By Arthur I. Cyr
President Donald Trump’s dramatic surprise announcement prioritizing an advanced missile defense to protect the United States continues to generate debate. “Iron Dome” is the name of the effective anti-missile defense system protecting Israel.
Actually, missile defense is a well-established United States policy. North Korea threats led the Obama administration to deploy Lockheed Martin’s Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea, Hawaii and the island of Guam.
The George W. Bush administration announced the deployment of ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Initially, the Obama administration planned to limit such weapons to sea-based forces, but Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine led to land-based deployment. Thereafter, a NATO summit meeting emphasized missile defense and new troop deployments in Europe.
The debate over the best balance of defensive and offensive military capabilities is as old as warfare. Technology complicates but does not abolish this dual challenge.
"Hitting a bullet with a bullet'' is the way even proponents of anti-missile systems describe the extraordinary technical challenge. Nonetheless, there has been sustained pressure within the U.S. government for many years to build such weapons.
There also has been remarkable success in the development of these complex weapon systems.
During the Eisenhower administration, defense spending absorbed more than half the entire federal budget and a much larger percentage of gross domestic product than today. President Dwight Eisenhower maintained control over the military primarily, though not exclusively, by putting an overall ceiling on the Pentagon budget, effectively setting the Air Force, Army and Navy against one another for available resources.
One byproduct was considerable duplication of effort. For example, each service developed a separate strategic missile program, jealously guarding research and development information from the other.
In the successor Kennedy administration, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara was immediately offended by the lack of formal logic in this approach and decisively imposed organization-chart order. The Air Force was given land-based strategic missiles, the Navy sea-based submarine systems and the Army was removed from any program.
Additionally, McNamara and his civilian analysts rejected arguments for anti-ballistic missiles because any conceivable defensive system could be overwhelmed at a relatively low cost by simply increasing the number of attack vehicles. Using strategic concepts of that time, which McNamara’s team embraced, leaving populations vulnerable was considered stabilizing and termed Mutual Assured Destruction. Defending missile sites was acceptable since that move signaled we were not planning to attack the Soviets first.
McNamara's domineering style quickly unified the services against him. The Army eventually achieved an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) role. President Lyndon Johnson, in desperate political trouble over the Vietnam War, forced McNamara to resign. President Johnson generously named him President of the World Bank but also forced him publicly to endorse the ABM system.
In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan promoted space-based missile interceptors, termed the Strategic Defense Initiative. The Air Force became the lead service but the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed the effort. During his first term, Trump created a new military branch, the Space Force.
The threat of an erratic, irrational nuclear-armed government or group, whether actual or potential, argues for the development of our defenses. Influential, if eccentric, nuclear strategist Herman Kahn used this exact argument in print to assist the humiliated McNamara when the earlier ABM system was announced.
The radical rogue totalitarian regime of North Korea is precisely the sort of threat the far-sighted Kahn had in mind.
The startling manner of the White House announcement distracts from this long history.
Arthur I. Cyr ([email protected]) is the author of “After the Cold War” (NYU Press and Macmillan/Palgrave).
English (United States) ·