“Right after I graduated, I interned with the Arms Control Association. It was terrific.”
European Missile Defense: Strategic Imperative or Politics as Usual?
Russia has been vigorously objecting to a U.S. plan to deploy a midcourse tracking radar in the Czech Republic along with 10 anti-ballistic missile interceptors in Poland. The United States maintains that this missile defense deployment is an anticipatory response to Iran’s determination to develop a nuclear weapons production infrastructure and its plans to acquire a long-range missile delivery capability, both of which are expected to materialize within the next decade.
In briefings at NATO headquarters and in Moscow, the United States has assured Russia that the missile defense system will not have the capability to interfere with Russia’s strategic ICBM forces. Washington has also indicated that the U.S. system, scheduled to come online beginning in 2011, will eventually be integrated into a NATO missile defense program and, because Moscow has access to the NATO-Russia Council, that the entire process will be “transparent.”
Russia, on the other hand, has said it considers the U.S. deployments to be unnecessary at this time and indicated that it views them as both an immediate political challenge, i.e., a specious justification for further NATO expansion into central Europe, and as a potential threat to its own strategic missile forces. The debate is so high-pitched at present that it is difficult to assess whether the system’s highly problematic protection is a strategic imperative for the United States or primarily a political one for the Bush administration. It is equally difficult to tell whether the Russian reaction represents a genuine strategic concern or a belated manifestation of its post-Cold War “loser” complex.
Russia Reacts
Russia’s strong opposition to the proposed U.S. deployment is not surprising. First, under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has increasingly come to believe that, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has been exploiting Russia’s relative weakness to advance U.S. security interests. Moscow is not convinced the U.S. missile defense plan is just about protecting Europe and the United States from Iranian missiles. Rather, Moscow sees the program as a major military encroachment by the United States and its NATO allies on Russia’s former sphere of influence in eastern Europe and the “near abroad,” an area that for decades had been both a Russian preserve and a buffer zone.[1]
Secondly, Moscow does not believe the system itself is as technologically benign as the United States maintains. As George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol discuss in their article in this issue, the system could have the capability to intercept Russian ICBMs launched on over-the-pole paths from missile fields west of the Urals. In a September 19 Associated Press report the chief of staff of the Russian military, General Yuri Baluyevsky, said, “The missile defense system being created today in Europe is specifically aimed against Russia. I am prepared to prove this with figures and diagrams.”
Although the initial 10 interceptors obviously pose no danger to a deterrent force the size of Russia’s,[2] Moscow is certainly not convinced that this will be the end of the story. Despite the fact that there are no stated plans to go beyond these deployments in Poland and the Czech Republic, the Russians have to assume that they are only the first sites in a series of missile defense bases.[3] Ostensibly aimed at “rogue” states such as North Korea and Iran and potentially for use against rising “peer competitors” such as China, they could be augmented and eventually add up to a genuine threat to Russian strategic missile forces. Russian political and military figures have already deemed the deployments “destabilizing,” coded language implying that U.S. missile defense deployments in Europe could lead to a potential increase in Russian offensive forces, higher alert rates, and/or a launch-on-warning policy.
Russia, without any really appropriate options to derail the project, has attempted to fend off the impending U.S. deployments in several ways. It has tried:
Threats – to target the missile defense sites in central Europe, expand its (possibly nuclear) forces in the Kaliningrad oblast, or place nuclear “facilities” in Belarus;[4]
Entreaties – to the Polish and Czech governments to delay any agreement with the United States on deployment sites and to the Azeri government to allow the United States to share data from the Russian-leased early-warning radar on its territory;[5]
Withdrawals – to suspend implementation of the Conventional Arms Forces in Europe Treaty[6] and withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty[7] as well as abandon the zero targeting[8] agreement; and
Proposals – to cooperate with the United States by jointly assessing the Iranian threat, sharing data from their early-warning radars located in Azerbaijan and southern Russia, and establishing joint early-warning centers in Moscow and Brussels.
This last overture, made by Putin himself, has been promised “serious study” by the Bush administration, although Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said within a week of Putin’s offer that it would not change U.S. plans. Republicans outside the administration have been divided. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, while also supporting the proposed system, called Putin’s offer a “historic initiative in dealing jointly with issues that threaten all countries.”[9] Former Ambassador Bob Joseph, an ever-vigilant conservative, dismissed it as a trick intended to derail U.S. plans for a European missile defense site.[10]
Protection or Politics?
