but did not endorse President Bush’s missile defense plan. They offered to “continue substantive consultations” with the U.S. German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping has argued that “a coherent political answer to the threats” is needed, “because technological means alone are not sufficient.” Secretary of State Colin Powell fared no better in his meetings with NATO foreign ministers. He added, “as this program progresses, we will likely deploy test assets to provide rudimentary defense to deal with emerging threats.” But allies remain skeptical. In meetings with NATO defense ministers, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld claimed that a missile defense system would “dissuade and discourage potential adversaries” while enhancing deterrence. The administration promises that information on the cost, timing, and structure of the proposed system will be released after Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld unveils the results of his review of U.S. The Bush team proposes a layered approach that would combine the ground-based NMD system inherited from the Clinton administration with sea-, air-, and space-based components, but specifics remain vague. Bush reiterated his campaign pledge calling for a missile defense system capable of defending the entire U.S., as well as “our friends and allies and deployed forces overseas,” from ballistic missile attack. With missile defense-booster Donald Rumsfeld by his side, on May 1 Bush delivered a speech at the National Defense University, sounding an awful lot like Reagan. As Frances Fitzgerald writes in Way Out There in the Blue, her history of what was then known as the Strategic Defense Initiative: “Every time the program seemed ready to expire, or collapse of its own weight, something would happen to bring it to life again.” The latest “something” keeping the program alive is the administration of President George W.
At worst, they could spark a new, multisided nuclear arms race that would increase the risks of nuclear war.īut Reagan’s dream of a shield against nuclear weapons lives on. In September 2000 he said, “I simply cannot conclude with the information I have today that we have enough confidence in the technology, and the operational effectiveness of the entire NMD system, to move forward to deployment.” Clinton added that even if missile defenses could be made to work, they would at best add a modest margin of protection from nuclear weapons. Given a critical test failure in July 2000 and a growing chorus of criticisms, President Clinton found himself in a safe position to delay deployment of the proposed NMD system before leaving office. policy to deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD) system “as soon as technologically feasible.” President Clinton’s commitment to missile defense was tempered by his pledge to base a deployment decision on four criteria: the overall costs of the program, the technical feasibility, an assessment of the ballistic missile threat facing the U.S., and the impact it would have on arms control and arms reduction efforts.Īlthough the NMD system was restructured to focus on the seemingly more realistic goal of defending all 50 states from an accidental missile launch by Russia or China or from the attack of a rogue nation such as Iran, Iraq, or North Korea, technological difficulties still abound. Under the Clinton administration, it became U.S. has spent more than $70 billion since that time on various missile defense programs without producing a single workable device. On March 23, 1983, Ronald Reagan surprised the nation and the world by announcing an ambitious research program designed to render nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” Reagan acknowledged that this “formidable technical task…may not be accomplished before the end of this century.” He was right: the U.S.
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The Bush proposal to move full speed ahead with missile defense, even if it means abandoning the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, could halt progress toward nuclear arms reductions and spark a new global arms race.More than $70 billion spent on missile defense projects since 1983 has produced precious little beyond cost overruns and technical failures.On May 1, 2001, President Bush reiterated his campaign pledge to deploy a multitiered ballistic missile defense system as soon as possible.
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