Jamie McIntyre on Bush's missile defense system

Jamie McIntyre

CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre looks at what is possible and not possible for President Bush's proposed missile defense system and why it is needed.

Q: Is Bush reviving Star Wars?

McIntyre: It's not really Star Wars because that's the name given by critics to President Reagan's concept of having a space-based missile defense shield -- an umbrella that would protect the United States from a large-scale attack.

What's evolved into national missile defense -- and now what the Bush administration is simply calling "missile defense" -- is a much smaller-scale plan to protect the United States -- not so much against a nuclear attack from Russia or even China -- but from a real small-scale attack, either from some rogue nation or from the threat of being blackmailed.

In a way, the real threat they're trying to guard against is the scenario under which the United States is afraid to act in its interests because of the threat that it could be hit by a single missile, perhaps with a nuclear or chemical warhead.

The scenario that the Pentagon continues to point to is what if in 1990, when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the United States was assembling a coalition to try to push Iraq out -- what if Iraq and Saddam Hussein were able to threaten at that point that he could strike either a European country or perhaps the United States with a missile and a nuclear warhead.

Even if he never did it, if he could threaten that and if the United States had no defense against it, they might have a hard time acting themselves or getting others to act with them. So it's because of that that the Bush administration argues that they have to proceed with some kind of a missile defense program.

Q: Did Bush propose anything new today?

McIntyre: What was new is that President Bush suggested the Pentagon might have what he called "near-term options" for a limited defense that would draw on already established technology. He said it might involve something on the land or might involve something based on a ship or aircraft.

But he suggested that instead of the six, seven or eight years under the Clinton proposal for a land-based system, the Pentagon might be able to deploy some kind of limited defense earlier than that-- perhaps as early as a couple of years from now -- by essentially discarding the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and going ahead with testing some systems that are simply confined to theater or battlefield defenses and seeing if they couldn't be given a role in protecting the United States.

An example might be an airborne laser, which is a project designed to put a laser on a Boeing 747 aircraft and shoot down missiles from the sky. That's designed as a theater missile defense, but depending on how it is deployed, it may also be able to protect the United States. In the past, the Pentagon has not been able to test it in that role because it would violate the ABM treaty.

But if the president is willing to abrogate the treaty -- which essentially means to walk away from it under the terms of the treaty -- then they could test some of these other systems that were designed initially for theater defense in some sort of national defense role. And under that system, they might be able to deploy some very limited defenses earlier, perhaps before the end of President Bush's term in 2004.

Q: What would critics say?

McIntyre: Critics call this proposal "the scarecrow defense," in that it might scare some other countries, but it wouldn't really provide a very effective defense. And in some cases, they argue, it would be worse than having nothing at all because it would require the United States to walk away from the ABM treaty, alienate its allies, antagonize its adversaries such as China and Russia, while at the same time providing almost no real defense against missiles. Critics argue that that is the worst of all worlds.

But the Pentagon counters that even a scarecrow that doesn't really have any potential to harm the crows can accomplish something if it keeps the crows out of the cornfield. And by the same token, they argue that even a limited defense, if it makes a potential adversary pause or think twice before attacking the United States, then it would have some deterrent effect.

And if it has a deterrent effect, that is really the ultimate aim of a missile defense. It's not to win a war with missiles, but to convince the other side that it's not really in their interest to attack the United States. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld didn't discount the idea of the so-called scarecrow option or scarecrow missile defense. He said that whatever the United States does, it will take into account what extent it might deter or dissuade potential adversaries from attacking the United States. The bottom line is the Pentagon is looking for options to deploy sooner rather than later.

Q: What is key about this system?

McIntyre: The United States still has deterrence as the bedrock of protecting itself from missile attack. Any adversary knows that if they attack the United States, they are asking for real trouble. And the United States is the strongest military power on the planet.

So the question is: Does the United States have any other option short of some sort of massive military retaliation? That is what missile defense is about -- trying to get more options. And it's not so much that they're worried that a rogue state such as North Korea or Iraq or some other country is seriously considering an attack on the United States, but the argument that the Pentagon makes is that even the threat of that attack can change the way other people react, and change public opinion. And they want something to counter that threat, even if it never comes to pass.

So again, like the previous Persian Gulf scenario, they don't want to be in the position in the future where the United States is unwilling or afraid to act because they're concerned some country might lob a missile at a major U.S. city. They want to have some protection against that.

The key point Bush made was that it is time to put aside the doctrine of mutually assured destruction that was the bedrock of security during the Cold War when it was basically a bipolar world, with the United States and the Soviet Union on opposite sides. The post-Cold War world is much more complex, the threats are much less clear and in that kind of a situation, the United States feels that in its defense and in the defense of its allies, it has to have more options than just the option of a massive military retaliation.

Q: What about loners or small factions?

McIntyre: Many people have pointed out that missiles aren't only threat against the United States that could be used by independent actors or terrorists or rogue countries. In fact, it may be more likely that if someone wanted to mount a terrorist attack on the United States or even a nuclear attack, that they'd have more success loading a nuclear device onto a ship and floating it into a harbor or setting off a chemical or biological weapon in a major city than they would in launching a missile.

So that missile defense is only one part of what the United States needs to do to try to protect itself. But the ultimate answer is that the United States can never be 100 percent prepared for terrorism as long as there are terrorists willing to sacrifice their lives and as long as the United States is a society that values freedom and freedom of movement and personal liberties. The missile shield is never going to be 100 percent either, but again it's about what the Bush administration describes as having options in an increasingly complex world.

Q: Is there concern about price?

McIntyre: There is a real concern at the Pentagon about the cost of the system and the benefit. Many military commanders, while they agree in principal that missile defense is a good thing to have, they're concerned that given the fact of a low threat of attack from missiles and a high threat from other delivery systems for bringing weapons of mass destruction into the United States -- they're concerned that with limited resources, they think some of the money that they think should go to upgrading conventional weapons, modernizing the military, better pay -- may get siphoned off to the missile defense program if it becomes more elaborate, more complex and more expensive.

Bush suggests junking missile treaty with Russia
May 1, 2001

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