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On September 1, President Clinton surprised the nation when he announced that he would leave to his successor the decision on whether to deploy a National Missile Defense (NMD). In a speech at Georgetown University, Clinton told his audience that "the system as a whole is not yet proven." Last year, observers almost unanimously anticipated a Presidential "yes" to deployment. Even after recent test failures, many still predicted that the President would try to "triangulate": directing the Pentagon to approve construction of a key radar station on Shemya Island in Alaska in spring 2001, but leaving the deployment decision to the next President. Some Administration lawyers had provided him with legal opinions suggesting that early radar construction would not violate the 1972 Anti- Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. Defense Secretary William Cohen strongly favored this option. In the end, the President did not try to split the decision. In a clear victory for missile defense opponents, the President vowed to continue research and testing, but to take no action that would commit the nation toward deployment. Clinton stated: "I simply cannot conclude with the information I have today that we have enough confidence in the technology, and the operational effectiveness of the entire NMD system, to move forward to deployment." The President's speech marked a clear and unambiguous victory for common sense -- and for the beleaguered arms control movement that had suffered a devastating loss when the Senate defeated the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty in October 1999. This resurgence was accomplished by effective and targeted work by numerous arms control organizations backed by generous support from major foundations. The effort received invaluable if unintentional assistance from the Boeing Corporation's abject failures even in carefully controlled tests of the NMD system. Other critical roles were played by credible, independent panels that corroborated some of the major contentions of NMD opponents, an international community virtually unanimously opposed to deployment, Republicans who provided the President cover by opposing a deployment decision this year in the perhaps mistaken belief that a Republican would take over the White House in 2001 and unpredictable events such as warming relations on the Korean peninsula. In June 1999, representatives of many arms control organizations under the auspices of the Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers met in Washington, D.C. to plot strategy in preparation for an NMD decision that was then scheduled for June 2000. Recognizing that termination of the program was not an achievable goal, they united on the following strategy: "Postpone a decision to deploy an NMD system beyond June 2000 into the next Administration, and prevent withdrawal from or abrogation of the ABM Treaty." The community recognized that there were several advantages in the battle ahead compared to the test ban fight. There was a clear deadline for action. The target audience was much smaller this time, consisting of Clinton Administration decision makers and not conservative Republicans. The groups had better contact with these decision makers. The opinions of Democratic lawmakers could make a difference in the White House, where they had little weight with swing Senators. The views of U.S. allies had a direct bearing on the ability of the U.S. to proceed with deployment. The game plan sketched out last year stressed that the planned tests of the new system would not provide a sufficient basis to make an informed decision because: a) Only three of 19 tests would have been completed by the decision date; b) The tests will not be against realistic targets that have effective countermeasures; c) The tests will use substitute hardware and not actual components slated for deployment. In his September 1 speech, President Clinton essentially acknowledged the validity of the first two of these arguments. Subsequent newspaper analyses of the decision added that delays in producing the actual components, particularly the booster rocket, played a role as well. The plan of action also focused on the four major criteria that the President had decreed would be used to make his decision: the cost, the threat, the status of the technology and the program's impact on arms control and national security. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, prodded the Administration repeatedly to keep these four criteria front and center. The groups developed arguments that NMD failed on all four counts. In Friday's announcement not to proceed with NMD, the President detailed the criteria: the technology was not ready, deployment would undermine U.S. security and the U.S. has taken a number of diplomatic steps to reduce the threat from "states of concern." He never mentioned the fourth criterion, cost. The arms control community made a major contribution to the debate. In one of the most significant developments, a group of experts under the guidance of the Union of Concerned Scientists and the MIT Security Studies Program produced a report on April 11, 2000 that provided some of the most devastating arguments against the Clinton Administration plan. These scientists argued that simple countermeasures from new missile states will defeat the planned U.S. NMD. Moreover, they found that the current testing program was not capable of assessing the system's effectiveness against a realistic attack. Pentagon planners disputed both these contentions vigorously, but never were able to lay this argument to rest. They were undermined by the Pentagon's director of operational testing and evaluation, Phillip E. Coyle III, who consistently questioned the adequacy of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization's (BMDO) testing program. Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) incorporated the UCS/MIT concerns into an amendment requiring additional testing he offered in July 2000 which attracted 47 votes. These contentions were accepted by the President, who acknowledged: "There are also questions to be resolved about the ability of the system to deal with countermeasures . . . We need more tests against more challenging targets." Another part of the arms control organizations' plan was to encourage highly respected "validators" to advise that a deployment decision should be put off. The most significant hit was by a letter urging deferral that was put together by the Carnegie Corporation and the MacArthur Foundation. The letter stated: "We respectfully urge you to defer a decision to deploy, and not be forced by artificial deadlines, but to further the debate that has now begun in earnest." Signers of the letter who had special credibility with the Clinton Administration included former Defense Secretary William Perry, former Senator Sam Nunn, retired Generals John Shalikashvili and Andrew Goodpaster and retired Admiral William Owens. On June 9, 33 experts on Russia sent a letter to the President urging no deployment at this time, followed by a June 29 letter signed by 45 experts on China. Both letters had been organized by Council for a Livable World Education Fund. A similar statement signed by 50 Nobel Laureates that had been organized by Federation of American Scientists was released at a July 6 press conference. All these letters garnered significant press attention, added to the credibility of the opposition and were cited many times during the subsequent debate. Arms control organizations also helped to mobilize important