Missile Defense: Defining the Threat

The Phantom Defense: America's Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion, By Craig Eisendrath, Melvin A. Goodman, and Gerald E. Marsh (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Trade, 2001). 216 pp. $24.95.

This 200-page critique of long-range national missile defense is crisply written and well informed, but somewhat disappointing. Like most analyses of the missile defense issue, it is too opinionated and too dismissive of the valid arguments of the opposing camp. Consequently, the book reinforces the tendency of most work in this area to perpetuate the ongoing dialogue of the deaf that has characterized the missile defense debate for at least twenty years. But even so, the book is a well argued and a rather comprehensive treatise, despite its short length. At a minimum, most opponents of missile defense will find it smart and appealing.

The Phantom Defense's three authors, Craig Eisendrath, Gerald Marsh, and Melvin Goodman, combine technical, diplomatic, and intelligence expertise on a subject that demands all three. Unlike many coauthors, they establish and maintain a clear, consistent voice throughout the short, but highly informative volume. Their good prose is complemented by the book's clear and comprehensive structure. The book begins with a history of the subject, then assesses the current threat posed by long-range ballistic missiles, before turning to a technical critique of various missile defense concepts, and finally estimates the diplomatic and strategic costs of any decision by the United States to abandon the ABM Treaty and deploy a shield against such threats for itself and its allies.

The authors convincingly argue that the near-term ballistic missile threat to the United States is limited in magnitude, that some technologies for countering such missiles will be difficult to develop and vulnerable to simple countermeasures once they are developed, and that any decision to deploy missile defenses in a way that seriously damages great-power relations could do more harm than good for U.S. security. Most of these arguments are well known to those interested in the missile defense debate, but the authors synthesize them in the form of a useful commercial book.

In the aftermath of the tragic September 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, the case advanced by Eisendrath, Marsh, and Goodman is even stronger. The experience demonstrated both the non-missile threats facing this country and the need for multilateral cooperation in addressing them. Missile defense could not have prevented the September 11 tragedy, and, if deployed recklessly, could even have impeded the ability of the United States to gain Russian and Chinese help in facing down the terrorists.

For all the book's strengths, however, it suffers from a number of weaknesses--some of them shortcomings of analysis, and some of them problems of tone and style. Many undecided readers will find this book too polemical and stop reading quickly, depriving the authors of the very readership they would most want to convince. Further, while the authors' argument against an overly ambitious and hastily deployed missile defense is convincing, they do a poor job of dismissing the case for a limited defense.

To get a feel for the book's problem with tone, consider this passage in its concluding paragraphs that criticizes U.S. foreign policy for alleged arrogance and unilateralism: "The myth of American exceptionalism has dominated Washington's post-Cold War strategy. Washington has resorted to the language of the Cold War in dealing with Iran and Iraq ('dual containment') and with such weak and impoverished states as North Korea, Cuba, and Libya ('rogue states'). This is the language of tutelage, not statesmanship." Do the authors really mean to suggest that these countries only require better understanding and soothing words? In other parts of the book they pursue obscure tangents, criticizing the Clinton administration's war in Kosovo and other elements of its foreign policy in an effort to place the missile defense issue within a broader context. For this reader, at least, such passages...