Missile Defense In The 21st Century

Protection Against Limited Threats, Including Lessons From The Gulf War

Keith B. Payne

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429710537
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the implications of emerging security environment for missile defense. It identifies the lessons concerning the questions provided by the Gulf War, focusing on the redirection of the Strategic Defense Initiative towards a capability for global protection against limited strikes.

Chapter One
The Rationale For Missile Defense: Protection And Deterrence

President Ronald Reagan surprised the U.S. defense establishment on March 23, 1983 when he introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). He spoke strongly of pursuing defensive protection for the U.S. and allied populations against nuclear attack. The President's stated goal of developing a comprehensive defense against long-range or "strategic" missile attack challenged the orthodoxy of U.S. policy on such defenses. With the signing of the ABM Treaty in 1972, the United States had rejected the option of deploying effective missile defenses. At the time, Nixon Administration officials claimed that preventing the nationwide deployment of ballistic missile defense (BMD) would help to end the "arms race" and "stabilize" the U.S.-Soviet deterrence relationship.¹ As the preamble to the ABM Treaty states:

[E]ffective measures to limit anti-ballistic missile systems would be a substantial factor in curbing the race in strategic offensive arms and would lead to a decrease in the risk of outbreak of war involving nuclear weapons.²

The signing of the ABM Treaty settled for a time the question of whether the United States should pursue defenses against long-range missiles, and debate on the subject subsided. Eleven years later, however, President Reagan's SDI speech sparked a renewed debate about the value of defenses.

In his effort to break with established strategic policy, Reagan spoke of the need to defend against strategic ballistic missiles. He directed the scientific community to turn its talents toward creating defensive forces that could protect against nuclear strikes, rather than focusing on offensive forces intended to deter by threatening retaliation. Reagan expressed his preference for defenses with a single succinct rhetorical question, "Wouldn't it be better to save lives than to avenge them?" Most Americans did not know that they were undefended against attack, and when made aware of their vulnerability supported the President's initiative.³

As part of his SDI vision, Reagan also endorsed the truly radical notion that the Soviet Union too should be capable of defending itself against nuclear attack. Such a recommendation broke with decades of established U.S. military strategy intended to deter Soviet attack by threatening offensive nuclear retaliation. As a consequence of that strategy the U.S. has maintained a powerful retaliatory nuclear deterrent against the Soviet Union. Yet, Ronald Reagan, the man some criticized as being cavalier about nuclear war, became the most radically anti-nuclear President in history—seeking to eliminate the strategic nuclear threat by a combination of defensive forces and U.S.-Soviet agreements to cut offensive arms.

This notion of combining the regulated deployment of defensive forces with deep offensive reductions for the ultimate purpose of protecting societies came to be called the "cooperative transition."⁴ The premise was that the United States and Soviet Union would agree to reduce their offensive nuclear arms while also agreeing to deploy defensive forces. As a result, defenses would become increasingly effective, and ultimately U.S. and Soviet citizens would be protected against nuclear attack. The "cooperative transition" was not an empty slogan. Formal arms control initiatives of the Reagan Administration at the Defense and Space Talks (DST) and other fora reflected a drive to establish agreements with the Soviet Union that would facilitate a cooperative transition.⁵

The goals of the SDI program have evolved since President Reagan's visionary speech in 1983. The Reagan Administration, however, clearly introduced the SDI as a search for defensive technology to provide comprehensive protection for the United States and its allies against ballistic missile attack.⁶ This original vision, however, never was the Reagan Administration's only rationale for the SDI. Official pronouncements about SDI's goal consistently included both civilian protection against strategic missile attack and strengthening deterrence. The Reagan Administration identified these twin goals—protecting population and strengthening deterrence—as the rationale for the SDI. The relative emphasis between the "protection" or the "deterrence" goals, however, has changed since 1983.

For many, strategic stability is narrowly understood in terms of maintaining mutual nuclear retaliatory threats, i.e., mutual vulnerability.⁷ Consequently, the twin goals of strengthening deterrence and protecting populations against the nuclear threat seem inconsistent, and SDI's critics charged that the SDI lacked a coherent strategy.⁸ Although there is nothing inherently inconsistent about these two goals, the Reagan Administration clearly was sensitive to the criticism of incoherence in SDI's rationale, and initially emphasized SDI's protection role.⁹

During the later years of the Reagan Administration, however, senior officials from the White House and Defense Department increasingly emphasized SDI's goal in traditional deterrence terms and downplayed the comprehensive protection of populations. Discussions of missile defense increasingly focused on "enhancing deterrence" by undermining the Soviet Union's confidence in its offensive capabilities, particularly its capability to threaten U.S. retaliatory forces in a preemptive first strike.¹⁰ The logic behind this notion that defense could strengthen deterrence was that undermining Soviet confidence in an offensive first strike would reduce Soviet incentives to consider such an attack, and therefore help ensure deterrence stability.¹¹

This emphasis on "enhancing deterrence" as the rationale for missile defense is more compatible with traditional U.S. strategic thought than is an emphasis on protecting population. For at least twenty-five years U.S. strategic policy has stressed a capability to retaliate against the Soviet Union instead of a capability to protect the population against attack. Consequently, President Reagan's vision of population protection for both the United States and the Soviet Union offended accepted wisdom concerning the role of strategic forces.

