Preemption

Jack Hitt had an excellent article in the previous issue of Rolling Stone about the farce and the fraud of national missile defense. Robert Farley, commenting on the piece, notes the apparent lack of a real strategic rationale for this system-that-doesn't-work:

The utility of a missile defense system has to be evaluated based on its value added over a basic deterrent posture. At least one reason (and not the only reason) that nobody launches missiles at us now is that we would respond by destroying the offending state. The missile defense assumes that deterrence will fail, but its advocates offer no compelling reason for why it would fail; apart from indefensible claims about the suicidal tendencies of the North Korean or Iranian leadership, or very tendentious arguments about terrorists acquiring ICBMs (seriously, if Al Qaeda had a nuke, why would they bother to put it on an ICBM?), there's just not much there. The most sensible case is the "hostage" argument; North Korea might invade the South, then attempt to deter US intervention by aiming a nuke at the West Coast. It's the best argument they have, but it doesn't amount to much; it still requires the North Korean (or Iranian, or whomever) leadership to be suicidal. But even if the argument were compelling, the missile defense would have to be 100% effective; what President would act if she seriously believed that there was a 10% chance an American city would be destroyed?

Unfortunately, I think Farley's thinking on this may lack imagination. Nobody will quite articulate it in this manner, but the purpose of NMD, it seems to me, is to facilitate American first strikes -- either nuclear or conventional depending on the adversary. The basic logic of the right's hegemonist worldview is that the United States needs to maintain the ability to effectuate "regime change" anytime and anywhere. Only NMD can really make that possible.

Comments

You may be right about ulterior motives, Matt, but if you look at the arguments actually made by NMD proponents, they always seem to boil down to a toxic blend of paranoia and a desire to increase government subsidies to the aerospace industry.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | October 12, 2007 10:40 AM

I think you're missing the point of a NMD. It isn't to stop nuclear missiles and such. That's a red herring. The system doesn't work for that domain and never really will.

However, the system will work pretty darn good as a way to guard the entry into space. It is easily fooled by decoys and such, but there are none of these messy things in satellite launches.

I just love how they have still managed to get people to argue/attack/pontificate on the program on their terms. Quite the purloined letter.

Posted by Azael | October 12, 2007 10:46 AM

Would you oppose the development of a NMD at any cost, no matter how low? As in, are you opposed to it on principle? On principle, I think I would rather have national missle defense than not--The cold war was scary because mutually assured destruction is not a comfortable state of affairs--but my understanding is that for the cost and level of effectiveness it's not worth it right now.

Posted by Wilson | October 12, 2007 10:50 AM

It's about putting money in the pockets of the Military Industrial Complex and it's about looking tough. That's really all it's about. The US has perfectly good first strike capability.

Posted by togolosh | October 12, 2007 10:55 AM

Why look for one single reason to explain the appeal of missile defense? It's like the endless wrangling over whether the war in Iraq was "about" oil or democracy or Israel or Bush's Dad or whatever. Or like arguing about why Gore lost in 2000. There are multiple, mutually-reinforcing factors in play.

* Subsidies for high-tech & aerospace industries

* Domestic political advantage (GOP base likes it)

* Genuine idealism (an improvement over MAD if it actually worked)

* Facilitating a hypothetical US first strike, as Matt suggests

By the way -- has anyone ever read a good explanation of how NMD proponents respond to the obvious criticism that a country or terrorist group would just sneak a bomb into the US on a boat or truck? This seems so unavoidable that I would assume someone must have come up with at least a fig-leaf kind of reply to that objection. Is it just "Well, the system might not be perfect but at least it'd help"?

Posted by J | October 12, 2007 11:38 AM

I think you are basically right about the purpose of NMD to its proponents--to remove the deterrent threats of others, not safeguard against a failure of deterrence. That said, if you believe deterrence is strong, why care about nuclear proliferation at all? Part of the reason is that there is good cause to worry about accidental launch, or state fracture and an ensuing launch from the struggle for control of the state, and other failures of central authority. It would not be rational to launch a missile at America, but there are all kinds of way to irrationally launch a missile other than a suicidal paranoia. NMD is a bad idea, but that is not to say that all arguments in favor of it are uniformly bad.

Posted by brendan green | October 12, 2007 11:39 AM

Whenver I hear about NMD, I think back to one of my professors in undergrad who worked on it at Lawrence-Livermore National Labs. He said, and I quote (from memory, but it's brief, so I'm confident): "It'll never work. I've shown them the physics that says it won't work. They're doing it anyways."

