New Arms Race

Henry C.K. Liu hliu at mindspring.com
Thu Jan 28 00:30:14 PST 1999



>From South China Morning Post - a Hong Kong newspaper

Thursday January 28 1999

Simon Beck

A new aim for the

Star Wars team

The force is about to be with us again.

Nearly two decades after the original

version, the hype machine is grinding into

motion as the United States prepares to

unleash a new Star Wars upon the world.

We are not talking about the movie,

although another intergalactic George

Lucas epic will soon be at a cinema near

you. We refer instead to the real-life

business of saving the US from nuclear

attack.

Star Wars was the name jokingly attached

to Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defence

Initiative (SDI), which in the early 1980s

shocked the world - particularly the Soviet

Union - by envisioning a futuristic,

space-based system for destroying

incoming missiles. A whopping US$40

billion (HK$309 billion) of research later,

scientists concluded the idea outstretched

capabilities. But although the vision is

dead, it could be argued the threat it posed

on the Soviet Union, and the defence

budget burden it placed upon Moscow,

hastened the end of what Mr Reagan

called the "evil empire".

In 1999, Star Wars is a much more prosaic

concept: the drama of the Cold War has

long evaporated, and Washington's

concerns are more mundane, if less

predictable. In the minds of Moscow and

Beijing, however, the old fears about the

missile defence concept are far from dead.

The Pentagon's announcement last week

that it was reviving the idea of a National

Missile Defence (NMD) system threatens

to drive Russia and China closer together

and raises the spectre of a new, albeit

limited, arms race. And all this from a

decision arrived at largely out of domestic

politics rather than national security.

For several years, Republicans have been

making political hay of President Bill

Clinton's refusal to sanction a system

which would protect the US from missile

attack. During that time, the Pentagon has

been working on a separate initiative,

Theatre Missile Defence (TMD), which

would protect US and allied forces in the

arenas of Asia and Europe. But since the

administration has conceded the nation

faces a growing threat from international

terrorism and missile attacks from rogue

nations such as North Korea, it has

become politically unfeasible to spend

billions defending foreign friends while

leaving 260 million Americans exposed.

This is the context in which Defence

Secretary William Cohen announced he

would commit another US$6.6 billion to

speed research into an NMD system for

possible deployment in 2005.

Republicans have praised the move, but

are sceptical of a caveat built into it: Mr

Cohen added that although development

work is being speeded up, a decision on

whether to deploy or not will not be made

until the middle of next year.

One cannot help but speculate that the

announcement - together with an extra

US$110 billion for general defence over

the next six years - is calculated to appease

military chiefs bristling at what they saw as

a deterioration in military readiness, and

also to insulate presidential hopeful Al

Gore from accusations the administration

has been soft on defence. An NMD will

also do wonders for the economy of

vote-rich California, home to most of the

aerospace and military-industry

manufacturers.

Naturally, Moscow and Beijing do not see

the political backdrop to Washington's

sudden gear-shift: they see only the

strategic implications for their own

security. Russia is the principal critic of the

move, since the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile

Treaty prohibited either side from

undermining the concept of mutually

assured destruction by constructing a

missile defence system of the kind now

under consideration. The US is now busy

trying to persuade Moscow that even if the

new system breaks the spirit of the treaty,

it poses no threat to Russia.

The system would use satellites to detect

the launch of a potential offensive missile

and, tracking its course, would fire

interceptor rockets from a base in Alaska

to knock it out long before it entered US

airspace. But Mr Cohen has been careful

to emphasise this is Star Wars on a

shoestring, targeting only a limited strike

from "rogue" nations (that phrase again)

and incapable of defending the US against

a full-scale Russian attack. Moscow is not

listening to the excuses; it says it will not

alter the treaty to suit Washington's whims,

and that the move is likely to give the

Duma another reason to avoid ratifying the

1993 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty II.

Beijing is also furious, or at least is feigning

fury. The Liberation Army Daily has

blasted the "dangerous move", warning it

could spark an arms race and cautioning

Washington against extending missile

defence protection to Taiwan.

For China's leaders, US theatre and

national missile defences are two sides of

the same coin.

For years, they have opposed the TMD

concept in Asia, fearing that it threatens

their capability to unify Taiwan with the

mainland through military means, and also

emboldens the old enemy, Japan.

US missile defence systems "would

neutralise China's deterrence, so they

would have to build a lot more missiles and

spend a lot more money, and tend to erode

whatever advantage they think they have

at this time," according to Washington

military analyst Ronald Montaperto.

"It could harden China's desire to greatly

expand the number of delivery vehicles

and warheads."

Beijing's panic might be premature,

however. Even before a national system is

developed, the Pentagon's attempts to

perfect theatre anti-missile systems have

floundered. All five test firings of the

army's so-called THAAD system have

failed and the Pentagon has ordered the

navy to speed up work on a rival

sea-based system, which is still on the

drawing board. Clearly, technology lags

behind the rhetoric.

Nevertheless, the message Washington is

sending by giving a tentative green light to

the NMD initiative is easily translatable as

that of a nation determined to preserve its

status as the only superpower, and not

particularly open to the concerns of those

whose friendship it claims to court.

One can expect many diplomatic

overtures, with US officials explaining

Washington represents no threat to Beijing

or to a peaceful reunification of China.

One can equally predict a Chinese military

even more determined to press ahead with

its aggressive modernisation, just in case.



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list