Missile defense shield Pretext for a new arms race.”
by usman karim
Russia has received new U.S. proposals on confidence measures on the missile defense issue and the reduction of strategic arms, a source with the Russian Foreign Ministry .--As to the missile defense issue, Rood said that the document in particular includes new proposals on securing the access of Russian officers to missile defense facilities in Poland and the Czech Republic. As to strategic arms, he said that this document is a follow-on to the START I of 1991, which expires in December 2009, and was sent to Moscow. The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 bans the build up or stockage of military weapons including nuclear arms or weapons of mass destruction -- in orbit and their installation on the moon, but not the shooting down of satellites."Weapons deployment in space by one state will inevitably result in a chain reaction. And this, in turn, is fraught with a new spiral in the arms race both in space and on the earth Ballistic Missile Defence is not mentioned in the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP), or EU Strategies on Security or Weapons of Mass Destruction. The Secretary General of the Council of the European Union, Javier Solana, has said that the EU has no plans to participate in a US anti-missile system but that its member states are free to join if they wish. However, members may consider that the relevance of the issue to the whole of Europe USSR, CHINA, India, Pakistan, Japan,Brazil,South Africa, would suggest that Poland and the Czech Republic should at least consult with other states before making a deal with the US. Russia in strongly criticizing the missile defense plan, which would build a radar base near Prague as part of a missile shield The question today is “does Europe need an anti-missile defense shield” and it is Undoubtedly being posed at this time because of the recent request by the United States to position bases in the Czech Republic and Poland as part of its National Missile Defence (NMD) system. Within Europe there is some unease about the deteriorating U.S.-Russian relationship.German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has been quoted in a newspaper article in March as saying that, in protecting against a possible Iranian threat, “the price of security must not be new suspicion or, worse still, fresh insecurity.” He also stated that “[We cannot allow a missile defense system to be either a reason or a pretext for a new arms race.” The arms race may already be with us. Russia has already announced new additions to its armoury to overcome the missile shield and missile defence encourages nuclear states to enlarge their arsenals so as to keep their deterrent effective. It can therefore be accused of being responsible for contravening the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Barack Obama is keeping people guessing about whether he will pursue a Bush administration plan to set up a missile shield in central Europe but analysts say Russia has shot itself in the foot with threats to deploy missiles in retaliation. Analysts see the threats as amounting to loose rhetoric and do not expect a showdown that will test Obama during his first six months in office after his inauguration as president on January 20. Hours after Obama's victory on Wednesday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced plans to deploy Iskander short-range missiles in the western Russian territory of Kaliningrad, wedged between Lithuania and Poland, in response to US plans for a missile shield in former Soviet bloc territory
• What is the threat of missile attack?
• How effective is missile defence likely to be?
• What are the consequences of deploying a European missile defence system?
• Are there alternative forms of action?
Before we look at these we will need to say something about what missile defence systems are.
What is Missile Defence?
The US Ground Based Mid Course Defence (GMD) system currently consists of some 15
silo-based interceptors at Ft Greely, Alaska and two at Vandenberg AFB, California. There are also associated ground based early warning and tracking radars, including those at Thule in Greenland and Fylingdales in the UK (recently upgraded for the NMD role) and a $1 billion sea-based X-band radar to track, discriminate and assess targets from a mobile semi-submersible platform in the Aleutian Islands. The US has proposed that a further 10 interceptors be based in Poland and a modified Xband radar system moved to the Czech Republic. The U.S. claims it needs to have these sites operational by 2012 in order to counter any possible future threat from Iran or North Korea. Although originally conceived as a system for long range missiles aimed at the US, the suggestion now is that it be combined with the missile defence system under consideration by NATO to form an integrated European defence system. A Charter for an Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence (ALTBMD) was approved by NATO in March 2005. The 20-year cost of this undertaking is reported to be 1 billion euros and in addition some 20 billion euros would be spent by individual member states on missile defence batteries. Increasing costs are the cause of some concern; most European NATO states are unable or unwilling to increase spending on defence as other concerns such as education and health take precedence. Despite this, NATO is considering extending the system to protect population centres - leading to the possible eventual integration with the US NMD system.
What is the threat?
None of the EU member states appears to have any immediate concern about the threat
of a missile attack. There are differences of opinion within NATO on the assessment of
threats from ‘states of concern’ but even NATO’s own parliamentary assembly does not
have immediate access to classified threat assessments carried out on their behalf. It does
seem odd that parliamentary democracies are expected to act on and pay for threat
assessments and feasibility studies that they are not even allowed to see.The United States is very concerned about the threat of missile attack and successive US governments have continued to fund and develop a cut-down version of President
Reagan’s unrealistic idea of a missile defence umbrella. In the justification of their 2008
budget request for European NMD sites the US Missile Defence Agency stated that the
bases are needed to improve protection of the United States by protecting its existing
European based radars and providing additional and earlier intercept opportunities. In
addition they would extend this protection to allies and friends and demonstrate an
international support for ballistic missile defence. The major threat to these installations
and/or the U.S. itself is believed to come from Iran. Let’s examine this threat in more detail.Currently Iran has no nuclear warheads and may not obtain any for some time (if at all). It does however, posses a medium-range ballistic missile with a range of 1,200kms but has denied that it is developing the next generation with a range of 2,900kms. Although that denial may be controversial what is certain is that they are not developing the Shahab-5 which, with a range of 6,000kms, would be able to reach greater parts of Europe but still not threaten the US (some 10,000kms away). It has been predicted that Iran may possibly develop missiles that could reach the US by 2015 at the earliest. However, placing a primitive nuclear warhead on an unreliable ballistic missile would be a risky and costly business and even if successful would result in a retaliation so devastating that it would mean national suicide. The US is preparing for a future potential threat rather than an imminent one. Their desire to place interceptors in Europe requires European co-operation and this can be hastened by persuading Europe that there is an imminent threat to them. There is no evidence that Iran wishes to attack Europe. Their reason for developing a nuclear capability (if they are) could well be the same as that claimed by all nuclear states – for deterrence purposes.
