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Chapter Five: The International Politics of Missile Defense
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116 The decision on whether to proceed with national missile defense involves more than assessing the threat and evaluating the feasibility of competing architectures. It also involves weighing the consequences that a national missile defense (NMD) deployment might have on international politics and America’s interests abroad. It is not overstating things to say that missile defense has become, perhaps even more than it deserves to be, a matter of great interest around the globe. It is also true that a U.S. decision to deploy a national missile defense could cause more harm than good for U.S. security. For example, Americans might be worse off with a deployed NMD system if the price is a Russian decision to reverse some arms cuts and suspend collaborative work with the United States on consolidating and securing its oversized and aging nuclear stockpile. A quick scan of newspaper headlines might suggest that national missile defense pits the United States against the rest of the world. Russia and China view themselves as potential targets of a U.S. NMD system and typically voice views ranging from deep skepticism to outright hostility to the idea. Many of America’s NATO allies oppose it, and those that do not hope the issue will go away. But on closer inspection the image of unified world opposition fades, and a much more complex picture emerges. Russia acknowledges that the spread of ballistic missile technology poses a threat and says it might support some types of missile defense. America’s The International Politics of Missile Defense CHAPTER FIVE European allies tend to criticize missile defense, but their objections will likely diminish to the extent that Russia’s concerns can be addressed. Other friends and allies—such as Israel, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia, and a few others—quietly or publicly support U.S. efforts to develop theater missile defense (TMD) and often also NMD. Countries differ in how they evaluate missile defense not just because they have different relations with the United States but also because they inhabit different strategic environments. Moscow, with its thousand longrange ballistic missiles, looks at missile defense differently than China with only twenty. Israeli leaders who saw their country hit by Scud missiles in the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and Japanese officials who saw North Korea fire a long-range missile over their heads, think differently about defenses than German officials who see no threat. Because countries see missile defense through the prisms of their own national interests and regional threat assessments, it may be possible to craft a missile defense policy that garners substantial international support. Why should the United States care how the international community might react? It is not because other countries should have a veto over American foreign policy or because the United States is trying to win the Miss Congeniality award. Rather, the United States needs to consider international reaction because other countries, whether Americans like it or not, can make the United States pay a strategic, military, and diplomatic price for building a missile defense. It is important to know what this price might be so Americans can decide whether they want to pay it—and whether there are some viable missile defense concepts that would keep it as low as possible. Russia Discussions about the international consequences of missile defense typically focus on Russia for understandable reasons. Russia not only possesses a nuclear arsenal equal to America’s, but the two are partners to the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, which bars both countries from building national missile defenses. If the United States builds an NMD system, it will have to persuade Moscow to renegotiate the treaty or invoke its legal right to withdraw from the treaty on six months’ notice. That may be a Hobson’s choice because Russia officially opposes modifying the ABM Treaty. Moscow insists that the treaty is crucial to preserving strategic stability and preventing a new arms race. Yet Moscow’s THE INTERNATIONAL POLITICS OF MISSILE DEFENSE 117 [44.210.86.29] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:44 GMT) behavior and strategic interests suggest that its opposition to modifying the treaty may not be immutable. The mixed signals coming from Moscow explain why the Clinton administration believed that it might be possible to negotiate changes to the ABM Treaty. Russian officials had held discussions with the first Bush administration on the possibility of amending the treaty to permit national missile defense, talks the Clinton...