It seems that the defense contractors and neocons are still hard at work on their grand plan to "secure" the world (or at least those parts of it they care about) from missile attack. I say "it seems" even though Rep. John Tierney is at least on the job to try and reign in this modest little budget item from a practical perspective. While I laud the good Congressman's work in this regard, it leaves us with a set of vital questions:
Is this really about missile defense at all? Is it just another boondoggle being shoved through while the kleptomaniacs of BushCo are still in charge? Might there be another possibility, one less savory even than the simple robbing of the Treasury of a few hundred billion dollars? Are there underlying strategic goals that might not be either wise or sane? This is a concept that will take a bit to lay it out.
Boondoggle +
While Rep. Tierney has done a fine job at getting to the boondoggle aspects of these anti-missile programs (see his committee site for the details of his hearings on 16 April) and their phenomenal price-tag, to the tune of about $250 billion over the next twenty years, he hasn't even scratched the surface of what's wrong or what it might mean. This is not to disparage his work; it needs to be done and quickly too, before these vultures at the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) get their hands on any more of our national treasure. It's just that we need to refocus on the long-term implications of putting these programs in place at all (something that is already in progress at a pace most people fail to grasp, regardless of future spending) and what these systems will actually be used for when completed. This is a broad strategy question that goes far beyond the dollars and cents of the matter.
The first problem is, of course, that the very idea of a missile defense system is inherently indicative of an arms race situation. It is one of those sorts of strategic moves that absolutely requires that potential opponents answer it one way or the other. The classic way to overcome defenses of this kind (static and dispersed) is, of course, to overwhelm them. This has long been a known counter-measure to missile defense and is such an easy and cheap solution (comparatively speaking vs. the cost of defensive systems) that the entire rational for a blanket system was abandoned long ago. You never hear, these days, any suggestion that this system could or would be a shield against large-scale missile attack even from its most ardent advocates.
The MDA now pushes only the idea of a limited defense against "rogue state" missiles, ignoring the fact that no rogue state has missiles that could actually reach the U.S. and if they could ever develop them they would be able to employ exactly the counter-measures (like decoys) that anyone else could. It is an ad hoc mission, latched onto because it could keep selling missile defense in a post-Cold War world. It is often justified now as medium-range ballistic missile defense by the MDA, but this is a red herring. Even on this scale, they could never counter a typical modest opponent state like Iran's fleet of missiles if it were launched properly (and it likely would be by the Iranians, who are not stupid by any means; if we drive them to it, they can and will fight effectively, but that's an argument for another post.) It's simply not in the cards that this will work on any scale above the tactical protection of force and even there it's imperfect, as history has clearly shown. A complete and still unsurpassed study of this problem was done by Theodore Jarvis and Paul Stares in Managing Nuclear Operations.
Warriors Back Out In The Cold
The simple fact is that the original idea of missile defense itself is proving unworkable. It's a matter of proportion. Interceptors are as costly as their real targets and much more so than the decoys and other counter-measures. They are plagued with technical difficulties, since their mission is inherently more difficult (i.e., intercepting a relatively small object on a variable and unknown trajectory vs. hitting a fixed ground target) and the systems needed to support interceptors are much more complex and active as well. These are matters that have been well covered in the past and were prominent at the House hearings on Wednesday, especially from the witnesses from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
The UCS and many others have also been quick to point out the diplomatic problems that this push by BushCo is causing, especially with the "European Missile Shield" that they're peddling as a counter against the non-existent Iranian missile threat. Russia and China both rightly view this as a new Cold War move and have reacted accordingly. This is a short-term problem to be sure, since it is easily countered by other nuclear powers and actually acts to their advantage as long as the terms of the strategic game remain the same: we spend lavishly on missile defense and they spend only enough to goad us on while not losing enough of an edge that we believe our system sufficient. It's the Cold War in reverse, only they now know that it will work and how to manage the situation to aid our military/economic overstretch.
So this naturally raises the question; what the heck are the neocons up to? They can't possibly be short-sighted enough not to realize where this is going and why (lack of intelligence has never been one of their faults, even if they do so often mis-apply it) so there must be some other goal in mind here that they are not sharing with the rest of us (or at least not openly so, but when has secrecy ever been a problem for these people?) The answer seems to boil down to two related strategies, one medium-term, one long-term.
Star Wars Redux
The medium-term idea is to dominate future battlefields as the neocons conceive them. Their entire view of war is wrapped up in the Rumsfeldian "transformation of force" doctrines and the technological view of warfare. Despite the nasty lessons of Iraq and Afghanistan that show quite clearly that you still must have infantry to "take and hold" if you want any real decision in warfare, the neocons prefer the remote and clinical strike to the messiness of actual war. Thus the emphasis on cruise missiles, Predator strikes, gunships, etc. that we see in all the services' own propaganda and in the White House releases on the "War on Terrortm". The abilities of the current crop of "missile defense" systems are really intended, I think, to act as a support to their vision of this technological brand of warfare. It is the ultimate in "capturing the high ground".
