Examines issues of the day against a triumvirate of core principles: liberty, responsibility and justice.
comments: americanbeacon@hotmail.com
|
|
| |
|
|
| |
This is where you stick random tidbits of information about yourself.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| |
Thursday, February 13, 2003
This week�s news that North Korea�s Taepodong II missile, which has not yet undergone flight tests, is capable of reaching the continental United States is not a revelation. It has long been known that North Korea, which counts ballistic missile technology as one of its most profitable exports and a key source hard currency, is capable of threatening the American homeland. What this piece of news does provide the chance to do, though, is to study the distinctly opposite approaches with which Republicans and Democrats have approached the problem of ballistic missile proliferation. The differing postures regarding threat management, Democrats denying the existence of problems until they fully materialize and Republicans hoping to confront them early, serve a useful lesson with regard to Iraq and the war on terror.
The history of warfare is replete with the development of weapons and defenses that have been alternatively unsheathed to counter each other. With the tandem threat of ballistic missile and nuclear proliferation emerging as the most dangerous menace posed by traditional military forces, this history suggests that missile defense will be the next major development in defense technology. And while America has established unquestioned leadership in this area, it is only because of the steadfastness of Republican political leaders that this is the case.
Indeed, it is only due to the remarkable strategic foresight of Ronald Reagan, unveiled in his 1983 speech announcing the Strategic Defense Initiative, that America is now two decades into this effort. The politicized reaction to strategic defense was indicative of the reactionary response of Democrats to any Republican proposal. In matters military, it is more than likely that Democrats will be in opposition to major new weapons systems and, when it came to missile defense, this rule of thumb applied perfectly. Democrats instinctively dismissed missile defense as unnecessary and tried to undermine it every step of the way. By slurring it as �Star Wars,� which both tarred it as an unachievable fantasy and labeled it as an offensive system when it was entirely defensive, they even established the early terms of the debate.
After years of haggling and veto threats between a Republican White House and a Democratic Congress, Bush 41 signed into law the Missile Defense Act of 1991, which established a variety of objectives for strategic defense. It only took less than a year for Democrats to back away from that compromise, as both the Democratic-led House and the Democratic-led Senate cut the SDI budget by 20% in their defense appropriations bills. This funding cut pushed out by several years the date by which the United States would be able to field an operational missile defense system.
But at least Presidents Reagan and Bush were in a position to force the issue. The 8 years of the Clinton presidency saw missile defense spending squeezed and the national security interest subordinated to an antiquated treaty with a non-existent entity. For opponents of SDI who salivated over the billions in SDI money they could shower on their favored interest groups, Democrats seized on the ABM Treaty as the reason we could not go forward with missile defense. Despite the fact that we do not enter into arms limitation treaties with allies and the Soviet enemy had transformed into a Russian friend, Democratic opponents of missile defense insisted that this treaty was a bedrock of global security.
From 1993-1995, when Democrats controlled all 3 branches of elected government, not much progress was made. Reflective of the Democratic tendency to minimize national security threats, President Clinton stated in 1996 that the �possibility of a long-range missile attack on American soil by a rogue state is more than a decade away.� But by then Republicans had won control of the Senate, and with it the chairmanship of key committees. As part of Bob Dole�s presidential run, the GOP pushed the Defend America Act, intended to accelerate work on a missile defense system. But the Republicans did not have a filibuster-proof majority and this effort ran into typical procedural hurdles.
Full scale support for missile defense returned with the election of George W. Bush as commander-in-chief. He campaigned on the issue consistently, and did so well before the North Korean threat became widely known to the general public. For him, it was a matter of principle: if there was a mortal danger to America it was immoral for the government not to do everything reasonably possible to avert it. An early signal that he was serious about this issue was his appointment of Donald Rumsfeld to be Secretary of Defense. It was the Rumsfeld Commission, which issued its report, while Clinton was still President, that highlighted the extreme danger posed to America by rogue states armed with ballistic missiles.
Bush 43 immediately confounded the diplomatic establishment with his announcement of America�s intention to withdraw from the ABM Treaty. Indeed, this move was tagged with the hackneyed label of �isolationism� by Democratic opponents and their patrons in European salons, who warned of a return to the arms race. But despite the noise, Bush 43 did what he knew to be best for America. In the end, not only was there no arms race, but Bush entered into an arms reduction agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
One more roadblock to strategic defense was the defection of Senator Jim Jeffords, which returned the Democrats to a position in which they could obstruct the President. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI), chairman in 2002 of the Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, inserted provisions into the appropriations bill that limited the very procurement flexibility of the Pentagon�s Missile Defense Agency that the 1991 MDA expressly included. Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, continued to be obsessed by the ABM treaty and cut $800 million slated for missile defense from the appropriations bill. Thankfully, the historic and sweeping GOP victory in the 2002 election returns committee chairmanships to the party that has proven itself more trustworthy in matters of national security.
The moral of the story is that rather than finding a way to pursue missile defense, Democrats consistently groped for reasons to hinder it. Where they routinely fell back on the ABM treaty, President Bush withdrew from it. Where they adhered to Byzantine procurement procedures that protected the traditional weapons systems favored by service chiefs, Bush and Rumsfeld promote a fundamental transformation of the Pentagon to fight wars of the future. One wonders if, with the benefit of hindsight, Democratic opponents of missile defense will acknowledge their errors in judgment. Perhaps some will, and that would be nice. It would be even better, though, if they could apply that lesson and realize that their knee-jerk opposition to soberly formulated Republican national security proposals might be as simplistic as their automaton-like opposition to missile defense.
2/13/2003 01:31:00 AM
|
|
| |
|
|
|
