Discussion Topic: National Missile Defense

Background
Notwithstanding the reduced tensions between the United States and its principal nuclear weapons rivals—Russia and China—the U.S. has committed to building and deploying a ballistic missile defense system. A number of difficult challenges and controversial issues surround this effort.

The original goal for the national missile defense project was to develop and employ a robust system capable of defending against the launch of a barrage of advanced missiles by China or the Soviet Union. However, after years of research and development, we have discovered that the technology required to create such a system is enormously difficult to develop. This fact has caused the administration to re-scope the project’s objectives. Now the goal is to defend against attack by a small number of unsophisticated missiles. As a result, if the project is successful, it will be incapable of protecting the U.S. from an attack by Russia or China and, at best, only capable of protecting the country from rogue states like North Korea and Iran until they acquired more advanced ballistic missiles. Moreover, the system provides no defense against the detonation of a nuclear weapon smuggled into the U.S. by a terrorist organization. Given the low likelihood that an unsophisticated nuclear missile would ever be launched against the continental United States, many observers are questioning the value of continuing to develop a system to defend against such an attack.

In addition to the debatable benefits of the project, there is also considerable concern regarding the costs to develop, deploy, and maintain such a system. Even if the ultimate costs are impossible to precisely predict or calculate at this time, it is evident that hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake over the course of the next few decades. With so much capital at risk, we must consider whether the increase in security is worth the costs. Could that money be better spent on a different program, or not spent at all?

One of the externalities of deploying the missile defense system has been the creation of a new international legal and foreign relations regime. As a result of the project, the U.S. found it necessary to withdraw from a cornerstone of prior nuclear arms détente: the three decades old Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union. In addition, the U.S. has been forced to enlist the support of several allies to provide sites for the basing of radar installations. Not surprisingly, many nations, such as Canada and Denmark, for example, have shown considerable reluctance to provide radar sites. To further complicate the matter, the U.S. has yet to decide whether the currently designed missile defense system or some future system will be deployable to protect selected allies as well as the U.S.