A WORLD POLICY INSTITUTE ANALYSIS:

The End of the ABM Treaty is No Cause for Celebration

by William D. Hartung

June 12, 2002, 4 p.m. EDT -- Later this afternoon, the Heritage Foundation will be hosting a reception in the U.S. Capitol on the theme of "ABM: RIP - A Cheerful Wake for a Flawed Treaty." Participants will include John Bolton, the Bush administration's Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Senators Trent Lott (R-MS) and Jesse Helms (R-NC), Representative Curt Weldon (R-PA), and Frank Gaffney, director of the pro-missile defense Center for Security Policy.

From the perspective of the conservative unilateralists who will be gathering to celebrate the death of the ABM Treaty, this historic occasion represents a break from the bad old days of "mutually assured destruction" and "rigid" arms control arrangements to a new era of ambitious missile defense measures and "flexibility" in nuclear targeting and development. Far from representing cause for celebration, the ABM Treaty could mark the beginning of the end of arms control and the inauguration of an era of anarchic nuclear proliferation in which individual nations make up the rules as they go along, based on their perceived short-term interests rather than a vision of global stability.

Bush-Putin Accord Paves the Way for a Unilateralist Nuclear Policy

The only arms control agreements that the advocates of "peace through strength, not peace through paper" -- as Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and other anti-arms control conservatives like to put it -- are minimalist agreements like the new Bush-Putin accord, which are barely worth the paper they are written on. In theory, the Bush-Putin agreement could pave the way for durable nuclear reductions. But in practice, its extreme flexibility - from its lack of any provision for destroying strategic weapons taken off of active deployment to its provision allowing either side to walk out of the accord on just 90 days notice - suggests that it could also be utilized as the opening wedge for terminating U.S. commitments to all the major elements of the current international nuclear arms control regime. Nothing the Bush administration wants to do in the nuclear field, from moving full speed ahead on a multi-tiered missile defense system, to developing a new "bunker busting" nuclear weapon, would be prohibited under the new agreement.

Unlike Ronald Reagan's vision of a missile defense shield which would be deployed in parallel with the progressive reduction and ultimate elimination of Washington and Moscow's extensive nuclear arsenals, the new age conservatives in and around the Bush administration are looking to save nuclear weapons, not eliminate them. This drive to make nuclear threats more "credible" and nuclear weapons more "usable" was evident in the Bush administration's Nuclear Posture Review, released earlier this year. It is also apparent in the administration's recent emphasis on "preemptive strikes" against terrorist groups or deeply buried chemical or biological weapons facilities -- using conventional weapons if possible, but resorting to nuclear weapons if the bunkers are "so incredibly hard" that the situation requires it, as Stephen Younger of the Pentagon's Defense Threat Reduction Agency noted in a recent interview with the Washington Post (Thomas E. Ricks and Vernon Loeb, "Preemption to Be Military Policy," June 10, 2002).

Provoking Proliferation: Consequences of a Unilateralist Approach

The impact of this new unilateralist attitude on the behavior of other nuclear weapons states and aspiring nuclear powers has been largely ignored by the Bush administration. Despite a May 2000 intelligence assessment which indicated that deployment of a substantial missile defense system could spur a major buildup of China's current arsenal of 20 single warhead, long-range ballistic missiles capable of reaching the United States even as it had a ripple effect in spurring increases in India and Pakistan's fledgling nuclear weapons forces, administration officials and their allies continue to assert that other nations will do what they plan to do, regardless of U.S. actions.

Similarly, no one in the Bush administration seems concerned about the fact that the Bush-Putin accord, with its implicit endorsement of U.S. and Russian possession of large arsenals of nuclear overkill for decades to come, is viewed by many governments as a violation of their pledge under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to make an "unequivocal undertaking" to eliminate their nuclear arsenals as quickly as is practically possible. Nor has the administration been willing to acknowledge that its recent "shuttle diplomacy" to India and Pakistan to counsel both sides to avoid making threats of escalating their conflict over Kashmir to the nuclear level has little moral or political standing in light of the explicit endorsement of nuclear threats and continued nuclear development contained in the Nuclear Posture Review.

