A consensus has lately developed that the Bush administration's worst legacy will be tied to the disastrous war in Iraq, but that may be wrong. The resuscitation of the fantasy of missile defense, and with it the raising from the dead of the arms race, may result in catastrophes in comparison to which Iraq is benign.
That is the final paragraph of an op edin today's Boston Globe by James Carroll entitled The paradox of missile defense.
When we are spending great amount of time and energy dissecting the implications of Iraq and every politician's every actions with respect to that tragedy, perhaps it is worth our while to consider if Carroll may be pointing at a more serious long-term problem.
Carroll begins with an historic illustration of the paradox:
ONE MAN picked up a club, and the other answered with a stone. A knife was parried with a sword. The shield followed, then the spear, the mace, the longbow, the fortified wall, the catapult, the castle, the cannon. Across eons, every warrior's improvement in defense was followed by a breakthrough in offense, leading to yet new countermeasures, ever more lethal. This ancient offense-defense cycle was made modern by the machine gun and the tank, then by warplanes and anti aircraft guns, and, ultimately, by ballistic missiles and anti ballistic missiles.
. He then quotes Robert McNamara from 40 years ago:
"Were we to deploy a heavy ABM system . . . the Soviets would clearly be strongly motivated so to increase their offensive capability as to cancel out our defense advantage."
. He gives McNamara credit for breaking with the "central paradox" of the military age
how defense and offense had taken on opposite meanings, with the former having become the inevitable precursor of the latter. In opposing the deployment of the ABM, the American defense chief was breaking with the oldest pattern of human belligerence.
Much of the history between 1967 and the arrival of the current administration includes a recognition by multiple administrations of both parties of the dangers of continued offensive-defensive escalation of the delivery systems of nuclear weapons. While it is true that Reagan's administration begin exploration of the "star wars" anti-missile system, Reagan's vision coupled that with the idea of a possible complete decomissioning of nuclear systems - remember Reykjavik? We can go back to Nixon and Kissinger to recognize the importance of the anti-missile treaty, of which Carroll notes
Defense could no longer be simplistically defined as moral, with offense as immoral, because the two were halves of the same nut. At last, it was understood that the only way out of the endless cycle of arms escalation was the renunciation of the whole of it. The ABM treaty was thus the ground of subsequent arms limitation, and then arms reduction, leading to nothing less than the non violent resolution of the nuclear stand off.
Carroll also reminds us that the architect of Bush's abrogation of the treaty was Paul Wolfowitz, who came to his first notice as a prominent opponent of the ABM tready.
Caroll points out how our beginning the process of installation of an ABM system, with key components intended for Poland and the Czech Republic, has motivate Russia to test a missile designed to penetrate such a shield. Moscow does not accept that such a shield is intended against a possible "rogue" state like Iran, but is aimed directly at our former adversary. Here I note that the key element holding together the old Republic coalition was anti-communism, and that the so-called war on terrorism has not worked as an effective substitute, even as it has perhaps enabled the military-industrial complex to continue running at full steam, albeit increasingly in arena of
"homeland security" (and it is incredible to me that man of jewish background whose wife survived the Holocaust - Joe Lieberman - would come up with a term so reminiscent of Nazi terminology).
We are now engaged in yet another cycle of offense versus defense escalation. Carroll offers us the point of view of the other side:
Two days after the Russian test, Vladimir Putin said simply, "It wasn't us who initiated a new round of the arms race."
Some who supported Reagan claimed that his escalation of defense spending is what brought down the old USSR. Certainly the resources of that nation were stretched by its debilitating adventure in Afghanistan, and the willingness of the people of its 13 republics to acquiesce in a society which denied them many rights was seriously undercut by the ongoing loss of life and the inability to bring that conflict to what the Soviets could call a successful conclusion. The parallel may not be exact, but are we not seeing a similar danger for the US, with Iraq draining our resources, increasing unwillingness to accept the restrictions it places upon our society, and the very real possibility that the restarting of an arms race with a newly energized Russia which - unlike us - does not ship much of its wealth outside the nation to pay for petroleum could finally bring the system as we know it toppling down?
I chose to do this diary this morning for one simple reason, that we cannot let our criticism of this administration, our focus on what is wrong, be restricted to our actions in Iraq. As bad and destructive as those are, there are other things that also undermine our liberal democracy and the future integrity and safety of our system. Certainly the entire frame of the GWOT has clear negative implications such as we can see in the use of torture and withdrawing from the Geneva Accords. It is in our lack of resources and focus to provide the kind of response we have expected in crises at home, whether those be Katrina or Kansas.
A reigniting of the arms race is in many ways far more scary. If we place systems viewed by Russia as hostile towards them in countries adjacent to them, what is to stop them from similarly placing their newly advanced weapons in countries that could thereby threaten us? I am 61, and I lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. What if this time it were not merely Cuba, but also Venezuela? Do we really want to be going down such a frightening and possibly apocalytpic path? We have already seen the rhetoric ("Axis of Evil") and actions (refusing to talk) of this administration lead to an escalation of the race towards nuclear weaponry in two nations hostile to us. As they move in that direction, will not those nations threatened by their efforts themselves beging to engage in similar actions, thus increasing the likelihood of a world-wide arms race and/or a worldwide conflict with nuclear weapons?
Iraq is to me a symptom, an important symptom,of the incompetence of this administration in handling the security of this nation. But I worry that Carroll may be correct that over the long run it is not the most dangerous example. He may or may not be right in his assessment, but we cannot afford to ignore the warning he offers.