Posted by James F. Elliott | October 12, 2007 11:42 AM

Togolosh is right. All this head scratching and looking for "real" or "secret" motives really does go away when you stop trying to believe that our military spending choices are being made primarily for rational national security purposes. Part of it is the illusion that we are only interested in defense, but the main part of it is business. Why are we building a new strike fighter, why do we keep building aircraft carriers, why are we building new attack submarines, why do we spend half of the world's total expenditures on armaments, why are politicians posturing that we are in a global war on terror? Why does no one talk about the Iraq war in terms of spending priorities, why does no one talk about defense spending as a way to reduce expenditures.

It is all an emotionally effective way to use the taxing and borrowing authority of the federal government to redistribute wealth. Even if there are true believers or useful idiots that make the case for all those things, or the real secret reasons for those things, none of it would matter unless a whole lot of people's livelihoods and wealth depended on commanding those capital flows.

Posted by Doug Elliott | October 12, 2007 11:43 AM

I think it also "lacks imagination" to believe that "no US President would ever act if he seriously believed that there was a 10% chance a US city would be destroyed." Destruction of a US city by an enemy would give the GOP a major boost, and in the Jihad-fighter mentality, it would not be the "fault" of the President who took the action, provided that President were a Republican.

This is especially true if the city to be destroyed were on the West Coast. None of those cities elect Republicans anyway.

Posted by brooksfoe | October 12, 2007 11:48 AM

LaFollette Progressive's link (to Claremont) is a good case in point. There's a lot of insane ravings (about how 9/11 was brought about by a bunch of foreign nations trying to take down the US) and a lot about ballistic missiles.

But nothing about ships, except -- hey, maybe Libya or somebody would put a ballistic missile on a ship, sneak it up close to our coast, and then launch it. The authors of that website assure us that a good NMD system could intercept a ship-launched missile regardless of its proximity to our coast. But they don't say why this hypothetical ship wouldn't just sail right into Baltimore Harbor and explode the nuke in-situ.

Surely someone has addressed this.

Posted by J | October 12, 2007 11:49 AM

"It'll never work. I've shown them the physics that says it won't work. They're doing it anyways."

I guess it depends on your definition of "work." In my opinion, the primary purpose of the defense system is to provide lucrative contracts to companies that support the Republican Party. In essence, the Republicans are using this issue to finance themselves. On that account, the system works quite well.

Posted by fostert | October 12, 2007 11:49 AM

"It'll never work. I've shown them the physics that says it won't work. They're doing it anyways."

They laughed at Galileo too! /depressed snark

Posted by brooksfoe | October 12, 2007 11:54 AM

The point of the NMD is not really to make a first strike possible, but only to change the relative balance of power. The point is not to use it, but to have it as a counter to someone else's threat. In any negotiation with the Soviet Union, they always had the threat of destruction. If their ICBM is only 10% as effective as ours, that substantially changes the negotiating position.

Similarly, assuming Iran wants a nuclear weapon, it is not so they can use it, but because it improves their negotiating position relative to other powers.

Simple game theory, really. The real argument is over whether it costs too much to get that negotiating advantage, not that it serves no purpose.

Posted by Duke | October 12, 2007 12:30 PM

There's also the question, Duke, of whether NMD provides any advantage at all. 90% effectiveness was a number thrown out there to demonstrate a point. So far, I don't believe SDI has shown anything approaching even 1% effectiveness. I doubt that has much effect on the "game".

Posted by Rob Mac | October 12, 2007 1:03 PM

"By the way -- has anyone ever read a good explanation of how NMD proponents respond to the obvious criticism that a country or terrorist group would just sneak a bomb into the US on a boat or truck? "

Good? No. I read a Krauthammer piece about how it would be much easier to launch ICBMs in to the US than it would be to smuggle in a bomb. He didn't feel compelled to go into details, because obviously, nothing ever gets smuggled into the US.

Posted by Njorl | October 12, 2007 1:21 PM

I agree with some of the posters that NMD is not "rational," in the sense that there is no publicly-acceptable end for which NMD is a rational means. But these posters suggest that the unstated end is enriching the military-industrial complex. I am not persuaded. There are so many ways of enriching the military-industrial complex. Why this one?

I think that the most significant unstated end of NMD lies in the psychology of the bedwetter right. They hate competing sovereignties, and autonomous nation-states. They fear them too. They only feel safe if they have ultimate protection, and ultimate power. And that's what NMD means to the bedwetters. An ever-so-safe ultimate revenge fantasy.

Posted by Joe S. | October 12, 2007 1:22 PM

I have to agree with J. NMD is happening because many different people support it for many different reasons. Some of those people are dumb, some of those people are misinformed, some are using it to their advantage and some are a combination of the above. Sneaky true motives are not really an important issue here.

