Provide for the Common Defense

Peter Huessy

The House of Representatives Committee on Armed Services (HASC) reduced funding for US and allied missile defenses by some $750 million, or roughly 8%. The Democratic majority argued its cuts—especially to the proposed BMD sites in the Czech Republic and Poland—were justified in that the threat from Iran had not yet materialized and NATO as a whole had not yet given its unanimous approval for the interceptor field and radar deployments. In addition, they argued Europe should be protected from all Iranian threats with one system, not a multiple, layered system as proposed by the administration. They further concluded the threat had also not yet materialized, the Russians objected, and the missile interceptors in question had not been adequately tested.

This fuzzy strategic thinking makes little sense and is in fact contradicted by the current publicly available information. The reductions are wrong headed and will undermine American security. First, the threat from Iran has dramatically accelerated in the past few years. Just last year, the North Korean government sold to Iran 18 BM-25 ballistic missiles and their associated launchers, with a range of between 2500-3500 kilometers, which would be a 1500 kilometers improvement in range compared to current Iranian capability.

According to a May 2 briefing by the former head of the Arrow ballistic missile defense program in Israel, Dr. Uzi Rubin, this missile, if deployed, could reach most of Europe. As former Under Secretary of State Robert Joseph argued in the Wall Street Journal on May 1, these rockets give Iran the ability to hold hostage most European cities, with the capability to coerce, threaten and otherwise gain strategic advantage over our key NATO allies and, by extension, the United States. The crazy idea that the US should wait until a demonstrated Iranian rocket attack is imminent or that a threatening deployment must have taken place is a fool’s wish. The time to build missile defenses is before a threat materializes. The Iranians are not going to pace the development of their offensive missile forces to when and if NATO and the United States deploy missile defenses.

Second, the critics of the deployment of a defense against long range rockets to the European heartland cite an intelligence report that any intercontinental ballistic missile threat from Iran will not occur until 2015, at the earliest, despite the rocket commerce between North Korea and Iran. But this estimate may be pure wishful thinking. For example, in 1995, a similar NIE from the intelligence community was represented to Congress as downplaying the ballistic missile threat to the United States from North Korea. The supposed conclusions were instrumental in upholding a Clinton veto of missile defense legislation passed by the Republican Congress calling for the deployment of what was then termed a “national missile defense”.

It turned out the Clinton administration had “sexed down the threat” and “cooked the books” to make it appear as though any threat of long range missiles being deployed by the North Koreans was many years in the distant future and therefore any proposed deployment of missile defenses was premature. The intelligence community deliberately did not examine threats to Hawaii or Alaska and thus distorted its findings—as if the 49th and 50th states are somehow beyond the constitutional requirement to “provide for the common defense”.


In addition, the intelligence boys decided they would only examine what the prospects were for missile defense deployments if North Korea used only indigenous sources of help. In short, they used two threat parameters which allowed them to make up a threat assessment that could be used to so distort intelligence as to give false support to a Clinton administration decision not to build missile defenses.

Later in the decade, at a seminar I hosted, a CIA official conceded that the 1995 NIE was distorted. He also conceded the 1998 Rumsfeld Commission report—established by Congress to put together an undistorted view of the ballistic missile threat—had gotten things exactly right and the new 1998 NIE being prepared by the intelligence community would agree precisely with the Commission’s findings. It was shortly after the June 1998 Rumsfeld Commission findings were released that North Korean launched a third stage rocket that landed somewhere between Japan and Hawaii. If the third stage had worked, the estimates are the rocket could have landed a 200 kilogram payload onto the western United States. This was despite reassurances from the Clinton administration that any North Koran launch was at least a decade into the future and something about which we would have plenty of advanced warning. They Clintons were wrong then just as its Congressional allies are wrong today.

Third, the one thing the critics get right is indeed the Russians have objected to the third site planned deployments. But why should this deter NATO from protecting its security? Is it not also ironic the very BM-25 technology and rocket system in the possession of the Iranians is based largely on Russian naval ballistic missiles—a variant known as the SN-6? And this rocket technology has now made its way to North Korea and then to Iran. And the Russians—complicit in the presence of such a threat, are now upset NATO and its various members are taking active steps to protect themselves. Whose side is the Congressional Democrats on?

Fourth, the Congressional critics then both go on to claim NATO hasn’t made a NATO-wide, (and therefore unanimous) agreement to deploy the Czech and Polish missile defense capabilities. Again so what? NATO members make decisions about military deployments all the time individually or jointly with other members. Only two deployments that I know of—the AWACS or advanced warning aircraft and some cargo aircraft—were deployments that were NATO designated assets and thus subject to a formal procedure requiring unanimous agreement.

The current upgraded radars in Greenland and Great Britain—hooked into the U.S. missile defense battle management system designed primarily to protect the United States from long range rockets launched from East Asia—did not require unanimous NATO approval. They were the subject of successful bilateral negotiations with Denmark, Great Britain and Greenland. Now some Democratic critics claim they wish such radar upgrades had been subject to NATO veto, in short giving one member of NATO veto power over whether the United States defends itself against North Korean rockets under the control of a madman in Pyongyang!


The United States has, in fact, worked extensively with NATO to move the alliance forward on missile defenses, having worked to secure a NATO wide endorsement of the technical feasibility of an alliance wide defense against long range ballistic missiles, as well as agreement to deploy missile defenses against short and medium range rocket threats. Many of these decisions have been bilateral decisions with various nations to either deploy newly developed defenses—such as the Patriot systems—or to build future systems such as the Medium Extended Air Defense System, or MEADS, with Germany and Italy. Neither of these has been subject to a NATO veto.

