As the days go one, it’s becoming ever more apparent that the President’s decision to forgo construction of a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was probably the right one:
Call it another revolt of the generals. More than 13 years ago, the nation’s military leaders told civilian defense officials they wanted to limit spending on missile defenses and to emphasize the protection of forces deployed overseas over defense of the American homeland against a long-range missile threat.
Last week, after a lengthy internal Pentagon review and against the backdrop of new limits on overall military spending, the generals again threw their weight behind a relative contraction of the effort to defend against long-range missile attacks. They cited needed budgetary savings and more immediate threats in demanding faster work to protect overseas forces and bases against shorter-range attack.
The latest shift shelved a plan to deploy in Europe an advanced radar and interceptors of long-range missiles by 2017. And it adds impetus to the Pentagon’s request earlier this year for a cut of about 15 percent in overall missile defense spending, a scaling back of the deployment of long-range missile interceptors in Alaska and California, and the cancellation of three costly Reagan-era missile defense programs that officials say had threatened to balloon out of budgetary control.
“I believe what’s happening is what you witnessed happening in the Clinton years,” said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund and a longtime critic of the focus on national missile defense. “The military never liked this stuff; they were willing to support it as long as the budget was increasing, as the president’s pet rock. But as soon as the budget starts contracting, they’re willing to throw this overboard.”
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Gen. James Cartwright, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Thursday emphasized that defense of the U.S. homeland remains a priority, and that some related research is being expanded even as deployments are being deferred. Gates, after touring the Alaska site in June, expressed confidence that its interceptors could field an attack from North Korea.
But last week’s announcement is clearly another step in a steady evolution of the $125 billion program’s central focus from President Ronald Reagan’s grand vision of a national shield, popularly known as Star Wars, to a more limited defense of U.S. assets in foreign theaters.
Along the same lines, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates talked about the reasons for the decision in an Op-Ed in yesterday’s New York Times:
Those who say we are scrapping missile defense in Europe are either misinformed or misrepresenting what we are doing. This shift has even been distorted as some sort of concession to Russia, which has fiercely opposed the old plan. Russia’s attitude and possible reaction played no part in my recommendation to the president on this issue. Of course, considering Russia’s past hostility toward American missile defense in Europe, if Russia’s leaders embrace this plan, then that will be an unexpected — and welcome — change of policy on their part. But in any case the facts are clear: American missile defense on the continent will continue, and not just in Central Europe, the most likely location for future SM-3 sites, but, we hope, in other NATO countries as well.
This proposal is, simply put, a better way forward — as was recognized by Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland when he called it “a chance for strengthening Europe’s security.” It is a very real manifestation of our continued commitment to our NATO allies in Europe — iron-clad proof that the United States believes that the alliance must remain firm.
I am often characterized as “pragmatic.” I believe this is a very pragmatic proposal. I have found since taking this post that when it comes to missile defense, some hold a view bordering on theology that regards any change of plans or any cancellation of a program as abandonment or even breaking faith. I encountered this in the debate over the Defense Department’s budget for the fiscal year 2010 when I ended three programs: the airborne laser, the multiple-kill vehicle and the kinetic energy interceptor. All were plainly unworkable, prohibitively expensive and could never be practically deployed — but had nonetheless acquired a devoted following.
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The bottom line is that there will be American missile defense in Europe to protect our troops there and our NATO allies. The new proposal provides needed capacity years earlier than the original plan, and will provide even more robust protection against longer-range threats on about the same timeline as the previous program. We are strengthening — not scrapping — missile defense in Europe.
It’s becoming clearer by the day that the “abandonment” talk we heard from the right — mostly from people with little real military or foreign policy expertise — was little more than panic-mongering.
It would have helped if the Administration had been as loud about their decision to emphasize the Aegis system (which I only discovered by accident while reading my local paper – the Free Lance-Star) as their cancellation decision.
Whatever the military merits of the move, the sales pitch was clearly designed to appease Moscow.
Reagan, either Bush, and likely Clinton, by contrast, all would have put the emphasis on the Aegis thumbs-up from the get-go. Even now, Gates can’t be brought to say the word “Aegis” – a political “code word” that would quickly reassure many on the right, but upset many in Tehran or Moscow.
Military policy is driven by military reality, but geopolitics are as much about perception as reality – and the Administration’s framing of the perception was flatly awful.