Posted by mpowell | October 12, 2007 1:53 PM

Of course the goal is to enable a first strike, or threaten with a strike even if it's only bluff.

Money for the military-industrial-complex is nice, but it doesn't explain why this particular project.

Posted by abb1 | October 12, 2007 2:08 PM

All you armchair generals overlooked two possible attacks which NMD is needed to deter:

a) A nuclear attack on the USA by proxy -- e.g., China bribes North Korea's leader to nuke the USA --in order to cripple our economy -- in exchange for a lifetime in China of luxury.

b) A covert op in which a ship of deniable source launches an IRBM at the USA from about 500 miles out -- but with the nuke exploding about 80 miles up. CReating an electromagnetic pulse which destroys much of the US computer network, power grid, and economy.

Posted by Don Williams | October 12, 2007 2:22 PM

Joe, you answer the question "why this one?" with your next paragraph. Because it works. Why do applications for research grants get spun with a national security angle? It is an adaptation to what strategy works best for extracting wealth. People try all kinds of things but stick with what works and what works attracts more people doing the same thing.

Why it works, why it gets support, is an interesting psychological, political question. I am suggesting any military spending has a built in advantage because of all the people who have an economic stake in keeping the cash flowing towards them. Of military programs, ones that have no deliverable goal or timeline would be preferred. Ones that have little public scrutiny would be preferred and ones that represent protection from an existential threat would be preferred.

The point is that Matt is just off base, it seems to me, suggesting that competing strategic uses for the theoretical end product is really what is motivating the program in any way.

Posted by Doug | October 12, 2007 2:26 PM

the purpose of NMD, it seems to me, is to facilitate American first strikes

That's certainly how America's strategic rivals would see it.

Posted by Gregory | October 12, 2007 2:54 PM

cold war was scary because mutually assured destruction is not a comfortable state of affairs

Quite right -- which is likely why the US and USSR kept the missiles in their silos.

So in asking if one is opposed to missile defense in principle, ask: Do we want to make it easier for one side to launch a nuclear strike with impugnity? And are we prepared to accept the risks that spring from the opposing side's being well aware of the imabalance?

Posted by Gregory | October 12, 2007 2:58 PM

Do Republicans actually think this will work? I was always under the impression this was just a way for them to funnel money to their friends and campaign contributors. This proposal is just so far beyond our current level of technology that I always assumed the driving force of this 'research' was corruption. The goal of near immunity from nuclear strike is laughable. It's simply impossible, and it certainly can't be done with any sort of interception technology.

Posted by Soullite | October 12, 2007 3:03 PM

People forget NMD is part of a layered system that does have 1st Strike use, as MY suggests, but also considerable military and strategic utility in ending credible nuclear blackmail threats from small to medium size nuclear powers, theater protection of bases and naval assets outside CONUS, and allies - who justly wonder if we would trade Manila or Kyoto or Amman to nail N Korea or Iran at the risk of losing Ramstein AFB or Minneapolis.

NMD is not only space-based, but has systems for boost phase including existing Aegis, Patriot III systems and "drawing board systems" of high promise that NATO and the Japanese are also working hard on..plus closer-in systems inc. the aforementioned missile systems that are designed to hit warheads before they reach ideal air-burst, seaburst detonation heights.

And critics incorrectly focus on "perfection" - deterrance is when you and your enemy know that they cannot inflict civilization-ending nuclear devestation on you, but you can utterly destroy them. The strategists look at countries and say - 3 nukes would end Israel, 11 would irretrievably end Iran, 65 would end Russia, 85 America, and 90 China. America, though it would be horrible and more casualties than any nation save the Soviets suffered in WWII - could survive 15 nuke bombs hitting it, and supposedly recover GNP in 5 years, net population in 7 years.

Critics that say missile defense is "useless" because N Korea could "easily" have a ship sail into one of our harbors neglect that we can control air and shipping anywhere near us if the NORKs do not attack out of the blue. In a crisis, we could track all 32 ocean-going N Korean ships, all airplanes. Not let any get within 100 miles of target through intercept or destruction..

Whenver I hear about NMD, I think back to one of my professors in undergrad who worked on it at Lawrence-Livermore National Labs. He said, and I quote (from memory, but it's brief, so I'm confident): "It'll never work. I've shown them the physics that says it won't work. They're doing it anyways."
Posted by James F. Elliott

Pity your anectdotal physics genius was wrong. The physics does work. The testing program for boost phase, high space, and close-in interceptions has had considerable success in interception of ICBM and anti-ship missiles. Japan SDF has tested their Aegis NMD variant against MRBMs and SRBMs and their test results are quite good so far. The Japanese are heavy into beam weapon research for boost phase, decoy discrimation computer technology, as well.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 12, 2007 3:10 PM

"The authors of that website assure us that a good NMD system could intercept a ship-launched missile regardless of its proximity to our coast."

