Chris Doss
The Russia Journal
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Moscow Times
May 20, 2002
>From MAD to Even Madder
By Matt Bivens
WASHINGTON -- Once upon a time, the Pentagon offered a resounding "no" to the suggestion it use nuclear weapons to shoot down hostile incoming missiles. Seems there are some downsides to detonating nuclear blasts high above America's cities. Go figure.
Now a powerful congressional committee has recommended that the Pentagon think again.
The House Armed Services Committee has tucked a recommendation into a defense spending bill to the effect that exploring the use of nuclear-armed interceptors for missile defense would be "a prudent step, consistent with the commitment to evaluate all available technological options for this critical mission."
Prudent? Exploding nuclear weapons to take out incoming missiles could damage radar and telecommunications infrastructure, and, some say, even knock out satellites -- bringing both the civilian and military United States to a grinding halt. It would also probably leave the country defenseless should anyone care to launch a second assault; and don't forget the radiation. That's why past Pentagons rejected the idea years ago.
Then again, the antique anti-missile system around Moscow, built in the 1960s, has about 100 nuclear-armed missiles ready to defend the Kremlin's honor (though we all hope it never comes to that). And as arms control expert Pavel Podvig pointed out to me in an e-mail interview, a very similar system, called Safeguard, was in place for a few months in the 1970s around U.S. missile fields in North Dakota.
Those limited systems were essentially part of the game of MAD, mutually assured destruction: To prevent two superpowers from going toe-to-toe with thousands of nuclear weapons, the MAD balance demanded uncertainty that either side could ever successfully pull off a preemptive first strike. In that context, protecting the leadership in Moscow or the silos in North Dakota makes a certain sense even when the protection system is itself pretty monstrous.
Yet in the 21st century, the missile defense system the Pentagon has been selling to Congress is supposed to be clean and sophisticated. It's triumphantly based on "hit-to-kill" technology -- the daunting business of shooting down an incoming missile, sometimes described as trying to "hit a bullet with a bullet." Billions of dollars have been spent upon the Pentagon's assurances that this can and will be done within just a few years.
Then, last month, came an oblique signal that it ain't happening. The old North Dakota Safeguard -- a mushroom-cloud-shaped missile defense shield -- was revived by the chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Science Board, who said Donald Rumsfeld was "interested" in the idea. Republicans in Congress leapt obediently to endorse such "prudence."
Hitting a bullet with a mega-explosion is the opposite of the surgical strike. It is clearly a when-all-else-fails scenario -- and the fact it's being discussed suggests the Pentagon is worried the program it has sold year in and year out to Congress won't work. After all, if "hit-to-kill" precision was possible, who in America would turn it down and instead cheer for using nukes over the skies of New York and Los Angeles?
So perhaps this is the real story behind the calm with which Vladimir Putin met the White House announcement it would pull out of a treaty to build a missile defense shield. The Russians have good intelligence in Washington; maybe they smell the desperation, and know missile defense is a radioactive dud.
Matt Bivens, a former editor of The Moscow Times, is a fellow with the Nation Institute. [ www.thenation.com]