MODERN TIMES
Art Hobson
ahobson@uark.edu
NWA Times 11 Oct 2008
Those missiles in
Poland
My
column of August 30, 2008 argued that the West has followed a dangerous
Russia-phobic path ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. After surrounding Russia with ten new
NATO members, we are pouring fuel on the fire of Russian fears of encirclement
by urging Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO, and by going ahead with plans to
site a defensive missile system in Poland and the Czech Republic to defend the
U.S. and Europe from future Iranian missiles.
Anybody
who argues that the missiles in Poland are purely defensive and thus pose no
threat to Russia doesn't understand the concept of deterrence. Let me explain.
During
the Cold War, each superpower developed enormous strategic nuclear weapons
arsenals that were meant to destroy the other side as a functioning
society. Neither side planned to
actually use these weapons to launch an attack. Instead, the purpose of each side's arsenal was to prevent
the other side from attacking by guaranteeing an annihilating
counterattack. The Soviet Union,
for example, regarded its nuclear weapons as a guarantee that the U.S. would
not attack, because the surviving Soviet strategic weapons would then launch a
counter-attack that would obliterate the United States. Thus, strategic nuclear weapons
"deterred" both sides from attack. It's called Mutually Assured Destruction.
But
MAD works only if both sides regard retaliation as inevitable. Now suppose that either side had "Anti-Ballistic
Missiles" designed to shoot down other missiles. Then deterrence becomes far more risky. If, for example, the U.S. possessed
ABMs, the Soviets might fear that the U.S. could shoot down the weakened
retaliatory blow that the Soviets would launch following a U.S. attack. So deterrence breaks down if either
side has effective ABMs. That's
why defensive missiles can be a threat.
Returning
to 2008, Russia's Foreign Ministry warns that Moscow's response to ABMs in
Poland "will go beyond diplomacy," because the missile system
"will be broadened and modernized" and "lacks any target other
than Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles." The U.S. dismisses these Russian fears
as "ludicrous," "bordering on the bizarre," and
"incredible."
But
a careful analysis (see "The Technological Basis of Russian
Concerns," http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2007_10/LewisPostol)
by physicists George Lewis of Cornell University and Theodore Postol, a former
scientific advisor to the Navy who is currently at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology, concludes that Russia's fears are quite rational. Here's why.
The
most important part of the U.S. system is not the missiles themselves but instead
the system's large radar, located in the Czech Republic. Lewis and Postol ask how Russian
military analysts would assess this system. A directive signed by President Bush in 2002 states that the
U.S. would begin deploying missile defenses in 2004 "as a starting point
for fielding improved and expanded missile defenses later." A Russian analyst will conclude that
the new U.S. system will be upgraded to something far more capable.
The
current size and power of the radar is limited by the number of individual
transmitters mounted in its faces.
Current plans are for 20,000 transmitters, but 17 times this many could
be mounted, boosting the total power by a factor of 17, and the two factors
(the number and the power) combine to yield nearly a 300-fold (17 times 17)
increase in capability. Since the
initial system will be able to simultaneously track and target the 10 missiles
that Iran might deploy initially, the expanded system would be able to target
nearly 3000 missiles. Although the
U.S. might never expand its system, a Russian analyst must assume the
worst.
But
the system is supposed to be directed toward Iran. Will it also be able to target the Russian deterrent
force? Despite U.S. claims to the
contrary, interceptors launched from Poland using the Czech radar could
intercept missiles from all of Russia's European-based strategic nuclear
missile fields, including even the 25 mobile (not silo-based) SS-25 missiles
stationed northwest of Moscow.
In
fact, the radar's placement in the Czech Republic is not optimal for defending
Europe from Iranian missiles.
Interceptors placed in Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, or Albania would be
better able to defend Europe from Iranian attack. But an Iran-oriented system located further north, in Poland
and the Czech Republic, would be better suited to targeting Russian strategic
missiles, and a Russian analyst would have to interpret this choice as an
indication of hostile intent.
Internal
Soviet documents from the late 1980s show that Soviet analysts had concluded
that Russian silo-based missiles could be nearly wiped out by a surprise attack
from then-existing U.S. submarine-launched nuclear missiles and other U.S.
forces. The concern of Russian
analysts today would be that a future crisis might lead to U.S. strikes on
Russian silo-based missiles followed by an ABM defense that would eliminate the
Russian retaliation.
To
repeat an analogy from my earlier article: What would be our response if the Soviets had won the cold
war, surrounded the U.S. with Soviet military allies, and now planned to place
"defensive" missiles in Cuba?
Would we have accepted Soviet assurances that these missiles posed no
threat to the United States?
The U.S. has been pushing Russia hard ever since 1991. We need to back down from our ABM plans, back down from further NATO expansion, and support an internationally supervised referendum in the two disputed Georgian provinces. Then we should offer NATO membership to Russia, and cooperate with Russia to develop ABM defenses against Iran. President Putin has already offered to participate in such a cooperative effort.