Effectiveness
President George W. Bush unilaterally withdrew the U.S. from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, in order to build an “effective” missile defence system.
However, five years later the system has still to prove that it can work in realistic circumstances. During controlled tests, under unrealistic conditions where information is
made available in advance that would not be supplied by an enemy, successful intercept
has been achieved in only six out of 11 attempts. The satellite networks required for
detecting missile launches and tracking trajectories are years behind schedule and way
over budget and an effective and operational command and control network has not beenestablished. The annual report of the Pentagon’s testing office, released earlier this year,stated that a lack of flight-test data “limits confidence in assessments” of the system.
A report by the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) in March this year concluded that the system “has not completed sufficient flight testing to provide a high level of confidence that [it] can reliably intercept ICBMs.” In addition the system can be readily overcome by numbers. Ten interceptors would be seriously challenged by eleven or more real or decoy warheads. There is an added complication for the proposed European interceptor site. The groundbased interceptor missiles in Poland will only need to be two-stage missiles rather than the three-stage interceptors in Alaska and California. Research and development on a twostage interceptor has only just begun. Given the problems encountered when developing the existing interceptor missile can we expect a much easier time for the development of the new one? There is also a question as to whether testing of the new intercepts would be illegal under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty which eliminated nuclear and conventional ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges of 500 to 5,500kms. If it can’t be tested, how will we know if it works? So, with missile defence we seem to be considering the use of interceptor missiles that have not so far been developed as part of a costly, unproven system that is easily overcome to defend against a threat that probably doesn’t exist.
What are the consequences?
The cost of building the bases in Poland and Czech Republic is estimated to be some $3.5
billion and there is also a probability that the program would later be extended to protect all European territory by the inclusion of sea-based missiles and missile tracking systems in space at considerable (but unspecified) extra cost. The technological problems
encountered in developments of this kind are complex and cannot be accurately predicted
and massive extra costs and overruns are common. Perhaps the biggest problem with missile defence however, is how its development is perceived by others. It is argued by some that a workable missile shield would enable the U.S. to strike first with nuclear weapons as any limited retaliation could be dealt with effectively. Even if this is not the intention, it is easy to see how the antagonistic nature of U.S. defence policy leads many states to this conclusion. The highly accurate nuclear missiles in the U.S. arsenal are not required by deterrence but could be used to destroy enemy missile silos. The proposed new U.S. NMD bases are in states formerly in an alliance with Russia which the US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates recently included in a list of potential threats to US security. Is it so surprising then that Russia has reacted strongly to the NMD proposals calling them an “unfriendly step” with President Putin threatening to target European sites with nuclear weapons? The U.S. says that the missiles are not aimed at Russia. However, an analysis of the geographic locations and missile trajectories shows that the radar and interceptors could be deployed against Russian missiles from some of its western launch sites and even though 10 interceptors clearly do not pose a threat to the 500 or so missiles in Russia’s nuclear arsenal a Russian Foreign Ministry statement suggests that: “one cannot ignore the fact that U.S. offensive weapons, combined with the missile defense being created, can turn into a strategic complex capable of delivering an incapacitating blow.” The U.S. proposal to include Russia in further cooperation on missile defenses has generated an interesting response from President Putin who has suggested joint US Russian use of an early warning radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan. This radar would give a good coverage of missiles from Iran but not of Russian launches because of an intervening range of mountains. However, the U.S. has now said this cannot replace the proposed Czech radar. Within Europe there is some conmcern. In the 2003 EU document entitled ‘A Secure Europe in a Better World, European Security
Strategy’, we find the following: “In contrast to the massive visible threat in the Cold War, none of the new threats is purely military; nor can any be tackled by purely military means. Each requires a mixture of instruments.”
Missile Defence is an example of an instrument applied too late. There is a danger that if a convincing defence against missiles did exist we would put too much faith in that and not enough effort in preventing situations getting to the stage where it might be deployed. and engage with states outside to build mutual trust and security. Indeed, if we are to survive as a civilization, as a species, even as a planet, we need to learn how to develop technologies for a positive future and tolerate cultural differences. This is our greatest challenge and to fail is unthinkable.why amercian want to make peace of world fargile just need to study
usman karim based in lahore lmno25@hotmail.com