More on Missile Defense

The House Armed Services Committee is marking up the 2010 defense authorization bill today, and there is expected to be an amendment that would restore funds for ground based interceptors, which lost some funding in Gates' FY2010 request.

HR 2845 has some interesting provisions in it,

1) Includes a Statement of Policy that Congress-
• acknowledges that North Korea’s and Iran’s long-range ballistic missile technology is improving and could be used to deliver chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons;
• expresses concern that North Korea’s and Iran’s long-range ballistic missile technology poses a real threat to the United States homeland;
• realizes missile delivery technology and warheads could be passed along to state and non-state actors; and
• supports ballistic missile protection of United States allies and forward deployed forces but believes it should not come at the expense of the protection of the United States homeland.

The first point is pretty vague. By "improving," the amendment fails to recognize that North Korea has had a total of two long range ICBM (Taepodong-2) tests since 2006, and both have failed. The one in 2006 failed in the boost phase and the more recent one in April crashed in the ocean after a couple of minutes. As of now, North Korea cannot attach their warheads on their long range ICBMs, and this is not an easy thing to accomplish. Iran's long range capability (mainly the Shahab or Sejil class) can threaten the region, but it cannot even come close to reaching the United States. States do not acquire nuclear weapons to use them, they are mainly political tools, to improve their own security. The surest way for a country to put its security in jeopardy is to launch nuclear strikes. In addition, we don't have any indication that either North Korea or Iran has capabilities for chemical or biological strikes, that seems like old fashioned fear mongering, something the Republicans have become very adept at peddling.

The second point I think really explains how inept our Congressional leaders are at talking about threat perception. It's quite clear none of them understand deterrence theory. Do North Korean/Iranian ICBM's pose a threat to the homeland? If either country were foolish enough to launch a strike on the United States, they would be instantly eliminated. Neither North Korea nor Iran possess any substantial military capability, and both have near destitute economies. Risking a war with the world's hegemonic power would have disastrous consequences for North Korea and Iran.

The third point is interesting. Could North Korea or Iran pass along their nuclear weapons (which Iran doesn't have yet) to non state actors (i.e. terrorists)? The idea of terrorists acquiring nuclear weapons has been one of the hot topic issues in national security since 9/11. Prof. John Mueller at Ohio State has done a lot of work on this subject, and I tend to agree with his basic conclusions that the likelihood of a group acquiring these weapons is getting smaller, and the technological expertise that a terrorist group would have to have in order to operate nuclear weapons is practically unattainable (for Mueller's full report, see here). In addition, in several years when both North Korea and Iran could potentially have weapons, they are only going to have a handful. Why then would they want to decrease their own security by giving their weapons away to unpredictable terrorist groups? When countries proliferate, there comes added responsibility. For example, if the United States was the victim of a terrorist nuclear attack tomorrow, Iran would not be suspected, because they do not have nuclear weapons. But in 4-5 years, Iran would no doubt be at the top of a very short list of suspects.

The fourth and final point seems to fail to understand the necessary defense choices we are going to have to make in the next several years. At some point we are going to have to cut spending. In the post 9/11 climate of fear, any reduction in defense spending (whether or not that spending actually aids in the fight against terrorism) is seen as a sign of weakness. I would prefer that the troops come home from Afghanistan immediately as I think it's turned into a state building exercise, but if they are going to be there, we have to make sure they have the tools they need. This means we have to make some tough choices. Gates and DoD have correctly (in my opinion) identified that the threat of North Korea and Iran has been exaggerated, and we can reduce missile defense funding, because it just isn't practical now.