Democratic support for deferring deployment. At first, few members of the President's party were willing to speak out against an Administration priority. This reticence was particularly apparent after 42 of 45 Senate Democrats, and a majority of House Democrats, voted for the March 1999 Cochran bill endorsing NMD deployment "as soon as technologically feasible." Only seven Democrats signed a February 2000 letter circulated by Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) urging more testing before deployment. However, after much prodding by activists, assisted tremendously by the July 7 test failure, that number quadrupled when 31 Senators signed a letter organized by Dorgan and Durbin in late July urging a deferral, and 61 House members signed a similar letter circulated by Rep. Tom Allen (D-ME). On July 13, all 45 Democrats voted for the Durbin amendment requiring additional testing. Another key moment came when Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, joined by Senator Levin and ranking Foreign Relations Committee Democrat Joseph Biden (D- DE) (an early foe of deployment), held a news conference on July 13 to urge the President to defer deployment. Separately, a number of key Republicans also either endorsed delay or signaled that deferral was politically acceptable. The list included the two major Republican presidential candidates, Governor George W. Bush and Senator John McCain (R-AZ), as well as Senators Chuck Hagel (R-NE) and Gordon Smith (R-OR), and former government officials such as Henry Kissinger, Robert McFarland and Richard Perle. While these officials were enthusiastic NMD backers and were hoping for a Republican President to make the deployment decision, they provided election-year political cover for the President should he not agree to deployment. Certainly there were a number of independent factors that were crucial to the President's September 1 decision. Coyle's reports helped, including an August 11 internal report suggesting that a deployment decision was premature. A Pentagon panel of independent experts headed by General Larry Welch, USAF (ret.), produced three separate reports that warned about the risk of proceeding too quickly, calling it at one point a "rush to failure," a memorable phrase that has stuck like glue to the program. In April, the independent Congressional Budget Office delivered a severe blow to the Administration's plans with its estimate of the cost of building and operating the system at almost $60 billion. This April 28 report, produced at the request of Senators Levin and Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), belied Pentagon estimates (accurate for what they measured) that the Pentagon's plan would cost a modest $12.7 billion over the next six years. The $60 billion figure also became a permanent part of the debate, as in "the $60 billion national missile defense system." A September 3 New York Times analysis of the decision-making process makes it clear that objections from other countries also played a critical role in stopping momentum toward deployment. Reinvigorated Russian leadership under President Vladimir Putin knocked a key prop away from the Administration's plans by refusing to negotiate any changes to the ABM Treaty to permit deployment. Putin stirred the international pot by pushing the Russian Duma to approve START II and the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and by vehemently opposing NMD. Many NATO allies who were less-than-enthusiastic about NMD refused to support any deployment that would abrogate the ABM Treaty and prompt Russian and Chinese nuclear buildups. As Great Britain and Denmark had to approve radar construction on British and Greenland soil, this lack of support could not be easily dismissed. French, German and even the normally loyal British governments weighed in against NMD. China, with whom the U.S. was trying to tie down a major trade package, was intensely opposed to the program. A classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) completed in August confirmed the adverse effects of National Missile Defense deployment on international relations that the arms control community had warned about. The NIE predicted China might increase its offensive nuclear weapons stockpile 10-fold following a U.S. deployment decision. Newspaper editorial pages overwhelmingly opposed deployment. Aside from the reliably conservative Wall Street Journal and Washington Times, most of the nation's leading newspapers counseled restraint. Between January 1 and August 2000, 61 newspapers called for delay, 20 for abandoning the program, and 15 for deployment. In the final weeks before the decision, arms control advocates raised awareness of the legal and diplomatic risks of a Clinton decision to approve construction contracts. All these factors still might not been enough, had it not been for the ineptitude of the defense contractors trying to build a national missile defense. The Pentagon set the bar for success extremely low when its plan called for only two successful NMD intercepts. Despite testing in carefully controlled conditions with minimal decoys and countermeasures, Boeing and its subcontractors could not even reach this bar. The first intercept test in October 1999 was an ambiguous success. The second test in January was an abysmal failure. On July 7, with the national media and the political community paying close attention because of the imminence of the President's decision, the kill vehicle failed to detach from the booster rocket. Had that test succeeded, pressure would have remained intense on the President to take some steps toward deployment. Instead, according to a senior defense official quoted in the September 3 New York Times, "After that test failed, it pretty much confirmed that the deployment would be kicked back. We lost the momentum." In the end, it was Defense Secretary Cohen against the White House, the National Security Council and the State Department. The President had never been enthusiastic about the program. One official quoted in the New York Times confirmed that the President "didn't want to be the president that killed the ABM treaty." With mounting evidence that the 2005 date for an operational defense system had slipped to 2006 or 2007, the President could circumvent the legal debate over when the ABM Treaty would be violated and reject Cohen's recommendation to permit radar construction to proceed. On September 1, the President could make the right choice without fear of forcing Vice President Al Gore to pay a political price. There is little doubt that he had his own public opinion polls confirming numerous private and public polls showing that national missile defense had not been and would not be a voting issue for Americans. President John F. Kennedy said that victory has a thousand fathers, while defeat is an orphan. Undoubtedly there will be many parties claiming " with some justification " to have had a hand in the postponement of national missile defense. Moreover, the delay only means that the issue will have to be debated all over again in 2001 and beyond. National missile defense has been resurrected from the dead many times over the past three decades. Nonetheless, the arms control community can claim a major portion of the credit for the success achieved on September 1. We established a goal and succeeded. John Isaacs Return to Global Beat Home Page Nuclear Watch | Balkan Conflicts | East Asian Security | EU Integration & Enlargement | Middle East | NATO Expansion | Nuclear Weapons and Proliferation | South Asian Security | U.S. Defense Policy | Publications | Events | |