Wither Missile Defense?

Robert Farley observes:

For the last two years, we have justified putting a missile defense system in Eastern Europe explicitly around the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. In addition to the extraordinary financial costs, this project has resulted in increased Russian hostility to the United States and to Russia's neighbors. And are we now to believe that this expensive and unpopular system is justified by the need to protect Poland from Iranian ballistic missiles armed with conventional warheads?

Naturally, though, the exorbitant financial cost of the program counts as a point in its favor. The US would never want to build something cheap, useless, and incredibly damaging to our relationship with Russia. But since the missile defense initiatives are so damn costly, they're also incredibly profitable to the people who build them, and thus to the members of congress who get their campaign contributions and to the think tankers who they support. The best way to kill this initiative would be a scientific breakthrough that allowed its goals to be achieved cheaply and with some efficacy. If that was on hand, diplomatic considerations just might win out.

Comments

There's always Chinese missiles. And Russian. You can't be too safe.

Posted by Horatio Parker | December 4, 2007 4:53 PM

You're contradicting yourself, Matt. If we had a scientific breakthrough that was cheap and effective, Congress would kill it because it wouldn't make them any money. In fact, Congress would never hear about it because the DoD and CIA would kill it - maybe literally...along with the scientists who invented it.

The only way to kill this initiative is to stop electing people who are bought and paid for by war profiteers.

Unfortunately, that does not include anybody running for office at this time, with the possible exception of Ron Paul - and he would be useless given the rest of Congress is full of war profiteers.

So basically, you're off into fantasy land again.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 4, 2007 4:55 PM

It is unlikely that anyone pushing missile defense will be even slightly deterred by this development. missile defense is a program subject to its own logic brought to us largely by the same folks that brought us the Iraq war, another endeavor subject to its own self-justifying logic.

Posted by chris brandow | December 4, 2007 5:03 PM

Our junior Washington pundits is learning. Tragic.

Posted by bob mcmanus | December 4, 2007 5:21 PM

Boy, are you liberals ever going to have red faces when the aliens try to invade and SDI saves the human race from enslavement.

Posted by RLaing | December 4, 2007 6:18 PM

Boy, are you liberals ever going to have red faces when the aliens try to invade and SDI saves the human race from enslavement.

Posted by RLaing | December 4, 2007 6:18 PM

And don't forget, the more you've pissed away, the more you've got to keep on spending, because if you stop spending, then everything you'd already spent is undeniably wasted.

Posted by sglover | December 4, 2007 6:38 PM

First editorial comment! It's "Whither," dude, not "wither."

Posted by neil | December 4, 2007 7:00 PM

You guys ever worry that you're fighting the last war?

This stuff . . .

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=071204233530.iix59uhf&show_article=1

. . . seems like it might be useful in plenty of scenarios.

Posted by southpaw | December 4, 2007 7:02 PM

First editorial comment! It's "Whither," dude, not "wither."

You never know here whether it's a typo or a pun. Maybe MY was expressing a hope that the case for missile defense would dry up and blow away.

Posted by kth | December 4, 2007 7:14 PM

Agree with Southpaw. NMD is not just about 10 missiles in Poland meant to deter Iran from ever building nucleat-tipped ICBMs. (Which they might be tempted to do if their enrichment activities continue.) NMD is multi-technology, with naval, ground-based, air, and possibly space platforms. And not just about missiles, but defense against indaving warplanes.

The Russians are pissed? They are pissed at everything these days from rapacious Jewish oligarchs, to uppity East European nations unwilling to defer to their former master, to high vodka prices.

Posted by Chris Ford | December 4, 2007 8:08 PM

As I pointed out at TAPped, the US has already set up a NMD batter in a territory that shares a maritime border with Russia: Alaska. Therefore, you could say "this project has resulted in increased Russian hostility to the United States and to Russia's *other* neighbors."

