GMD, RIP
On September 17th, ending months of speculation about the future of the Bush administration's plan for missile defenses in Europe, the Obama administration formally announced the termination of efforts to erect ground-based defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. "The best way to responsibly advance our security and the security of our allies is to deploy a missile defense system that best responds to the threats that we face and that utilizes technology that is both proven and cost effective," President Obama said, explaining his decision. In place of the Poland/Czech deployment, the Obama administration has outlined a new theater and sea-based missile defense architecture for Europe that it says "will provide stronger, smarter, and swifter defenses of American forces and America's allies" from the threat of Iranian missiles.
That plan consists of four distinct phases, according to the Fact Sheet on U.S. Missile Defense Policy released by the White House in tandem with the President's announcement. The first, to be carried out in the 2011 timeframe, entails the deployment of "current and proven" systems - among them the Aegis Weapon System and the SM-3 Block IA interceptor - "to address regional ballistic missile threats to Europe and our deployed personnel and their families." The second phase, to take place in the 2015 timeframe, envisions the deployment (after "appropriate testing") of a more capable SM-3 interceptor on sea and land, "to expand the defended area against short- and medium-range missile threats." The third phase (to take place in the 2018 timeframe) includes the deployment of more advanced SM-3 Block IIA variant interceptors. The fourth and final phase, planned for around 2020, entails plans to "deploy the SM-3 Block IIB to help better cope with medium- and intermediate-range missiles and the potential future ICBM threat to the United States."
MISTIMING THE IRANIAN MISSILE THREAT?
The Obama administration's alternative missile defense plan is based in part upon revised estimates of the Iranian ballistic missile threat. "The intelligence community now assesses that the threat from Iran’s short- and medium-range ballistic missiles is developing more rapidly than previously projected, while the threat of potential Iranian intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capabilities has been slower to develop than previously estimated," the White House's Fact Sheet declares. But in its comprehensive study on the ballistic and cruise missile threat facing the United States released earlier this year, the National Air and Space Intelligence Center outlined that, "with sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015." All of which matters a great deal. "Under the new [U.S. missile defense] plan, the U.S. will have no long-range, intercontinental, defense capabilities until 2020," points out Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation. Meaning that, if Iran does manage to erect an ICBM capability by the middle of the next decade (something the U.S. government believed as recently as this past January), the homeland defense capabilities envisioned in the Obama plan will emerge "too late."
THE MIRAGE OF "ZERO"
Since taking office, the Obama administration has made the push for comprehensive nuclear disarmament a key foreign policy priority. But this effort, known colloquially as "global zero," runs the risk of undermining U.S. deterrence posture and fragmenting America's foreign alliances, a leading defense expert has warned. The president's push for nuclear disarmament "is not new, per se," writes the National Institute for Public Policy's Keith Payne, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, in the October 5th edition of Defense News. But "the apparent degree to which the administration believes that the goal of nuclear disarmament should shape contemporary U.S. nuclear policies" is unprecedented.
The Obama administration's approach, Payne points out, should be tempered by five stubborn realities. First, that "more than 30 U.S. allies in Asia and Europe seek protection under the U.S. nuclear umbrella to deter emerging weapons-of-mass-destruction (WMD) threats in their region"- protection America will not be able to provide as effectively if it pursues comprehensive disarmament. Second, nuclear drawdowns on the part of the United States are likely to spur corresponding investments in precisely those types of technologies by our adversaries, who will have hopes of overwhelming America's conventional military advantage. Third, the requirements for "airtight verification and enforcement" of such a global regime currently do not exist - nor are they likely to in the near future. Fourth, in order for "zero" to be feasible, the United Nations will need to undergo extensive reforms and adaptation, an unlikely prospect. Final, and most problematic, is the fact that "the path to nuclear zero would have to include an international context where states' calculations of interest would allow them to forgo nuclear weapons." Such an "unprecedented benign world order," Payne points out, is for the moment much more idea than reality. And, as a result, "there is no plausible path to nuclear zero in sight."
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