 |
 |
|||
    |
The meetings of NATO foreign and defense ministers in December saw the first signs of a new dispute among the allies--European alarm at American plans to deploy ballistic missile defenses (BMD). President Clinton is required by law to make a deployment decision this year. We Americans are at the end of a long national debate on BMD; we have arrived at a national consensus to proceed. For many Europeans, however, BMD looks like an isolationist, "Fortress America" kind of exercise foisted on the world by the Yahoo Republican Congress. They say they fear a "double standard" of security in the West, by which the United States will be protected while the allies are left naked; Europe's security will thereby be "decoupled" from that of the United States. Missile defenses, moreover, are said to "destabilize" the entire global security environment by overturning decades of U.S.-Russian strategic arms control. All these fears are given additional emotional charge by the Senate's defeat of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which the Europeans thought was a great crime. European fears are based on a misunderstanding. Most of those Americans who advocate missile defenses--and especially conservative Republicans--want our allies to be included. Theater missile defenses to protect U.S. troops and allies abroad are meant to go in tandem with national missile defenses protecting the United States. (The Administration at this very moment--with strong Congressional support--is consulting with Asia/Pacific allies and friends on how theater defenses might protect them against North Korean and Chinese missiles.) Nor do advocates of U.S. missile defenses want to upset the U.S.-Russia strategic balance, which is quite stable and benign. The simple fact is, the United States now faces strategic threats from an entirely different direction--from rogue states (North Korea, Iran, Iraq) as well as China. The Russian Ministry of Defense has even identified these as potential threats to Russia. So there is ample scope for a U.S.-Russia dialogue that carves out the necessary freedom of action under the ABM Treaty. Both Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, architects of the ABM Treaty, are on record in the mid-1990s declaring that the Treaty has outlived its purpose and should not be allowed to stand in the way of defending our vital interests in new strategic conditions. The Clinton Administration, unfortunately, worships the ABM Treaty above all else; it has even constrained U.S. theater-defense programs out of fear of impinging on the Treaty. Its priorities are thus completely backward. No wonder the Russians (whose strategic doctrine, in fact, has always favored missile defense) have seized the opportunity handed to them by the Administration to collude with it in constraining American technological development. A better posture toward the Russians would give priority to American strategic necessities and, on that basis, invite the Russians to join us in carving out the necessary freedom of action under the Treaty. If they continue to obstruct, we have the option to withdraw from the Treaty. But most likely we will get a sensible dialogue going. President Bush reached precisely this kind of agreement with Boris Yeltsin in 1992. (The Clintonistas tore it up.) So all the misunderstandings with Europe over missile defense are soluble. Provided they're only misunderstandings. If the Europeans just don't share our strategic perceptions any more, or resent BMD as another form of American domineering (there are hints of these), then we have a more profound problem on our hands than a technical dispute over deterrence doctrine. (Peter W. Rodman is Director of National Security Programs at The Nixon Center.) 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 | |