Shifting emphasis to deterrence instead of population protection fit more easily with traditional U.S. strategic thought; it also introduced severe potential problems for the SDI. Focussing on deterrence brought the SDI into competition, at least as perceived on Capitol Hill, with alternative methods for strengthening deterrence

The House Democratic Caucus, tor example, responded to the deterrence rationale for SDI by observing that the SDI should be compared with other measures intended to strengthen deterrence. The Caucus identified alternatives such as mobility for ICBMs, the proliferation of cruise missiles, or a greater reliance on "our nearly invulnerable submarines" as preferable to BMD on cost-effectiveness grounds.¹² Identifying alternatives to BMD as preferable for the purpose of strengthening deterrence is neither new nor unusual—it was a staple of the case for an ABM Treaty and against the Safeguard BMD program in the late 1960s and early 1970s.¹³ In the mid-1980s Brent Scowcroft, now President Bush's National Security Adviser, argued that small mobile ICBMs specifically would be preferable to BMD as a means of increasing ICBM survivability and strengthening deterrence.¹⁴

By emphasizing deterrence as SDI's rationale, the Reagan Administration brought the SDI into greater compatibility with traditional strategic thought, but placed the SDI in competition with other programs that also promised to strengthen deterrence.¹⁵ Consequently, the SDI faced the dilemma of promising either a unique capability that was out of favor with traditional U.S. strategic thinking, i.e., the protection of population by defensive means, or a deterrence role that placed it within the framework of traditional thought but squarely in competition with alternative stability measures. This dilemma did not auger well for the viability of the program—as was demonstrated by the program's severe budgetary problems on Capitol Hill after 1988.¹⁶

Officials in the Bush Administration initially continued to emphasize "enhancing deterrence" as SDI's primary goal.¹⁷ In this regard the Bush Administration pointed toward the protection against a preemptive first-strike that BMD could provide for U.S. retaliatory capabilities. According to a 1989 report on SDI by the Department of Defense, Strategic Defense Initiative: Progress And Promise:

Strategic defenses, by having the capability to destroy ballistic missiles and nuclear warheads before they reach their targets, would reduce the confidence Soviet leaders have in their ability to launch a first strike and destroy the forces we would use to retaliate. Lacking confidence that they could destroy our retaliatory forces, and faced with the threat of enormous damage to their nation if we retaliate, Soviet leaders would not risk an attack.¹⁸

Similarly, Secretary of Defense Cheney stated in March 1990 that:

When it comes to deterrence, a limited defense is enough to give your opponent second and third thoughts.

...the Soviets could never know in advance which [warheads] would be destroyed. Under those conditions, it would be impossible for them to plan for a first strike at all. If you don't know which missiles will get through, you can't be sure what will be left to hit you back afterwards.¹⁹

This focus on eliminating any possible Soviet first-strike confidence as the means by which missile defense could contribute to deterrence stability is not new. For example, the Safeguard BMD system, introduced in 1969, was to provide defense for U.S. ICBMs and eventually Strategic Air Command bomber bases.²⁰ Similarly, before President Reagan's 1983 introduction of the SDI, members of the Reagan Administration appeared to favor BMD as a means of strengthening deterrence, particularly by increasing the survivability of the MX ICBM.²¹ Consequently, an emphasis on "enhancing deterrence" by undermining the Soviet capability to destroy U.S. retaliatory forces has been the focus of much of the thinking about missile defense since 1969. There was, however, the brief period during the mid-1980s when the Reagan Administration emphasized the unique goal of comprehensive protection for the population.

Recently, however, the Bush Administration introduced a significant redirection of the SDI. This new direction focuses on "protection" as the primary SDI goal, a role that is uniquely suited to missile defense. The following chapters examine the return of the SDI to a protection mission and assess the prospective value of BMD in the emerging strategic environment of the 1990s and early 21st century.

¹As Henry Kissinger stated in 1972, "By setting a limit to ABM defenses the treaty not only eliminates one area of potentially dangerous defensive competition, but it reduces the incentive for continuing deployment of offensive systems. As long as it lasts, offensive missile forces have, in effect, a free ride to their targets. Beyond a certain level of sufficiency, differences in numbers are therefore not conclusive." Quoted in, U.S. Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, Hearings, 92nd Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1972), p. 121. For an excellent synopsis by a Bush Administration official of how strategic defense was seen at the time of SALT I as being incompatible with deterrence stability, see, Paul Wolfowitz, in, U.S. Senate, Committee On Armed Services, Department Of Defense Authorization For Appropriations For Fiscal Years 1990 and 1991, Part 6, Hearings, 101st Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1989), p. 490.

With regard to deterrence, Secretary of State Rogers stated before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "This [ABM Treaty] is a general undertaking of utmost significance. Without a nationwide defense, there can be no shield against retaliation. Both nuclear powers have recognized, and in effect agreed to maintain nuclear deterrence." Quoted in, SALT I Reconsidered (Washington, D.C.: Institute of American Relations, 1979), p. 99.

²U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Arms Control And Disarmament Agreements: Texts and Histories of Negotiations (Washington, D.C.: USGPO, 1990), p. 157.

³See the summary of poll data presented in, Keith B. Payne, Strategic Defense: "Star Wars" In Perspective (Lanham, ...