The administration’s stated rationale for the missile defense site in Europe is the presumptive need to counter an ICBM or intermediate-range ballistic missile threat from Iran. What is unclear, of course, is why Iran would risk annihilation by attacking Europe or the United States with weapons that have such an obvious return address. Additionally, and this must appear most intriguing to Moscow, it is unclear why the United States has chosen to locate the radar and interceptors so far north in Europe that part of NATO territory is left uncovered while the over-the-pole path of Russian missiles is not. The Russians were concerned enough about the strategic significance of the northern European location to prompt Putin to offer to provide data from two of Russia’s early-warning radars located considerably closer to Iran. Putin also suggested that the United States locate its interceptors further south in Turkey and/or Iraq (unlikely), Bulgaria, or Romania from where they would not be able to overtake Russian missile launches on a polar trajectory.
Since the rise of Ronald Reagan, ballistic missile defense has been a politically unifying issue for Republicans and conservative members of the defense community even if the real-world capability of such a system remains questionable at best. For more than three decades, the ballistic missile defense “amen corner” has had a noticeable if uneven policy impact, passing through the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) to the 1994 Contract with America and culminating in the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002.
After abandoning the ABM Treaty, the Bush administration wasted no time in setting a target date of 2004—a date linked not to any emerging threat but to the presidential election—for the deployment of a ballistic missile defense system in Alaska and California to protect against a potential missile threat from North Korea. The site was declared available for use in an emergency in September of that year even though the testing program was and remains both incomplete and largely unsuccessful even against “dumbed down” targets. One obvious motive, both for the hasty U.S. West Coast deployments and for the extension of missile defenses to Europe,[11] is to entrench the program and help ensure its continuation after the present administration leaves office in 2009.
In addition, the missile defense proposal may serve two broader political goals. First, a resurgent Russia alarms the “tough love” policy community of whom Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Gates are charter members. Moving missile defenses into central Europe is a stark reminder to Moscow that it has lost a good portion of its ability to influence events around its borders. Secondly, for the opponents of arms control, expanding the U.S. missile defense network creates an additional disincentive for Russia and the other nuclear powers to seek truly low levels of strategic nuclear weapons.
What Next?
There are four directions in which the missile defense issue might evolve. One is that nothing changes and the United States proceeds with the missile defense program as currently designed. A second option is to freeze the project at least until the extent of the impending Iranian threat becomes clearer and/or Russian objections abate or are partially accommodated. A third approach might be to adjust the program, possibly geographically, to be responsive to Russian concerns. A fourth path might be to cooperate with Russia and share data from a joint early-warning system linked to NATO and Russian command centers and possibly to non-nuclear armed interceptors.
As regards the first option, there is a danger that if the United States goes forward with its plan as is—and that is still an “if”—it will provoke a serious rift in Russian-U.S./NATO relations. Although the Bush administration may be dismissive of this possibility—Rice called Russian concerns “ludicrous”—the European allies may be sensitive and appropriately apprehensive about this development. On the other hand, rifts have been predicted over other U.S. actions in the past decade (e.g., NATO expansion, collapse of the ABM Treaty) but have failed to materialize, perhaps because effective policy alternatives for Moscow continue to be limited.
As for a freeze on the program, Congress seems inclined to hold off, at least for now, on fully funding the missile defense sites. The Czechs also seem prepared to delay a final decision on accepting the radar base, perhaps until after the U.S. presidential election.[12] As former Senator Sam Nunn, co-chair of the nongovernmental Nuclear Threat Initiative, said recently in Moscow, the United States and Russia need to “pause” and “take a deep breath.” It is possible that “we could stumble to the precipice of strategic danger if we and our Russian friends play a foolish zero-sum game with missile defense.”[13]
A freeze would allow time for the political debate to evolve over the need to move forward with a very problematic missile defense system in Europe. A freeze does not, however, resolve the issue or even forecast an end to the program. It is more than likely that if a Republican administration and Congress were to take power in 2009, they would pursue the missile defense program into the next decade. In this “age of terror,” a Democratic-controlled government might do so as well in an effort to show that it has the national security “chops” generally attributed to the Republicans.
As for the third option of adjusting the program, most likely geographically, even Kissinger has recommended that if the United States deploys the system, it “find ways to define specific steps that separate the anti-missile deployment in Central Europe from a strategy for a hypothetical and highly implausible war against Russia.”[14] These “specific steps” are partly what Moscow has been suggesting would provide it some strategic reassurance, and they would not present the United States with insuperable technical problems.[15] Yet, this administration has proven itself to be inflexible in dealing with national security issues even when seeking “win-win” negotiated outcomes would be patently in the nation’s interest. This certainly must have been uppermost in Moscow’s mind when it sought to delay Czech decision-making until after the next U.S. presidential election.
