In search of security

An unarmed Minuteman II intercontinental ballistic missile launched on December 11 from the Vandenberg air force base in California streaks across the Pacific Ocean as part of a test in support of the United States' missile defence programme. The U.S. suffered its third failure in eight test attempts to shoot down a dummy warhead in space over the Pacific. - TOM ROGERS/ REUTERS

The `Son of Star Wars' is born premature, but nuclear restraint could be the first casualty of the technologically overambitious missile defence system that the United States seeks to deploy.

ON December 10, the United States government released a six-page document outlining its strategy to counter the potential use of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against U.S. territory, armed forces or allies. Maximalist in its conception, the strategy promises the gravest possible consequences possibly even annihilation in the widest possible set of conditions. The U.S., as the document outlines, "reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force including through resort to all of (its) options to the use of WMD against the United States, (its) forces abroad, and friends and allies".

The following day, the U.S. Missile Defence Agency conducted the latest in its interception tests over the Pacific Ocean. On this occasion, the interceptor that was supposed to seek out and destroy an incoming missile-borne warhead failed to separate from its rocket vehicle. Several hundred miles separated the interceptor and its target at their nearest approach. The operational core of the missile defence programme equivalent to hitting one bullet with another in outer space remains over-ambitious in purely technological terms. And this test was a conspicuous failure as both the interceptor and the missile burnt up harmlessly in the atmosphere.

Less than a week after this failure, the U.S. administration announced its intention to deploy a basic anti-missile defence system within two years. President George W. Bush conceded that the system envisaged would be modest, though it would add to U.S. security and "serve as a starting point for improved and expanded capabilities". Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was decidedly more modest, calling the proposed system a "start" which was "better than nothing". Though not purely symbolic, the system, Rumsfeld conceded, was being put in place before it was fully developed.

World reaction tended to be muted, since the missile defence deployment had been expected ever since June, when the U.S. served out a six-month notice period and formally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Signed with the erstwhile Soviet Union in 1972, the ABM Treaty restrained both sides from developing or deploying a missile defence system that could conceivably blunt the potency of the other's strategic nuclear deterrent.

Equal degrees of vulnerability to nuclear attack were considered the key to strategic stability, the only assurance that the lethal game of nuclear one-upmanship would not spiral completely out of control.

Global apprehensions that the Bush administration's long-stated intention to deploy a missile defence system would spark off a renewed arms race were hardly assuaged by a treaty arrived at in May, committing both the U.S. and Russia to reducing warhead numbers in active deployment from the current level of 6,000 to between 1,700 and 2,000 by the year 2012. Short on details, careless in its drafting and rich in the possibilities for evasion, the Moscow treaty, as it is called, would perhaps be the least memorable of all compacts in the long history of nuclear arms control. It fails to demand a verifiable destruction of warheads, and does not place any limitations on the number of delivery vehicles maintained by both sides. In other words, warheads taken out of active deployment could be maintained in operational reserve for reactivation at the shortest possible notice.

Since the Bush administration had already shown itself to be virtually impervious to worldwide concerns that disarmament needed a genuine forward impetus rather than the dubious reductions of the Moscow treaty, the response to the recent decision on deploying a missile defence system has been one of resignation. Russia made its unhappiness known. France and Britain had no comment and the German response, though critical, was issued by a relatively junior spokesperson. The strongest criticism came, surprisingly enough, from Canada, with Foreign Minister Bill Graham commenting that the militarisation of outer space would be "immoral, illegal and a bad mistake".

The sequence of events between December 10 and 17 speak eloquently of the principles underlying the current phase of the U.S.' engagement with the world. It has for long been suggested by various U.S. administrations that nuclear weapons could quite conceivably be used to respond to chemical and biological attacks. The Nuclear Policy Review conducted under the Clinton administration went so far as to hold out the nuclear threat against nations that could have prospective access to WMD.

The latest policy document, titled "National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction", goes a long way forward on this assurance of nuclear havoc. It finally shreds up the U.S. assurance slowly diluted over the years that any state party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would be safe from nuclear attack unless it joined with a nuclear weapons state to attack the U.S. or an ally.

Further uncertainties in the global strategic scenario are foretold by the doctrine of pre-emptive action that the recent document lays out. In calling for "new strategies" to cope with WMD-armed adversaries, the document seems to endorse the often-stated view of Bush administration officials that new types of deep-penetration and low-yield nuclear weapons would be needed to destroy potential threats pre-emptively.

As nuclear disarmament experts have pointed out, the approach is politically and morally contradictory. "A policy that sets the U.S. above and apart from the rules that other states are expected to follow is ultimately unsustainable and self-defeating," said Daryl G. Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, Washington D.C. "Perpetuating U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons as a key component of protecting U.S. security will only make the acquisition of nuclear weapons more attractive to others, not less."

