Wes Riddle’s Horse Sense #391

Defense Needed Against More Than Terrorism
by Wes Riddle

In the course of fighting the Global War on Terror, a strategic failure of the first order has occurred. Namely, the United States is still not fully prepared to defend itself against a ballistic missile attack from Russia, China or even the Iranians if they happened to launch a missile attack from a ship. The U.S. possesses a limited missile defense consisting of a small number of ground-based interceptors. Besides the Patriot weapon system, the Army’s next generation of hit-to-kill interceptors have been under development for over a decade but are only now nearing completion for deployment in the next year or so.

Given the economic crisis and relative reordering of priorities in Washington, lawmakers are already talking about substantial cuts in ballistic missile defense. Ironically this comes at a time when Iran and also North Korea are increasing their ballistic missile activities. Recall that these were two of the countries George W. Bush characterized as comprising an “Axis of Evil” (the third was Iraq). His terminology sounded strange at the time, but his point is accurate if by “evil” he may have meant harboring significant ballistic missile arsenals. Of course Saddam had few operable missiles remaining, and nowhere near the numbers intelligence sources reported before U.S. invasion in 2003. North Korea and Iran possess numbers that are far greater by several orders of magnitude than anything we ever ascribed to Iraq.

The same can be said for our very limited sea-based capability against ballistic missiles too. The Navy Aegis was certified in March as being effective at short-range intercepts of missiles reentering the atmosphere, and it had previously been certified against longer-range missiles flying above the atmosphere. Great in terms of capability, except that such capability will only be installed on 18 ships by June 2009. Few of these ships will be home-ported for at least a year, and that’s if there’s no significant cut in spending. Meanwhile, for all the talk of Star Wars the U.S. has no space-based system to defeat missiles in their early launch and ascent phase.
America is strong not invincible. Moreover, U.S. strength is based on hard work and smart thinking. Defense, foreign policy and intelligence communities are there to help, but it takes determined executive decision makers to get things done: to put real boots on the ground, satellites into space, and to procure and deploy the various weapons required for defense, retaliation and deterrence. This applies towards terrorism, but it also applies towards ballistic missile defense (BMD) and towards nuclear retaliatory capability and nuclear deterrence. Yet somehow the threat of nuclear missile attack has seeped from our minds, as if because it didn’t happen during the Cold War it never will.

If Islamic terrorists ever got nukes, it is clear they would use them. If they controlled nuclear states like India or Pakistan or took over even for a short time, they might have a real opportunity—perhaps not to strike our Homeland but clearly to threaten vital interests and possibly decimate an ally. Such terrorists, however, do not pose the only threat to America of nuclear attack or blackmail. Strategic rivals possessing nuclear weapons during the Cold War haven’t entirely gone away, so it is hard to reckon our complacence and slothfulness at BMD.

Nuclear powers Russia and China threaten our security now as much as they did during the 1980s, and even more so today in the case of China. In addition, Iran aspires to threaten us and to undermine our security and will likely do so in the not too distant future. Iran is working hard to acquire nuclear weapons, and experts argue only over how many more years it will take before they have them. We very much want Russia to be a peaceful member of the community of nations, and for a while it looked like they might be. But recent events in Georgia suggest the bets are off, and anyway Russia will continue to seek what its non-democratic rulers believe is in their interest. Sometimes this will coincide with our interests and many times it won’t. In either case, Russia has thousands of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles. It is proceeding to modernize its military and enhance its capability to influence world events.

Nor one should add did victory in the Cold War cause a sudden dawn of democracy in communist China, or inhibit it from modernizing its military. China has over two million men under arms, so the nuclear advantage and BMD are crucial to the United States vis-à-vis China. China possesses a minimum of 30 intercontinental ballistic missiles, most of them aimed at the United States, as well as hundreds of short and medium range nuclear missiles for use in a theater of combat in Asia. Today the Chinese are building and testing more than one ballistic missile per week! We ought to connect the dots, as Chinese military thinking is unabashedly anti-American. Its military journals are full of candid accounts about unrestricted warfare with the United States using a combination of conventional, cyber, economic and nuclear warfare, as well as terrorism. China is also working to close the space gap, to develop space-based military capabilities including manned launch vehicles, a space station, and extensive anti-satellite weaponry to negate U.S. global satellite coverage.

The Global War on Terror is real, but it isn’t the only conflict scenario and not even the most obvious. We have known the United States requires a BMD shield for decades. It is about time we move ahead to complete it.