The China Syndrome By Robert Wright: ... how does the Bush administration persist in its quest for missile defense in the wake of 9/11? Simple -- just assert that 9/11 actually underscored the need for missile defense. "As the events of September the 11th made all too clear," Bush said yesterday, the greatest threats to America come "from terrorists who strike without warning, or rogue states who seek weapons of mass destruction."
Um, could you run the "rogue states" part by me again? I agree that their seeking weapons of mass destruction is a big problem. But the problem is their giving the weapons to terrorists, not their sending the weapons over on a missile, with a return address.
I freely admit, I have never once understood the Shrubbery's insistence on this missile defense system. (Or, to be fair, Clinton's or Shrub I or Reagan, for that matter -- this particular idea has a long, if not particularly distinguished, pedigree.) I mean, I understand the appeal of the concept, but it's no longer possible to build a system that would withstand a major attack (although I suspect the question of whether Russia's missiles would actually fly or would blow up in the silo is of more than academic interest these days). Minor attacks, if any, are not likely to come by ballistic missile -- first, if it was only a few missiles, they could actually be shot down by planes, and second, what state leader with pretensions of sanity would think, "Hey, let's just lob a missile or ten at the US and see what happens?" It's far more likely that they'll give materiel to terrorists and say, "You know, I think the Empire State Building would look lovely glowing in the dark, don't you? And even better as a glowing crater!" On the other hand, such a system has the potential to aggravate the hell out of other arms races. To be honest, I really don't expect that China thinks we'll lob missiles at them without major provocation, either. However, as the article notes, the chance of India, Pakistan or China lobbing missiles at each other is considerably better. (And wouldn't Japan and Australia and the West Coast just love what would happen with the Jet Stream and the prevailing Westerlies after an exchange like that? Nothing like being downstream, is there?)
Who benefits from this system, that's what I'd like to know. Just to be terribly cynical, there must be major jobs and major campaign donations somewhere behind all this, because the system has never made sense in and of itself. Back in Reagan's day, it did have an unexpected benefit, if that's quite the right word: the massive US/Soviet arms race, of which ABM was a part, bankrupted the Soviet Union and helped totter into a startlingly early grave. (Of course, that came at the cost of a massive national debt that we'll be paying off until long after I die, but whatever.) It's unlikely that China is that vulnerable; it's also unlikely that we have the political will to rack up debt in quite that way over quite that issue.
Or rather, we wouldn't have the political will if Congress remembered what it was there for. However, given the craven cowardice shown by them over the past few months, I expect we can expect to see this system stumbling along its merry way to completion -- if that's quite the right word.
Copyright © 2001, Iain Jackson, after-words.org
[Archives: 2001 and after]
Archives before February 5, 2001
Search entries:
12/19/2001: vive la france
12/19/2001: princess, redux
12/19/2001: yemen and rumsfeld
12/18/2001: you're NOT in the army now
12/18/2001: interesting donation
12/18/2001: shame on winn dixie, indeed
12/18/2001: saudi princess
12/17/2001: new resolve
12/17/2001: a victim of the attack ... yeah, right
12/17/2001: polluters ho!