Stop, Pause, or START?

Save START! That is the new rallying point of the national security team of the administration. The New START treaty is getting an extraordinary push to secure ratification prior to the end of the calendar year while Congress is in town doing the nation’s business. Should it be ratified now or should a new Congress get to examine its merits?

At first glance, what could be the problem? Many former senior national security cabinet officials have endorsed the treaty. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee has voted 14-4 to approve it. Most of America’s currently serving military commanders have said it should be approved. So why the hold-up?

There are five reasons. (1) The historical poisonous political atmosphere that has enveloped past arms control efforts; (2) The rhetorical excesses of many particularly the contempt for missile defense exhibited by its critics; (3) The lack of transparency in the Administration’s future plans for the US nuclear enterprise; (4) The fear and mistrust of the current Russian Federation leadership; and (5) The push that places the New START treaty within the boundaries of the push for a nuclear free zone, other known as “Global Zero.”

Let us examine these issues more closely. For example, while the original SALT treaty in 1972 was overwhelmingly approved, it did allow the buildup of nuclear weapons to over 12,000 deployed weapons, while limiting to some degree the number of missiles on which such warheads could be deployed. But it nothing to constrain the awesome destructive power of our respective nuclear stockpiles. Its sequel, SALT II, was withdrawn by the Carter administration almost immediately following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. It would have codified and capped the build-up allowed by SALT I.

With the 1980 election of President Reagan, however, arms control became part of a vicious campaign not only to defeat him but to wipe-out America’s strategic modernization programs. The “nuclear freeze” as it was known would have locked the United States into a condition of strategic inferiority to the Soviets, while leaving Moscow’s nuclear forces free to expand, such as the nearly 2000 warheads deployed on SS-20 missiles in Europe and Asia.

The rhetoric of the nuclear freeze held Reagan to be ready and willing to fight a nuclear war. His finger was on the nuclear bottom, we were told, ready to go. The late Senator Edward Kennedy was working with the Politburo seeking a joint campaign with the Soviets to bring down Reagan, specifically aimed at stopping the American strategic modernization programs.

Ironically, proposals by the United States to eliminate all intermediate nuclear missiles and cut strategic nuclear weapons in half were greeted with cries of derision, ridicule and skepticism from the nuclear freeze people. Reductions, as Reagan proposed? No! They cried. Freeze over 24,000 nuclear weapons in place? Yes!

And in March 1983, when the US administration announced missile defenses, the rhetoric became even shriller. “Star Wars” immediately became the moniker for all missile defenses, an appellation designed to ridicule. No further debate was considered even necessary. As Ambassador Max Kampelman noted during a keynote speech to the American Bar Association, “The term ‘Star Wars’ was designed solely to stop debate in its tracks”.

Some of the leaders of these two campaigns–the nuclear freeze and the opposition to missile defense–now rhetorically embrace both strategic modernization and missile defense which they previously condemned. They act if their previous positions and rhetoric never even existed. And some of these folks are senior leaders of this administration.

Now we are assured that the administration will support future robust strategic nuclear modernization–our labs, our infrastructure and our delivery vehicles such as Minuteman missiles, Trident submarines and strategic bombers such as the B52 and B2. Conveniently forgotten is that many in the administration have been trying to kill these very same programs for three decades! While at the same time lambasting at every turn the INF, START and Moscow nuclear weapons elimination and reduction treaties as “not real arms control” or too reminiscent of “cold war thinking”.

On missile defense, which is at the center of today’s START treaty concerns, the issue is more convoluted. A little background is needed. The Bush administration sought to protect Europe, US forces and our Middle East allies from Iranian short and medium range ballistic missiles through the expanded deployment of our Navy-based Aegis, and our Army-centric THAAD and Patriot missile defenses. Supplementing these forces were allied deployments such as the Iron Dome, David’s Sling and the Arrow in Israel.

But the inventory of Iranian ballistic missiles of all ranges and the increasing arsenal of such terror subsidiaries as Hezbollah and Hamas, was very large. As General Kevin Campbell, the Commander of our Space and Missile Defense Command in Huntsville, Alabama told me, we do not necessarily have to match the enemy inventory missile for missile. But we do have to have a sufficient inventory of interceptors to deflect any use of missiles by say, Iran, to protect our key assets, and then take whatever offensive action is needed and possible to take out the launch sites from where the threat emerges.

The Bush administration may not have been sufficiently explicit about its plans to deploy such defenses in the Persian Gulf. And one can argue the planned inventories needed expansion. So far, so good. But many of the rhetorical criticisms of the administration of the former missile defense policies were out of bounds.

For example, some made it appear that the deployment in Poland of ten ground-based interceptors–designed to defend not only central Europe but the east coast of the United States from Iranian long-range rockets–was going to be the sole US capability to defend against Iran.

But such claims were nonsensical. Iran’s arsenal of short range missiles threatens the entire Persian Gulf and no missile interceptor from Poland has either the time or the “legs” to intercept a missile launched from Iran at the western Gulf. Everyone understood that.