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.