Random speculation.

"America, though it would be horrible and more casualties than any nation save the Soviets suffered in WWII - could survive 15 nuke bombs hitting it, and supposedly recover GNP in 5 years, net population in 7 years."

Random speculation.

"In a crisis, we could track all 32 ocean-going N Korean ships, all airplanes. Not let any get within 100 miles of target through intercept or destruction."

God forbid they use someone else's ship or smuggle suitcase bombs. You are also wrong about the rate of success, and even if you were not wrong, there are numerous other means of getting a step ahead of the system, and we would not know whether these had been developed until too late.

Posted by bob | October 12, 2007 3:35 PM

Chris confuses physics with technology. Of course we can get NMD to work. Just the same way my ninja sword would work at taking out the entire US Army. Both could work pretty well, as long as the other side nicely promised that they would take no countermeasures.

The problem is that countermeasures are far, far cheaper than NMD. Chris cannot invent an anticountermeasure capability by simply saying so. Bob did a nice job of pointing out one of Chris' worst howlers: "In a crisis, we could track all 32 ocean-going N Korean ships, all airplanes. Not let any get within 100 miles of target through intercept or destruction." If we have that kind of superduper capacity, why are there any illegal drugs coming in through Florida?

Posted by Joe S. | October 12, 2007 3:42 PM

One of the best critiques I've ever heard of national missile defense comes from Ken Waltz's 1990 article in The American Political Science Review:

"Finally, let us imagine what is most unimaginable of all: both sides [in the US-Soviet conflict] deploy defenses that are both impregnable and durable. Such defenses would make the world safe for World War III - fought presumably in the manner of World War II but with conventional weapons of much greater destructive power."

Posted by Austin McKinley | October 12, 2007 3:54 PM

By spending money on missile defense, how many spies in N. Korea, Iran, Syria or China do we forego? Even if we accept a paranoid and aggressive worldview, which is the better application of that money?

I think we probably have a much better chance of bribing scientists to screw up guidance systems and such than we do of shooting down missiles. We can get the apparatus to do it in place more quickly and more cheaply. It also causes less diplomatic problems.

Posted by Njorl | October 12, 2007 4:37 PM

out one of Chris' worst howlers: "In a crisis, we could track all 32 ocean-going N Korean ships, all airplanes. Not let any get within 100 miles of target through intercept or destruction." If we have that kind of superduper capacity, why are there any illegal drugs coming in through Florida?
Posted by Joe S

Because, moron, you confuse peacetime realities that are the only ones you understand with what we could do in an emergency.

"If we had that kind of superduper capacity, explain to me how we could ever shut down all air traffic above the United States and block any inbound planes from coming in!!!"

How quick cretins forget that is just what we did shifting from peacetime to wartime mode within 2 hours of 9/11.

In WWII, the Mexican Border was completely shut off with 40,000 troops with orders to shoot to kill anyone crossing w/o authorization and refusing to obey orders to stop.

Joe S - Chris confuses physics with technology. Of course we can get NMD to work. Just the same way my ninja sword would work at taking out the entire US Army. Both could work pretty well, as long as the other side nicely promised that they would take no countermeasures.

NMD works in terms of physics. You just argue that it can be overwhelmed by surplus number of projectiles. Which has nothing to do with physics. Nor do decoys work at all in the boost phase, nor guarantee that quantum improvements in kill vehicle discerning sensors will not work in the space phase, nor are high space decoys a factor in re-entry, time to target phase.

Nor do you understand that the goal is not perfection, but another layer of defense.

Soldier's body armor is not impermiable. Do you argue that they should go without it? That the costs are better spent on "underachieving children, smoking cessation programs," etc.?

America, though it would be horrible and more casualties than any nation save the Soviets suffered in WWII - could survive 15 nuke bombs hitting it, and supposedly recover GNP in 5 years, net population in 7 years."
Random speculation

No, RAND Group thermonuclear war, terrorist nuclear strike economic Study.
You on the other hand, by saying this and the ability to stop the NORK shipping fleet is "random speculation" - just engage in the usual ill-informed "Lefty head up your ass" syndrome.

Posted by Chris Ford | October 12, 2007 5:46 PM

LMFAO Rand. Yeah, a study commissioned by a bunch of engineers and statistical economists is really going to move us.