Posted by Grumpy | December 4, 2007 9:51 PM

The "Wither" thing is an in-joke for those who remember the old-school Matt. I hope.

Posted by live | December 4, 2007 10:22 PM

Chris Ford will be so pleased that the Russians see the logic of NMD when they make their own version and put it in Cuba...or maybe Mexico and Canada...

That would be the equivalent of what the US is doing.

Moron.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | December 4, 2007 11:32 PM

How about the scientific breakthrough of realizing the whole thing was unnecessary to begin with? We could call it the "retroactive information bomb."

And re whither vs. wither: it is one of the charms of Matt's writing that either explanation is entirely plausible.

Posted by ask | December 4, 2007 11:36 PM

missile defense is a program subject to its own logic brought to us largely by the same folks that brought us the Iraq war, another endeavor subject to its own self-justifying logic

Actually, it is a completely different set of people. So it has an even larger inertia and even more insulated from any feedback mechanism that may arise from current events.

Iraq War logic is post-cold war (or, you could even say, circa-Spanish American War); Missile Defense logic is Cold War, which draws from a much larger political and economic base.

Posted by Kolohe | December 5, 2007 3:13 AM

And isn't it still an incredibly expensive, diplomatically costly program that _doesn't actually work_?

Posted by Ray | December 5, 2007 3:36 AM

And isn't it still an incredibly expensive, diplomatically costly program that _doesn't actually work_?

Uh, no. If press accounts are to be believed, some of the technologies they're developing are starting to work and they've had several successful intercepts.

Posted by southpaw | December 5, 2007 5:36 AM

Southpaw, they also have a history of redefining 'successful' as needed.

Posted by Barry | December 5, 2007 9:07 AM

I think we'd be a lot better off spending the money on fixing our badly broken intelligence community. No one's going to launch missiles at the US or its allies if we know, or our enemies think we MIGHT know, where they came from.

This deal could have some use as a bargaining chip with the Russkies, though.

Posted by Robert Powell | December 5, 2007 10:03 AM

If press accounts are to be believed, some of the technologies they're developing are starting to work and they've had several successful intercepts.

There's a difference between "some of the technologies in NMD are starting to work" and "the whole project works".

Many of the technologies in my planned Hamster-Powered Trans-Atlantic Flying Machine have been repeatedly shown to work - the propellor, for example, is proven technology, and the little plastic drinkie bottles that provide the hamsters with water are virtually 100% reliable. The success of the project as a whole, however, is less certain.

Posted by ajay | December 5, 2007 10:25 AM

I think ajay's point is a good one. Its one thing to say that certain components of the system work. Its another thing to put it together as a workable system in the face of unknown threats and countermeasures.

One could try to justify the project on other grounds, though:
1. welfare for physicists and engineers.
2. allows development of cool technologies which may pay off later, particularly in the development of space weapons.

Posted by Jim W | December 5, 2007 10:34 AM

There's a difference between "some of the technologies in NMD are starting to work" and "the whole project works".

Many of the technologies in my planned Hamster-Powered Trans-Atlantic Flying Machine have been repeatedly shown to work - the propellor, for example, is proven technology, and the little plastic drinkie bottles that provide the hamsters with water are virtually 100% reliable. The success of the project as a whole, however, is less certain.

I could say roughly the same thing about the State Department.

The import of saying that missile defense doesn't work, by my lights, is that it doesn't shoot down missiles. And for a long time, truly, it didn't work. The interceptors couldn't get close to the targets. Now, according to the military, they're actually starting to shoot down missiles--which does seem like an important advance. Obviously, the improvement doesn't mean the program meets all our strategic needs (or ever will). Nor does it mean that the program was worth all the money. It does mean that the "and it doesn't even work" talking point has less and less cache.

So, don't worry. There are still plenty of great arguments for why we shouldn't throw gobs of money at missile defense. But let the engineers off the hook. They're getting it done (and developing very useful technology), however slowly.

Posted by southpaw | December 5, 2007 11:40 AM