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The Washington Quarterly 23.3 (2000) 127-133



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Brussels's Burden

François Heisbourg

International Perspectives on National Missile Defense

Well into the year 2000, a strategic analyst can only be struck by the lack of public debate in Europe on the United States' projected NMD. Part of this is attributable to ignorance: European politicians tend to know as little about U.S. NMD as most U.S. politicians do about the new defense policy of the European Union (EU). Until NMD becomes a political reality, Europeans not specialized in defense matters are not going to focus on it. Those Europeans who do follow strategic affairs do not, as a rule, like NMD, much in the same way that the congressional armed services committees and the U.S. secretaries of state and defense are not exactly enthusiastic about the new European Defense Policy (EDP).

There is another similarity between NMD and EDP. In both cases, these policies are graduating from concepts into the real world. The Europeans most directly involved know, as Ivo Daalder and others put it, that NMD deployment is not a question of whether but of how, 1 in the same way that the relevant U.S. policymakers now assume that EDP will happen.

The EDP is now firmly established as part of the transatlantic dialogue. The EDP includes the creation of defense institutions within the EU, including inter alia a military committee, and the creation of a European rapid reaction force of 60,000 soldiers by the year 2003. A move toward establishing a European defense identity raises U.S. fears of duplication with, and discrimination within, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). NMD, on the other hand, has been the subject of relatively little debate and could erupt on the political scene in a brutal and uncontrollable manner, poisoning U.S.-European relations. As a French saying goes, one should beware of sleeping waters. Although the degree of virulence of European reactions will depend on the exact circumstances of the NMD decision, the [End Page 127] backlash will be stronger because there has not been much of a debate, with limited exceptions such as U.S. secretary of defense William Cohen's hard-sell of NMD at this year's Wehrkunde. 2 The discussion should be nurtured, on both official and nonofficial tracks, before the actual decision is made.

How Europe's Interests Will Be Affected by NMD

The assumption here is that NMD will be what the current U.S. administration says it will be (a limited system capable of dealing with a small number of ballistic missiles) and, furthermore, that it will actually do what it is supposed to. That may be an excessive leap of faith as to what the technology can accomplish. But, if the tests preceding the deployment decision prove satisfactory, this is a sensible way to focus the transatlantic debate. Europeans are well advised to assume that the decision on NMD will be made by the United States, irrespective of what the Europeans might think or say about its technical feasibility. European analysts understand that this scheme is not a remake of Star Wars, which elicited vehement European opposition on doctrinal and political grounds, but which was often and rightly dismissed as a technological fantasy that eventually collapsed under its own weight.

Four main areas of European interest would be affected by NMD. First, there would be the opportunity cost of the scheme. The funds involved would be considerable, with a $28 billion figure on a 20 year period mentioned by the General Accounting Office. The part devoted to the total procurement, $10 billion for NMD, would represent the equivalent of 11 percent of this year's U.S. procurement spending at fiscal year 2000 levels. 3

In the absence of NMD, these are resources that would presumably have been available for defense items upon which there is a degree of transatlantic agreement. Improving U.S. force projection capabilities, or sustaining the U.S. force presence in Europe and Asia. Nevertheless, even if the project encountered the usual cost overruns, the amounts are not such...

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