We Need Missile Defense Now
President Bush has made a priority of acquiring missile defenses for the United States regardless of: a) the objections of other countries, both friend and not friend, and b) the machinations of those on Capitol Hill who want to appear to be in favor of defending the nation (because the polls show that the American public favors defenses by a wide margin), but who don’t actually want to do it.
The first set of objections is easier to understand, and probably easier to deal with.
President Bush has made a priority of acquiring missile defenses for the United States regardless of: a) the objections of other countries, both friend and not friend, and b) the machinations of those on Capitol Hill who want to appear to be in favor of defending the nation (because the polls show that the American public favors defenses by a wide margin), but who don’t actually want to do it.
The first set of objections is easier to understand, and probably easier to deal with.
The United States has, as every country has, the right to defend itself against existing and potential threats. Because of the odd structure of the Cold War (two superpowers and no other country with similarly threatening capabilities), the U.S. voluntarily put that right in abeyance with the 1972 ABM Treaty. The Treaty denied both countries defenses and made their civilian populations hostage to either a first strike or retaliation. This, in turn, fueled an arms race to ensure that each side in fact had both first strike and retaliatory capabilities. The disappearance of the USSR and the advent of missiles and WMD in a variety of countries have made the ABM Treaty non-responsive to the threats the U.S. now faces.
It is unsurprising that the European countries are not fully aware of or sympathetic to the changed threat environment. It is similarly unsurprising that they prefer what they consider the stability engendered by the Treaty to the radical approach Mr. Bush would take, which is to build defenses and reduce the American nuclear arsenal to the lowest level consistent with American national security.
It is troubling, however, that in the U.S. Senate there are members who still consider the ABM Treaty to be holy and defense to be destabilizing. Because it is impolitic (in the true sense) to advocate defenselessness, they take the roundabout route to keeping us undefended. They complain that current technologies are not feasible, when the Treaty limits R&D to the most difficult systems while prohibiting more promising technologies. They try to shift money away from strategic systems and zero out funding for specific elements of those systems. Their newest line is that the tax cut makes missile defense too expensive. They talk about the objections of our allies and our adversaries to American missile defense system as if what others want for us is more important than what we determine we need for ourselves. (A VERY troubling public report indicates that those same people are encouraging European objections to missile defense.) They talk about America “violating” the ABM Treaty when, in fact, the Treaty has a withdrawal clause precisely to allow the parties to account for new realities.
The American government has a Constitutional mandate “to provide for the common defense (sic).” The Senate as well as the Administration, Democrats as well as Republicans. There is no excuse for undermining the development and deployment of missile defense. We have the money, we have the capability, and we have the mandate.
Israel’s Arrow Radar Tracks Syrian Scud Launch
The Arrow anti-missile defense system’s radar tracked the flight path of a Syrian Scud missile from the moment it was launched on Sunday morning until it landed some 300 kilometers away in the desert of southern Syria, the IDF revealed yesterday.
The IDF Spokesman said the radar system, known as Oren Yaruk [Green Pine], picked up the launch of the Scud in the Haleb region, in northern Syria, and monitored its path until it hit the ground.
The radar system, which has been operational for a year, apparently proved its worth during what was assumed to be a test flight of the Scud missile by the Syrians.
The announcement of the successful tracking by the Green Pine radar, which is an integral part of the Arrow’s anti-missile defense system, comes at a time of heightened tension in the region generally and along Israel’s northern border in particular.
[Reporting from Tel Aviv by David Rudge for the Jerusalem Post, July 3, 2001]