WASHINGTON, 28 April 2004 — By now it’s common knowledge that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush administration’s attention was focused not on terrorism but on other national security priorities — most notably missile defense. The administration’s more reasonable defenders argue that this was a forgivable miscalculation, and that after Al-Qaeda’s attack on New York and Washington, President Bush utterly remade his agenda.
Only he didn’t — at least not in one large respect. The president may have declared war on terrorism and launched invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. But for the past two and half years, his Pentagon has quietly but implacably persisted in pursuing, without alteration, the previous No. 1 mission. The result is a breakneck, hugely expensive and quite risky attempt to build and activate a national missile defense before the November election.
There’s been bipartisan agreement on developing missile defenses for some time in Washington. But the Bush enterprise is different. It’s a project being pursued with a lack of safeguards that could be justified only by a national emergency. Its logic is that the greatest threat to this country is not a terrorist’s smuggling of a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon, but the possibility of a surprise missile attack by North Korea.
That threat looked somewhat plausible six years ago, when North Korea tested a missile possibly capable of reaching Hawaii and parts of Alaska with a heavy payload. But the regime of Kim Jong Il hasn’t tested since then; it is currently negotiating about giving up its arsenal. Though the North probably has several nuclear weapons, no one believes it has built a miniaturized warhead capable of being placed on a long-range missile. No other hostile country has, or will have soon, a missile that can reach the United States.
The Bush policy nevertheless assumes that some kind of defense, however raw, must be put in place immediately - and that’s where the recklessness starts. Over three years, the administration has poured more than $25 billion into missile defense but has made only modest technological progress. According to experts both in and outside the Pentagon, a defense deployed this year could not be regarded as reliable by even the most basic standards. Yet Bush nevertheless has ordered 10 interceptor missiles to be installed at two US bases, and plans to announce the system’s activation by September.
Consider: The interceptor missile to be activated has never undergone a flight test with its present booster rocket. In fact, there have been no flight tests of the interceptor since December 2002 — and the last one failed. Nine tests have been put off or canceled since then. The earliest test of the missile is now scheduled for August or September - just as, or maybe after, Bush declares missile defense operational.
• The Pentagon’s own chief tester, Thomas Christie, says he is unsure the new system could stop a missile from North Korea. At a Senate hearing last month, he was asked whether, even if it did work, the system’s makeshift radar would allow it to protect Hawaii, the only state fully within range of the only missile North Korea has (once) tested. Answer: “We have not done a thorough analysis. At this point, I can’t say one way or another.”
• The General Accounting Office has issued four reports on the developing system in the past year, the latest last week. All have been highly critical of the Pentagon’s failure to adequately test under realistic conditions. One recurring point: Even if the bare-bones interceptor Bush is shooting for could be made to work, it couldn’t overcome the simplest of countermeasures.
• For all its spendthrift zeal, the Bush administration has been unable to solve the problems with key pieces of the planned defense. The high-altitude satellite network that is supposed to detect missile launches has been delayed by another two years on Bush’s watch and won’t be in place until the end of the decade. The airborne laser that is to shoot down enemy rockets as they boost into orbit also has been put off by two years and is expected to have $2 billion in cost overruns. The new X-band radar system that is needed to accurately track missiles as they approach the United States won’t be ready for onsite testing for at least another year.
Given the development problems and the shift in the security landscape since Sept. 11, the pragmatic course would be to postpone activation of the system until its bugs are ironed out — a step that would save billions. Instead, Bush proposes to spend $10 billion more on missile defense next year and $53 billion in the next five years.
As the fall campaign heats up, he will make activation of missile defense a part of his “war president” profile and dare Democrats to oppose him.
As Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., noted in a recent speech, Bush would spend twice as much on missile defense as on customs and border protection in the Department of Homeland Security. In exchange, Americans will get “a rudimentary and uncertain defense against an unlikely long-range missile attack.” The president who never admits error will stay the course — never mind Sept. 11.
