Decision to defy missile treaty sends dangerous message, Panofsky says

BY CHRISTIAN HEUSS

President George W. Bush's decision to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is purely a political act, said W. K. H. Panofsky during a Jan. 23 seminar. The president's decision to withdraw from the treaty and to create a national missile-defense shield sent a dangerous message to the public that a defense against a missile-based nuclear attack is technically feasible, Panofsky said during the talk given at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

"The withdrawal of the ABM Treaty will be highly counterproductive," said Panofsky, a long-term participant of CISAC and director emeritus of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. One of the world's most influential experts in the nuclear weapons policy debate, Panofsky analyzed Bush's decision to withdraw from the treaty and sketched possible consequences.

The 1972 ABM Treaty between the Soviet Union and the United States prevented the two countries from building nationwide missile-defense systems and restricted testing of ABM technology. A ballistic missile is one whose payload reaches its target by way of an initial powered boost and then a free flight along a high-arcing trajectory. Part of the flight of long-range ballistic missiles may occur outside the atmosphere and may involve the "reentry" of a missile or its warhead. An anti-ballistic missile system is intended to intercept and destroy long-range ballistic missiles and their warheads in flight.

For several decades, in accordance with the treaty, the U.S. government has pursued limited tests of anti-ballistic missile programs. They ranged from Reagan's "Star Wars" plan, designed to employ satellites for intercepting incoming missiles, to Clinton's surface-to-air "mid-course intercept" program, which was intended to prevent the reentry of intercontinental missiles into the Earth's atmosphere.

All the individual developmental tests have provided little, if any, evidence that a national missile defense will even work, Panofsky said. And tests that can evaluate effectiveness under realistic conditions are years away. "The U.S. has spent about $100 billion with nothing substantial to show for it," he said.

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Bush often criticized the design of Clinton's proposed ground-based missile-defense system as inadequate. Instead, Bush proposed a multi-layered missile-defense program involving systems not only on the ground but on ships and satellites as well.

As the system proposed by the Bush administration does not yet have a defined architecture, Panofsky said, costs are difficult to estimate. "They would likely be in the hundreds of billions of dollars," he said. Plus, Congress would need to approve budgetary expenditures over many years.

Panofsky added that technically, an impenetrable national missile-defense shield is almost impossible to achieve. Technology-capable nations would be tempted to overpower such shields with increasingly lethal weapons. Therefore, the deployment of an ABM system would motivate nuclear-capable countries to increase their offensive penetration of the defensive shield. "An anti-ballistic missile defense will be escalatory," Panofsky said.

While some have argued that rogue states such as North Korea, Iran or Iraq may not have the financial or technical capabilities to modify their nuclear missiles against an ABM defense shield, Panofsky said this is a weak argument: "Nuclear weapons can be delivered by many means other than ballistic missiles." Rogue nations are much more likely to employ "low-tech" delivery techniques such as detonating nuclear bombs on board ships close to U.S. territory or even smuggling nuclear weapons into the United States, he said.

Although Russian President Vladimir Putin's reaction to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty was modest, the uncertain reaction of China, a nuclear power, is of great concern, Panofsky said. "Some Chinese military officials may overestimate the technical capabilities of the U.S. and overreact." Should China's response indeed result in substantial augmentation of its strategic nuclear force, it may trigger nuclear proliferation in Asia. "If the Chinese react, then India followed by Pakistan will react as well," he said.

In Panofsky's view, the ABM Treaty is not a relic of the Cold War; it is still needed to dampen the escalations of nuclear armaments. "Technical and military realities cannot be coerced by simple policy," Panofsky said, referring to the long-standing commitment by conservative members of the Bush administration to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. Protection from a nuclear attack, he said, must be sought through a combination of political efforts, deterrence and reductions of nuclear weapons -- not by the futile pursuit of a comprehensive and costly technical defense.

"If you look at the technical difficulties, the large costs and the fiscal constraints, the probability that there ever will be a national missile defense is low."