Ballistic Missile Defense and the Atlantic Alliance

Defense and the Atlantic Alliance I T h e Atlantic Alliance may be at the threshold of a new debate on the implications of ballistic missile defense (BMD) for European security. Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and several U.S. Senators and Congressmen support a thorough review of U.S. BMD options, including possible revision of the 1972 AntiBallistic Missile (ABM)Treaty and its 1974Protocol. Although active defense of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs)seems the most likely application for BMD, other strategic defense options are reportedly under consideration. European-based BMD against theater ballistic missiles such as the SS-20, SS21 , SS-22, and SS-23 is being examined as well. Such defenses are known as anti-tactical ballistic missiles (ATBM)or anti-tacticalmissiles (ATM).The term “ATM” is preferred in that it implies capability against cruise as well as ballistic missiles. The political and strategic issues that BMD programs could raise within the Alliance should be explored as deliberately as possible before economic resources are committed. Material for preliminary analysis resides in previous Alliance deliberations on BMD and in the informal discussions recently provoked in Europe by obvious U.S. interest in BMD options, including ATM. The issues go to the heart of NATO’s established theory of deterrence and offer an opportunity for fundamental reassessment. This essay is based on extensive interviews in Europe in 1980 and 1981. Despite obvious risks of over-simplification, owing to the diversity of views in each country on most issues, I have chosen to conform to standard practice by referring to the “Europeans“ as a shorthand for what appear to have been and to remain dominant trends in West European opinion. Special thanks are owed to Colin Gray, who first encouraged me to investigate this topic, and to various observers in government and industry (including Benson Adams, Guy Barasch, Charles Kupperman , and Richard Nuttall) who commented on earlier drafts. The views expressed are nonetheless mine exclusively, and should not be construed to represent those of the Department of the Navy or any U.S. government agency. David S. Yost is an Assistant Professor at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California. He is the author of European Security and the SALT Process, Washington Paper, Number 85 (Beverly Hills and London: Sage Publications, 1981) and editor of NATO’s Strategic Options: Arms Control and Defense (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981). International Security, Fall 1982 (Vol. 7, No. 2) 0162-28891821010143-32 $02.5010 01982 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 143 lnfernational Security I 144 Alliance BMD Deliberations, 1967-1968 The previous Alliance deliberations on BMD helped to form European attitudes that have become firmly entrenched over the past fifteen years. The principal deliberations took place in Nuclear Planning Group (NPG)meetings from April 1967through April 1968. The two key issues were U.S. plans for the Sentinel ABM system and the possibility of BMD in Europe. McNamara’s September 1967 speech announcing the decision to deploy the Sentinel ABM system for defense of the United States against projected Chinese strategic capabilities “created considerable resentment among the allies” for several reasons, including convictions that “the announcement had been made without sufficient consultation and that the United States had failed to honour its obligations to the NPG.” ’The anti-Chinese orientation of Sentinel was seen in Europe as based on ”hysterical and dangerous” American fears of China, so that ”the dangers that are thought to arise from BMD deployment seem to be incurred for no good reason.”2 These presumed dangers were partly those thoroughly articulated by the American opponents of BMD at approximately the same time-above all, that strategic stability and prospects for arms control and detente would be needlessly endangered by highly expensive technology that probably would not be reliably effective. Few indeed were the Europeans of that era who supported a U.S. BMD program as in the West European interest because it might promote coupling by assuring the continued invulnerability of American retaliatory force^.^ The most frequently offered West European argument against U.S. ABM deployment was that it would promote a neo-isolationist ”Fortress America” concept, allowing Western...