Missile Defense and National Security

The key missile defense questions facing policymakers today are what kind of systems should be fielded and to what extent should investments be made in future missile defense technologies. In recent years, some have argued that more investments are needed to counter theater-range missile threats, even if such investments come at the expense of developing future capabilities. On the surface, this approach seems reasonable given the sizable increase in the number of short-range ballistic missiles around the world. However, such an approach could undermine the U.S.' ability to defend against an adversary that might not be deterred by offensive forces alone. Moreover, it would not provide a meaningful capability in the long term that could dissuade an adversary from investing in ballistic missiles in the first place. This paper argues that the United States can achieve the deterrence and defense objectives set out for its missile defense forces only by sustaining a program that is balanced between the deployment of nearterm defenses and the development of advanced technologies, and between the fielding of defenses against theater-range threats and long-range threats to the American homeland. Notes 1. Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, "Missile Defense Hits Mark," Defense News, July 23, 2007, p. 21. 2. Draft Memorandum from Secretary of Defense McNamara to President Kennedy, November 14, 1963, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 8, National Security Policy (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1996), Document 145. 3. Kenneth Waltz, "Waltz Responds to Sagan," in Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons (New York: W.W. Norton, 2003), p. 153. 4. Text of the report of the 1998 Congressionally mandated Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, also called the Rumsfeld Commission after its chair Donald H. Rumsfeld, is available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/bm-threat.htm. 5. As quoted form the unclassified NSPD-23, "National Policy on Ballistic Missile Defense," issued by the president on December 16, 2002. 6. Bertil Lintner, "The long reach of North Korea's missiles." Asia Times, June 21, 2006. 7. Bradley Graham, "Withdrawal Gives U.S. More Latitude in Defense Tests," Washington Post, December 14, 2001. 8. Fiscal Year 2007 National Defense Authorization Act, Sec 223 (b). 9. Michael Bruno, "HASC Panel Targets Missile Defense, Milspace," Aviation Week, May 3, 2007. 10. United States, White House, "Fact Sheet: Defending America and Its Allies Against Ballistic Missile Attack," October 23, 2007. 11. David C. Wright and Timur Kadyshev, "An Analysis of the North Korean Nodong Missile," Science and Global Security, November 1993. 12. David S. Cloud and David Sanger, "U.S. Aide Sees Arms Advance by North Korea," April 29, 2005. 13. Craig Covault, "Iran Tests Safir Space Booster," Aviation Week, August 18, 2008. 14. See, U.S. Department of State, International Security Advisory Board, Report on Discouraging a Cascade of Nuclear Weapons States (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of State, October 19, 2007). 15. Kurt Campbell and Robert Einhorn, "Avoiding the Tipping Point: Concluding Observations," in Kurt Campbell, Robert Einhorn, and Mitchell Reiss, eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), p. 321 (emphasis in original)

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