Fifth, the Congressional critics reserve their fiercest opposition to the technical readiness of the defense being proposed in Europe. They contend the proposed interceptors have to be fully tested before they can be deployed. They complain the US has spent some $100 billion on missile defense and has little to show for it. With only one successful test of the deployed rockets, (as opposed to numerous successful tests of the developmental missile), they say go slow and delay the deployments.

This is more than bone-headedly wrong. It plays right into the hands of the mad mullahs in Iran and the crime family in Pyongyang masquerading as a government. The Democrats would apparently have us wait for perfection while the threat grows and expands. The entire basis for the spiral development and deployment plans of the Missile Defense Agency, is to field defenses as we test, so as to provide the US and its allies an insurance policy not only against threats that are here and now but which may unexpectedly arise in the near and long term future.

The MDA testing record of late is exemplary. According to the agency’s director, Lt Gen Trey Obering, the US has successfully tested missile defense components including the Navy based Aegis, Patriot, THAAD, (the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense), Air Borne Laser, and the ground based defense against long range missiles in 16 out of 17 attempts. Just a few days ago, the Army, Air Force and Navy combined assets with THAAD to shoot down a missile. Since 2001, the United States has been successful in 28 of 36 hit to kill intercept tests. This is an extraordinary record, including a recent test in which the Navy simultaneously intercepted ballistic missile and air-breathing targets.

The funding spent for much of the period between 1985-2001 was to explore basic research. The deployment of a missile defense for the United States was prohibited by the ABM treaty. This spending helped lay the foundation for the Patriot, Mid-Course, and Aegis missile defense systems today that are now defending America, her allies and our troops overseas. THAAD is being accelerated to a deployment in 2009 from 2014. In 2010, an Aegis upgrade will bring additional capability to a redundant, layered missile defense. As General Obering, the Director of the Missile Defense Agency has explained, the United States and its allies will have some 1400 missile defense interceptors deployed by 2014, some 1200 more than what was deployed at the end of the previous administration. This is real and significant progress.


The Democratic critics of missile defense denigrate these accomplishments with claims the tests are rigged. Again the evidence contradicts this claim. The tests are done on US bases such as White Sands, or using Kodiak Island, (a new and marked improvement) and our other Pacific tests assets. There are no other tests ranges we can use. Supposedly we are meant to test these defensive missiles under “combat” conditions—should we ask North Korea to launch a surprise attack on Los Angeles just to see whether we can stop it?

What then explains the animus toward missile defense? It cannot be the facts because they are all on the side of those seeking to deploy these defensive systems in Europe. It cannot be that the systems do not work, because they do. And it cannot be that these critics wish to give Russia a veto over NATO deployments, or to give Iran a free shot at Paris, Bonn or London, because they have claimed that is not their goal.

At the heart of the matter is the question of the capabilities of arms control. The deployments of missiles in Syria, North Korea and Iran, aided and abetted by additional missile production cartel members from Russia and China, reveal the sad and failed face of “arms control”. But not just for the control of missiles themselves. The real failure of arms control, and especially the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, (NPT), is that its members—particularly Iran, Iraq, Libya and North Korea—either have successfully developed nuclear weapons, have previously come very close to developing nuclear weapons, or are in the process of trying to develop nuclear weapons. All these countries have either in the past or in the present given the middle finger solute to the NPT.

While the International Atomic Energy Administration, (IAEA), is chartered with the job of discovering the cheats under the NPT, its watchdogs, especially under the failed direction of former IAEA Chief Hans Blix, have been found over and over again face down in their bowls of Viennese Alpo, completely oblivious to the growing nuclear threat now shadowing the Middle East and East Asia.

The need for missile defense deployments illustrates the foolishness of relying entirely on arms control to protect American security. Missile defense critics have often argued rogue state missile deployments and nuclear weapons developments are only “for deterrence” and “the fault of the United States”. North Korea claims it was a “US hostile policy” that “made it” purchase a limited uranium enrichment capability from the A.Q. Khan network. Many critics of missile defense have apparently adopted this old “Mommy he made me do it” defense for the behavior of rogue states. This is not dissimilar to the old “blame America first” mentality so eloquently described by the late Ambassador Jeane J. Kirkpatrick in her address to the Republican National Convention in 1984.






In subjecting the European site deployment to the litmus test of NATO unanimity, the Congressional Democrats are resorting to what Senator John Kerry argued during the 2004 Presidential campaign. And that was that US foreign policy should be subject to an “international test” to prove itself. His friends now have posited a European wide test for defending ourselves from the world’s most serious threats.

However, Americans do not need “international” approval to do what is required by the U.S. Constitution—“provide for the common defense”. The only test required is whether the storm clouds are now gathering. They are. And we therefore are compelled to defend ourselves with the technology now available, as we improve it into the future. No American will excuse our national leaders if in the future we are unprepared for an attack and we blame the “international community” for its failure to approve a US missile defense. If a nuclear armed missile lands in an American city, the millions of dead won’t know that some infantile “test” prevented the US from defending its own citizens, but those remaining alive will. They will ask what in the name of God America’s leaders were thinking when they refused to defend their own people from threats which were obvious, growing and serious.

The blame America first folks should rethink their opposition to missile defense and heed the words of Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, who wrote in her posthumously published book “Making War To Keep Peace”, “…to preserve our own freedom, independence and well-being, requires a capacity to defend the United States…from potential adversaries and the weapons of the era. That is why we badly need an effective defense against missiles.”

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Peter R. Huessy is currently the president of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense and national security consulting business. In addition to writing for OpinionEditorials.com, he is also a guest lecturer, appearing at such fine institutions as the School of Advanced International Affairs, Johns Hopkins University, The Institute of World Politics, and The National War College. Mr. Huessy has spent his career working in government organizations and committees, such as the United Nations, The Environmental Fund, Department of the Interior, and the National Defense University Foundation.

huessyp@ndu.edu