Finally, there is the cooperation option. Both the United States and the Soviet Union/Russia have been talking about defense cooperation for years. Reagan offered to share any achievements of the SDI with the entire world, and Putin has offered to protect Europe with Russian theater missile defense systems. There has been U.S./Russian cooperation in the Cooperative Threat Reduction program and on reciprocal inspections under existing arms control treaties. The Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC), however, some version of which seems to be what Putin has in mind for the early-warning centers in Moscow and Brussels, has languished for almost a decade. In reality, neither side has been comfortable enough to accord the other access to national security-related plans, information, and technology. Putin sounds as if he may be willing to crash this barrier. If so, it could afford Washington an opportunity to start looking seriously at genuine security cooperation with Moscow. Moreover, it would put Russia and the United States on a shared watch against Iran rather than in a spitting match over true intentions—a point worth Washington’s consideration.
Rethinking the current Europe-based missile defense project and giving serious consideration to Russian concerns and proposals would seem to be in line with stated U.S. and NATO policy. After all, the Bush administration adopted a “New Strategic Framework” in 2002, claiming it was moving away from the Cold War-adversarial relationship with Russia. Why make a national security choice now that could reignite that competition and undermine the goals of the new framework?
The case for a strategic missile defense site in Europe is not a slam dunk, nor is the proposed two-site, two-country configuration the only viable one if the deployment goes ahead. As with Iraq, there is a sense that the drive to deploy missile defenses in Europe is not a considered policy response to a real-world threat so much as an autonomic political reaction by a severely beleaguered and analytically challenged administration. This skeptical appraisal of U.S. policy is coupled with the sense that the hot-button Russian reaction to anti-ballistic missile deployments is not solely about their strategic significance but has a good deal to do with Moscow’s decade-long frustration over being dealt only losing hands.
Jack Mendelsohn is an adjunct professor at George Washington University and at American University. A former ACA deputy director and current member of its board of directors, he was also a member of the U.S. SALT II and START I delegations.
ENDNOTES
1. See Martin Sieff, “BMD Focus: Missiles in Kaliningrad,” United Press International, July 5, 2007.
2. The United States had been planning to fire two to four interceptors at each target (depending on the time available to evaluate the first shot). Therefore, 10 ten interceptors could be counted on to deal with two to four targets at most.
3. Lieutenant General Henry Obering has explained that those countries not covered by this European deployment could be covered with Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD), Patriot Advanced Capability (PAC)-3, Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense, and NATO missile defense.
4. Announced by the Russian ambassador to Belarus. See Kommersant, August 30, 2007. The “facilities” were unspecified.
5. Russia cannot conclude agreements with a third party regarding the facility without Azerbaijan’s consent. The Azeri side has pledged not to hand over the site to third countries during the period of lease. A U.S. visit to the site is scheduled for September.
6. Russia has suspended the treaty. Although the Russians have not formally linked their action on the treaty to the missile defense plan, most commentators accept the linkage. See, for example, Andrew E. Kramer and Thom Shanker, “Russia Suspends Arms Agreement Over U.S. Shield,” The New York Times, July 15, 2007.
7. The treaty bans all land-based cruise and ballistic missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Abrogating the treaty would give Russia a new set of capabilities to deploy around its land borders and against potential trouble spots, particularly to its south.
8. By threatening to target Europe, Russia has implicitly threatened to end zero-targeting arrangements that leave no targets assigned during normal alert status.
9. Henry A. Kissinger, “Putin’s Bold Counteroffer,” The Washington Post, August 9, 2007.
10. Bob Joseph, Presentation at the Army Space and Missile Defense Command conference “Celebrating 50 Years of Space and Missile Defense,” August 13-17, 2007 (as reported by Victoria Samson).
11. Negotiations for the missile defense sites were basically bilateral between the United States and the Czech Republic and the United States and Poland for a system to protect the United States from ICBM attacks. The rationale was later extended to include defense against intermediate-range ballistic missile attacks on NATO even though the system could not cover all NATO members. NATO subsequently agreed to conduct a study of a “bolt-on” missile defense capability for those southeastern European states not covered by a Czech/Polish location.
12. “Russia Talks Czech Republic Into Postponing Its Decision Regarding U.S. Missile Shield,” Regnum News Agency, August 22, 2007.
13. “Former Senator Sam Nunn, Co-Chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, Spaso House Discussion Forum,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, August 27, 2007 (transcript).
14. Kissinger, “Putin’s Bold Counteroffer.”
15. The administration might argue, however, that political conditions are such that deployments in Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, and Romania are not realistic options.