National Missile Defense

In 1983, President Reagan announced a program to defend our country from what he understood to be an increasing threat of missile technology that would enable countries far from our shores to reach us. He was broadly ridiculed then and after by those whose naive faith in non-verifiable arms control treaties and the permanence of the USSR was overmatched by his faith in American technology and the morality of defense over MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Yesterday, President Bush announced that the first layer of national missile defenses would be deployed by 2004.

In 1983, President Reagan announced a program to defend our country from what he understood to be an increasing threat of missile technology that would enable countries far from our shores to reach us. He was broadly ridiculed then and after by those whose naive faith in non-verifiable arms control treaties and the permanence of the USSR was overmatched by his faith in American technology and the morality of defense over MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). Yesterday, President Bush announced that the first layer of national missile defenses would be deployed by 2004. The fact that no one is laughing – or even terribly surprised – is testimony to the sophistication of the American people who understood the threat, paid the bills, and await the finished product. We will write tomorrow about the importance of President Bush’s decision, but it is instructive today to look back at the revolutionary words that set the process in motion:

There was a time when we depended on coastal forts and artillery batteries, because, with the weaponry of that day, any attack would have had to come by sea. Well, this is a different world, and our defenses must be based on recognition and awareness of the weaponry possessed by other nations… We can’t afford to believe that we will never be threatened. But a freeze now would make us less, not more, secure and would raise, not reduce, the risk of war. It would be largely unverifiable… It would reward the Soviets for their massive military build up…

Free people must voluntarily, through open debate and democratic means, meet the challenge that totalitarians pose by compulsion. It’s up to us, in our time, to choose and choose wisely between the hard but necessary task of preserving peace and freedom and the temptation to ignore our duty and blindly hope for the best while the enemies of freedom grow stronger day by day. I’ve become more and more deeply convinced that the human spirit must be capable of rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by threatening their existence.

Feeling this way, I believe we must thoroughly examine every opportunity for reducing tensions and for introducing greater stability into the strategic calculus on both sides. What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S. retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies? …Isn’t it worth every investment necessary to free the world from the threat of nuclear war? We know it is. As we pursue our goal of defensive technologies, we recognize that our allies rely upon our strategic offensive power to deter attacks against them. Their vital interests and ours are inextricably linked. Their safety and ours are one. And no change in technology can or will alter that reality. It is truly terrifying to think where we would be in this war against terrorists and their state sponsors if we were only now breaking ground on the idea of defending ourselves.