In other words, the persistent hectoring by the U.S. on the proliferation threat loses credibility with each definitive profession of its undying faith in nuclear weapons. It is no accident that the last month witnessed some of the most spectacular breakouts from nuclear restraint in years. Even while the U.S. has been at its most aggressive in denouncing the threat of nuclear proliferation from the so-called "axis of evil" states Iraq, Iran and North Korea it has also repeatedly asserted its own intent to use nuclear weapons if necessary, against them. In the morally skewed environment this creates, the institution of a missile defence system becomes another technological fix for the embattled superpower.

The immediate goal of the Bush administration is to augment existing radar systems at Flyingdales in the United Kingdom and Thule in Greenland. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell has already initiated talks with the British and Danish governments to secure their consent. The anti-nuclear movement in the U.K. and the rest of Europe are gearing up to pose certain tough questions about the proposed system. And British Prime Minister Tony Blair could face opposition from within the ranks of his Labour Party.

The Flyingdales and Thule radars would provide early warning of any possible missile attacks on U.S. territory from the entire region stretching eastwards. Interceptors would then be stationed on a number of sea-based platforms, to knock out missiles shortly after they are launched, that is, in the "boost" phase. Batteries of interceptors would also be stationed on the west coast of the North American continent current plans indicate that California and Alaska could be the locations for shooting down missiles after they have separated from the booster engines. These so-called mid-course interceptors have consumed most of the U.S. Missile Defence Agency's R&D budget so far. And the results have been mixed at best.

Lt-General Ronald Kadish, Director of Missile Defence, has claimed a success rate of 88 per cent in missile interception tests. This calculus is based on a curious procedure, under which instances in which the interceptors fail to deploy beyond the boost stage would not be counted. In other words, the failure of December 11, when the interceptor failed to separate from the booster, would not be reckoned as one. The U.S. Defence Department, rather, only takes into its calculations those tests where all systems make it to the "end-game", when the interceptor successfully separates from its booster and enters the stage where it is hunting and homing in on the intended target. Credible experts in missile technology have argued that this calculus is a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and create an illusion of success, when the real picture is of multiple failures and a system that may never deliver the promised results.

The sea-borne system again has shown its share of problems. It consists in the main of two elements: the so-called Aegis combat system, which is designed to track simultaneously 100 moving targets and direct a ship's weapons towards incoming threats, and the missile batteries themselves. Two internal assessments by the U.S. Defence Department have concluded that the Aegis radar is not capable of supporting a missile defence system. And the missile batteries that have been developed are far from adequate to the task of firing off interceptors that could have even the remotest chance of success.

All its ill-conceived character apart, the Bush administration has won the early endorsement of key leaders of the U.S. Congress for its plans. Missile defence budgets, which have been augmented considerably over the last two years, would now need further infusions. Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to suffer a serious crisis of credibility in international forums over its patently double-faced attitude on nuclear issues. That challenge has been most fiercely stated in recent times by North Korea, though Iran's recent insistence that it would not abandon ongoing programmes must be counted as a fairly strong remonstration.

Obviously irked by the Bush administration's reversal of the conciliation policy set in motion by its predecessor, North Korea has rapidly ratcheted up the confrontational rhetoric in recent times. It first came out with the admission that it had been actively pursuing a uranium enrichment programme since shutting down a plutonium-based nuclear weapons programme as part of a deal brokered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter. Dredging up the vocabulary that many thought had been consigned to oblivion following the end of the Cold War, the North Korean regime announced that it was compelled to pursue a weapons programme because of the threat of "imperialist aggression".

Following this, North Korea announced that it would remove all the monitoring devices installed at its plutonium reprocessing plant and take measures to bring it back onstream. Any threat to intervene militarily, it warned, would be met with the severest consequences.

With its attention focussed on Iraq, the U.S. administration has been rather slow in responding to the North Korean challenge. Defence Secretary Rumsfeld has held out the assurance though, that the U.S. was perfectly well-prepared to open up two fronts in the war against the global spread of WMD. But given the geopolitical situation in East Asia and the far more conciliatory attitude that Japan and South Korea have recently taken, the U.S. is unlikely to find many takers for a policy of confrontation with North Korea.

The missile defence system then is a necessary, but perhaps illusory, assurance of security for the superpower that is rapidly losing whatever little moral authority it had. There are now subtle but strong suggestions from senior officials that the U.S. could soon resume nuclear testing. After having systematically torn up all the hard-won nuclear restraint measures of the last three decades the ABM Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and START II (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) its pursuit of security in isolation from the rest of the world may just prove a chimera or worse.