U.S. Missile Defense Plans for Europe Debated and Evaluated in Arms Control Today Magazine

Media Advisory

For Immediate Release: October 5, 2007
Press Contacts: Daryl G. Kimball, (202) 463-8270 x107, or Miles Pomper, (202) 463-8270 x108

(Washington, D.C.): A Bush administration plan to base anti-missile systems in Poland and the Czech Republic has triggered debate and some negative reactions in Congress, Europe, and, particularly, Russia, which warns that the move might spur another arms race. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates will meet their Russian counterparts October 12 in Moscow to discuss missile defense and other security matters.

The October issue of Arms Control Today looks at the technically complex and politically controversial missile defense initiative from several different perspectives, including those from the administration’s top missile defense official, a ranking member of Congress, two key scientists, and a couple of leading arms control and missile analysts. Arms Control Today is published by the independent and nonpartisan Arms Control Association (ACA).

In the issue’s lead article, Lieutenant General Henry Obering, the head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency (MDA), writes that the Iranian missile threat is evolving quickly and delays in extending U.S. missile defenses to Europe “could leave the United States and our allies in an intolerably vulnerable situation tomorrow.” MDA hopes to begin deploying the first of 10 interceptors as early as 2011.

But California Democrat Ellen Tauscher, who chairs the strategic forces subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, contends the current proposal fails to adequately protect all U.S. allies. She urges the administration to work with all NATO members, not just Poland and the Czech Republic, to explore alternative defenses, while also ramping up testing of U.S. systems to ensure that they can work under realistic conditions. Tauscher further recommends engaging Russia to discuss its concerns and proposals, although she notes “Russia should not expect a veto over U.S. or alliance security.”       

Moscow charges that the proposed defense is aimed at Russia instead of Iran as the Bush administration claims. Obering dismisses this assertion, writing that “U.S. interceptors in Europe cannot catch Russian ICBMs because of the engagement distances and greater speeds of the Russian missiles.”

Yet, two U.S. physicists, George Lewis and Theodore Postol, contend in their article that Russian concerns have some technical merit. They assess that U.S. interceptors based in Poland would be fast enough to intercept some Russian missiles and point out that any initial U.S. capability could be enhanced or expanded over time.

Moscow surely recognizes that latter fact, according to Jack Mendelsohn, a former U.S. arms control negotiator, and is “not convinced that [the initial deployment] will be the end of the story.” To avert a revived hostile military competition between Moscow and Washington, Mendelsohn suggests giving Russian concerns and proposals a serious hearing and “rethinking the current Europe-based missile defense project,” which he charges is motivated partially by the administration’s intent to “entrench the program and help ensure its continuation after the present administration leaves office in 2009.”

The administration maintains the initiative’s schedule is dictated by the growing missile threat from Iran. In an in-depth review of Iran’s missile programs, missile expert Dinshaw Mistry assesses that Iran might be able to obtain a long-range ballistic missile by 2015, as the administration contends, if North Korea developed such a system and transferred it to Iran. Even without such a transfer, Iran could possibly develop and initially flight-test such a missile by 2015, Mistry concludes. But he notes Iran would still need a few more years to test the system to have sufficient confidence in it and to deploy enough missiles to pose a “more significant threat to the United States.”

In the magazine’s editorial, ACA Executive Director Daryl Kimball writes that there is still time for all countries, not just the United States, to intensify efforts to control the spread of missile technologies and reduce the numbers and saliency of such weapons. He notes that the current administration’s emphasis on missile defense neglects the broader goal of that concept’s foremost promoter, former President Ronald Reagan, who urged the elimination of long-range ballistic missiles.