You're a fucking moron and you're in comic-book territory. In reality, actual missile tests PROVE that the shield we are developing can be overcome with decoys or multiple projectiles so long as the target does not have a homing beacon placed on it. You may as well be suggesting we deploy platforms to emit high-density sound waves to crush these missiles, or manipulate as-of-yet undiscovered gravitons to create an anti-gravity shield to surround the united states. While what you suggest MIGHT be physically possible, it is not within our ability to do. I really doubt you can create infinite, pinpoint accurate interceptors, and even if you can, it will not protect you from nuclear weapons.

Lets look at reality, shall we: Even if you create this 'shield' over the united states, an enemy can still detonate multiple weapons outside of your canopy and cover your territory with radioactive water vapor and dust. Even if you can enforce that shield across the skies of this planet, an enemy could have greater success with submersible delivery devices.

What you are suggesting is not possible. It will not likely be possible at any point in the future, as by the time we're capable of working out the problems with it we will likely have more lethal weapons than nukes. It's a pipe dream that people like you like to fantasize about because you really, really want to nuke someone and you can't do that if they can nuke you back.

Posted by soullite | October 12, 2007 6:30 PM

"Money for the military-industrial-complex is nice, but it doesn't explain why this particular project."

Sure, it does. It's a project that won't ever work, but can be IMAGINED to work - especially in the absence of any other (allowed) concepts. Can you imagine how much money can be made throwing money into that hole for decades?

It's perfect.

Besides, it involves monkeys throwing shit at each other - the standard monkey fighting technique (when they aren't ripping each others balls off...)

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 13, 2007 1:14 AM

Here's another fun problem with the concept: it's designed to prevent attacks of a certain kind.

Unfortunately, at the moment, nobody has any intelligence that anybody is planning any such attacks - and worse, that anybody outside of maybe Russia and China COULD at this point plan any such attacks. And of course, Russia and China would be nuts to try any such thing.

The rest of the countries with nukes who might be our enemies - oops, that should be "country" - North Korea - because nobody else but Pakistan has nukes that could conceivably be our enemy enough to actually use them...

Which means that once this wonderful system is in place, those attacks won't be planned.

Instead, attacks for which we have no defense will be planned.

Like, North Korea has submarines and submersibles - and Special Forces troops trained to use them to infiltrate - that could deliver a nuke to the West Coast - despite Ford's belief in the wonderful powers of our tracking systems. Which the NMD would be useless against.

It's the old "how do you defend against what you don't know" problem.

The answer is: you can't.

So you don't waste money trying. You defend against what are obviously easy attacks. You lock your door, you put in an alarm system. You don't try to defend against somebody driving a tank through your front door. If you think you might be a car bomb victim, meaning you're really paranoid, you might put concrete blocks in your driveway. But then you don't try to defend against bin Laden dropping a plane on your house.

Of course, if the money isn't yours, and it's only going to a bunch of guys who paid you campaign money and bribes, then maybe you do spend that money.

But it will be just as useless as the guy spending it on protecting himself from a plane falling on his house.

Point-specific defenses rarely work - and never against terrorists, because terrorists always work AROUND defenses, not through them.

Instead of spending the money on the NMD, spend it on an intelligence apparatus that will KNOW when somebody is going to attack us, and a military that can use a precision attack to take out the weapon and the persons ordering the attack. That is WAY cheaper than spending billions on a system that might not ever work, and even if it did, it will only defend from a very narrow set of circumstances.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | October 13, 2007 1:28 AM

"Would you oppose the development of a NMD at any cost, no matter how low? As in, are you opposed to it on principle? On principle, I think I would rather have national missle defense than not--The cold war was scary because mutually assured destruction is not a comfortable state of affairs--but my understanding is that for the cost and level of effectiveness it's not worth it right now.

Posted by Wilson | October 12, 2007 10:50 AM"

What does it matter? It's like asking presidential candidates what they would wish for if they had a genie. It's not going to ever happen, so who cares?

MAD is not the greatest thing in the world, but at least it provides stability. As Waltz noted, this would just make conventional great power war a greater possibility. Communism may have been horrible, but WWIII between NATO-Japan and the USSR and/or China directly would have been worse. It's also worth asking if we would ever accept any other nation, including the UK, to ever have such capability. If such a system did ever come online successfully that included first-strike capability, China, Russia and who knows who else would want to develop their own, which would allow first-strike capability over us and doing so would be the only thing that would allow for stability. When you have first-strike capability over someone, they tend to get paranoid. Paranoia is one of the worst things for the world to have influencing world leaders.

Posted by Reality Man | October 13, 2007 8:06 AM