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Foreword
- Brookings Institution Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
ix Should the united states deploy a national missile defense? This is one of the most important policy questions facing President George W. Bush. His decisions on missile defense will have potentially enormous consequences for America’s security and international affairs. The United States has never had a nationwide defense against missile attack. That raises questions about whether the United States will someday , out of fear of reprisal against its homeland, be deterred from projecting power abroad or at least from considering certain military options . Meanwhile, since the Pentagon’s last major policy plan, the 1997 quadrennial defense review, the potential ballistic missile threat to the American homeland has increased as missile delivery system technology has proliferated, as noted in the Rumsfeld Commission report. Yet deploying missile defenses would require modifying or even withdrawing from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In light of the end of the cold war, the treaty’s blanket prohibition on nationwide defenses arguably has been overtaken by events. Nonetheless, Moscow still values the treaty highly, as do many of America’s key allies—this guarantees that efforts to deploy missile defenses will be extremely challenging diplomatically . In addition, there are obvious technical hurdles that must be surmounted to make national missile defenses work, not to mention the budgetary issues that will be fought out in Congress. Reduced to their Foreword essentials, they boil down to the familiar question: how much insurance is enough—a matter on which honorable men and women will surely differ. James M. Lindsay and Michael E. O’Hanlon wrestle with these problems . Noting that missile defense proponents and opponents both make valid points, they nonetheless argue that each side is deaf to the other’s concerns. This book searches for a proposal for national and allied missile defense that incorporates the most important and persuasive concerns of each view. The authors are deeply grateful for the support and assistance they received from their colleagues in researching and writing this book. Richard Haass encouraged the project from the start and did much to create a lively, collegial, and constructive environment at Brookings, which greatly aided the authors as they wrote the book. The authors are also deeply indebted to Ivo Daalder, Tom Donnelly, Bates Gill, James Goldgeier , Philip Gordon, Richard Haass, and David Mosher for reading the entire manuscript and providing detailed and invaluable comments. Harold Feiveson, Steve Fetter, Richard Garwin, George Lewis, Frank von Hippel, and David Wright answered the authors’ queries on a variety of technical issues. Jason Forrester, Gregory Michaelidis, and Micah Zenko were superb research assistants who worked tirelessly and in good cheer to track down a dizzying array of facts and figures. Todd DeLelle made the process of verifying the manuscript a pleasure. Theresa Walker edited the manuscript, Carlotta Ribar proofread it, and Julia Petrakis prepared the index. The authors thank the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the John M. Olin Foundation for their financial support of this effort. The views expressed here are solely those of the authors and should not be ascribed to the persons whose assistance is acknowledged above or to the trustees, officers, or other staff members of the Brookings Institution. Michael H. Armacost President March 2001 Washington, D.C. x FOREWORD ...