Rhetoric Versus Reality: Following the Money

One way to determine whether the new Bush approach to nuclear weapons represents merely rhetoric or a substantive change in policy is to follow the money.

--The administration's proposed budget for the Pentagon's Missile DefenseAgency is $7.8 billion for FY 2003, a 47% increase over the Clinton administration's final budget for the program. Once programs like the Airborne Laser, which are budgeted outside of the Missile Defense Agency budget, are taken into account, the Bush administration has already added $5.4 billion in missile defense funding during the 2002 and 2003 budget years above and beyond the levels that prevailed when it took office in January 2001.

--An internal memorandum by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz which was described in a piece by veteran Pentagon correspondent George Wilson that ran in the National Journal last month indicates that planned spending on missile defense between now and 2007 is $46.4 billion, while spending thereafter is marked "TBD" - to be determined. With $850 billion in procurement commitments already in the pipeline, this suggests that even with the military budget approaching $400 billion per year, pursuing a full-blown missile defense system will require making significant tradeoffs against other programs favored by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the military services. Killing the Crusader artillery system alone will not begin to address this clash of funding priorities within the Pentagon.

Weapons contractors have received hundreds of millions of dollars in new contracts for missile defense projects since the Bush administration took office in January of 2001. Many of these new contracts would not have been funded under the Clinton plan, which gave priority to ground-based interceptors and was not intending to make a commitment to deployment of the ground-based element until it received additional indications that the technology was ready. Major contracts include:

1. In keeping with the Bush administration's decision to build a Ground-Based Midcourse "test bed" in Alaska which could allegedly be converted into a "rudimentary" missile defense capability in an emergency, Boeing has awarded a $60 million subcontract to Bechtel to build missile silos for 5 to 6 ground-based interceptors at Fort Greeley, Alaska (with a groundbreaking later this week, after the ABM Treaty lapses); and the Missile Defense Agency has awarded a $250 million contract to the Fluor Corporation to build various roads and facilities at Fort Greeley and on Shemya island as part of the "test bed" project.
   
   
2. Systems integration contracts for Boeing and Lockheed Martin, worth $23.9 million initially but with the potential to earn each company billions over the life of the program. The contracts, awarded in February 2002, give Boeing responsibility for overall system integration and engineering, and Lockheed Martin responsibility for integrating command, control, communications, and battle management.
   
   
3. A major acceleration in the schedule and funding for the Airborne Laser (ABL) program, a joint effort of Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and TRW has been budgeted for $1.1 billion in funding for 2002 and 2003 (Congress has sought cuts in the 2003 figure, with final resolution due later this year). According to a June 6th report in Jane's Defence News, the Air Force hopes to conduct the first flight of the ABL aircraft this summer.
   
   
4. In February 2001, just after the Bush administration took office, Sen. Trent Lott's lobbying efforts paid off when the Pentagon announced the construction of a $115 million Space-Based Laser Performance Test Facility at the Stennis Space Center on Mississippi's Gulf Coast, to be operated jointly by "Team SBL" partners Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and TRW.
   
   
5. In mid-February of 2002, Lockheed Martin's Naval and Electronic Systems Unit in Moorestown, New Jersey received a $420 million contract to work on "the S-Band radar component of the Sea-Based Midcourse Advanced Radar Suite." The Bush administration has heeded the call of conservative missile defense advocates to accelerate sea-based elements of the proposed missile defense system.
   
   
6. In March 2002, Boeing received a $425 million contract to develop a back-up booster for the Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor program, working in conjunction with Orbital Sciences, Inc.

New nuclear weapons spending to be carried out in conjunction with the administration's unilateralist policy includes a $15 million request to study the development of a Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator (the funding was rejected by the Senate Armed Services Committee, and a floor fight to restore the funds is expected as early as next week when the full Senate may consider the defense authorization bill. In addition, on May 29th, the Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) "certified" the need to build a plutonium "pit" facility to make the plutonium triggers for nuclear weapons, to replace the Rocky Flats facility in Colorado (which was shut down due to environmental concerns in 1989). The proposed plant could cost between $2.2 and $4.1 billion, according to DoE estimates.