All of the real successes of the current interceptor crop have been against a specific type of target: a satellite type of orbital or sub-orbital object. In other words, these things may be bad at shooting missiles, but they're great for whacking other guys' satellites. It's an attempt to bring the entire battlefield under direct control and shut down all other potential avenues of information or satellite support (possibly even including things like rivals to U.S. GPS networks run by private entities or "friendly" governments if they are being used by other forces.) This is a serious escalation of warfare, being conducted with virtually no debate beyond very rarefied defense circles. It opens up the possibility of weaponizing space in ways we once thought out of reach due to treaty strictures, especially those of the ABM treaty. With that having been dispensed with by BushCo, the way now lies open to the neocon concept of future war against other powers; a conflict reaching even into space and aiding them in what they see as their over-riding strategic goal: control of oil and thus the Middle East and by extension the energy resources of the world in a time of increasing scarcity. China and Russia are the obvious rivals in this quest (they discount Europe in this) and countering them means gaining the high ground of space first so as to trump their nuclear equivalency with the U.S.
This means that they will not stop at the relatively modest goal of eliminating the other side's satellite capabilities. That is merely the side-effect of the system's development (though a welcome one.) The long-term goal, one that was always inherent in the idea of missile defense but was and is rarely spoken of, is true space-based weaponry. The next phases of the MDA strategy calls for increased emphasis on non-missile technology, particularly kinetic energy weapons and space-basing of the same. The rest of the space programs inside and outside of the military are being re-tuned to heavy lift capacity again (the Mars push in the manned program comes to mind, among others.) All the signs point to the development of the ability to quickly weaponize space and use it for blanket strategic first-strike capability. This is the crux of the matter and the real long-term goal.
The Global Sword Of Damocles
Kinetic weapons in space are the ultimate remote weapon platform: "rods from god" is not too strong a term for this, think the thunderbolts of Odin or Zeus but with a meteoric impact effect. It represents the ultimate in conventional warfare power that can be directed at the typing of a few commands and an "execute" order. This is what the neocons really want, their own version of the ultimate weapon. It would be a non-nuclear (and thus inherently more "usable", in the neocon mindset) option with all the "bang-for-the-buck" that a war-minded strategist could desire. No need for "bunker-buster" bombs or other such nonsense, just let the little artificial meteorite loose and what was once a threat is now a crater. The military has been after this capability for years, but it keeps eluding them. The problem is that conventional explosives just can't deliver the compact energy they need to have good deep-penetrator weapons: thus Cheney's insistance on the development of nuclear bunker-busters and the doctrine of the use of tactical nukes. Kinetic projectiles solve all the dilemmas created by either conventional or nuclear deep-penetrators, since they rely on velocity and mass alone and far more effectively for the size and simplicity of the weapon; there would be practically no way to hide anything from a strike by a large kinetic weapon (light-gas gun, EM railgun, etc.) short of putting it down a South African gold mine. We'd gain the ultimate first-strike capability with no real counter possible as we'd also control space security with the anti-satellite capabilities mentioned above. Sounds great, yes?
Well, no, not really, not unless you're a neocon dedicated to the idea of empire without end. You see, this strategy carries with it all the same kinds of problems that any "ultimate weapon" strategy does. It inherently invites opposition and a counter-arms race to overcome it; indeed, human psychology rather indicates that people threatened with such over-riding power will try to avoid or eliminate it. No one feels safe and so this strategy spreads, not the stability that the neocons hold up as their ideological touchstone, but drastic strategic instability. It's the Cold War once again. While the neocons may long for a return to those days when you knew your enemy and waged this kind of brinksmanship war with them, the rest of us don't have such fond memories of the process and know that we could just as easily have broken ourselves along with the Soviet Union.
It also offers no solution to our other imperial problems, created by decades of foreign policy mistakes or short-sightedness in the Cold War fight: insurgency and terrorism (the unavoidable Romulus and Remus of any imperial project, but that's another post too.) We end up by trying to use these means (as we do now with everything from Predator strikes to strategic class cruise missiles.) to take out the softest of soft targets at a distance, with the inevitable results: civilian casualties, world outrage, etc. ad nauseum. Not only does it not achieve the desired effect but it also tends to create exactly the response it seeks to stamp out: terrorism. What most of the world's people have already learned (through decades of hard experience) is that an asymmetrical warfare/exhaustion strategy is the way to go against large-scale military powers, especially a hegemon. It's a classical failing of military empires and BushCo has already succumbed to this syndrome to its logical maximum with the weapons it has, so there's no reason to think that a kinetic weapon from space wouldn't have the same or even greater appeal to those with their fingers on the button.
Rejecting this wild combination of boondoggle/wishful thinking/strategic madness is essential if our nation is to do anything that will repair its strategic policy for the long term. Call your Congressperson or Senator today and back what Rep. Tierney is doing. Let's let "Star Wars" go back to being a movie title and let strategy get back down to earth where we need it.