actions are endless. The best counter-measure the U.S. has is to continue non-proliferation efforts with these rogue nations like Iran and North Korea. By using soft power, we can make greater gains than by physical intimidation.

Not only will this help protect lives, but it will also improve the image of the U.S. in international relations. Space is considered the final frontier, and if one country dominates it, the rest of the world might scorn upon us and wont rest until balance is brought back. A NMD should not be employed by the United States now or anytime in the near future.

Bibliography

ABM: Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty". Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics. n. pay. Online. Internet. 17 Nov. 1999.
Available : web es. htm". Ballistic Missile Defenses". Union of Concerned Scientists. n. pay. Online. Internet. 2 Nov. 1999.
Available : web Joseph and Von Hippel, Frank. Introduction. The Last Fifteen Minutes: Ballistic Missile Defense in Perspective. N. p. : Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, 1999.
1-5. Cooper, Richard N. "Emerging Missile Threats to North America During the Next 15 Years". The Last Fifteen Minutes: Ballistic Missile Defense in Perspective. Ed. Joseph Cirincione and Frank Von Hippel. N. p. : Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, 1999.
Appendix B. "Countermeasures: The Achilles Heel of Missile Defense". Online. Internet. 2 Nov. 1999.
Available : web Gordon A. and George, Alexander L. Force and Statecraft. 3rd ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Fetter, Steven. "Overview: Desirability and Feasibility of Ballistic Missile Defenses". Ed. : Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers, 1999.
6-15. Gordon, Michael R. "Russians Firmly Reject U.S. Plan to Reopen ABM Treaty". New York Times. 21 Oct. 1999: A 3.
Hulme, Dr. Derrick. "Arms Control". World Problems and Conflict. Alma College, Alma, MI. 17 Nov. 1999.
Krepon, Michael. "Missile Defense: Not Such a Bad Idea". The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. May-June. 1999: 31-33.
Mendelsohn, Jack. "Missile Defense: And It Still Won't Work". May-June. 1999: 29-31.
National Academy of Sciences. The Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy. Washington, D.C. : National Academy Press, 1997.
Ray, James Lee. Global Politics. 7th ed. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998".
Selling Russia on Missile Defense". New York Times. 21 Oct. 1999: A 24".
What Proponents of Missile Defense Argue and Rebuttals". Council for a Livable World. n. pay. Online. Internet. 2 Nov. 1999.