Does America Need a ‘Star Wars’ Defense Against Missile Attack?

Many Americans watched in horror five years ago as their televisions showed scenes of Iraqi missiles falling on Tel Aviv during the Gulf War.

Most Americans assumed the same thing couldn’t happen here. Most Americans assume that the United States has the ability to defend its citizens from the risk of ballistic missile attack.

The truth is, it doesn’t.

The United States does have the technological ability to defend itself, and there are systems in place that could be easily upgraded to provide defense from missile attack. But the Clinton administration’s current policy prevents the technology and systems from being deployed for missile defense.

The administration’s policy is based on a 20-year-old agreement with the Soviet Union called the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. That treaty was based on the concept of mutually assured destruction, the idea that if both the Soviet Union and the United States were completely vulnerable to missile attack, then neither country would be likely to start an exchange of missiles.

The idea of complete vulnerability to missile attack made little moral or strategic sense 20 years ago, and it makes even less sense today. The Soviet Union, our partner in the treaty, no longer exists. Washed away by the tide of freedom and democracy that is sweeping so much of the world, the threat of the Soviet superpower no longer looms over us. But the end of the Soviet Union does not mean the end of the threat of missile attack.

On the contrary, where once we looked to the Soviet Union as almost the sole threat to our national security, the number of countries posing the threat of missile attack on the United States has multiplied in recent years. Just last month, the Secretary of Defense issued a report declaring that the proliferation of missiles “presents a grave and urgent risk to the United States and our citizens, allies and troops abroad.”

Both Russia and China maintain and are aggressively modernizing nuclear forces capable of destroying American cities. According to the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea has missiles now under development that probably have sufficient range to reach targets in Alaska. Libya’s Moammar Kadafi has spoken of his desire to have “missiles that can reach New York” as a deterrent to United States’ diplomatic action, and China recently told a former United States defense official that American leaders “care more about Los Angeles than they do about Taiwan,” a veiled threat to prevent our intervention in China’s policy of intimidation toward Taiwan.

To forgo building an effective missile defense against these very real threats means we are counting on the restraint and good will of these countries and others such as Iran, Syria and Iraq. I, for one, don’t find that a comforting thought.

Most Americans feel secure in the knowledge that they will never see missiles falling on Los Angeles, New York, Anchorage, or any other American city. We feel secure that we will never have to learn the harsh realities of missile defense that the Israelis learned by watching missiles fall on Tel Aviv.

It’s time to make certain that sense of security is grounded in fact and not in wishful thinking. It’s time to end the policy of neglecting missile defense that leaves the United States, its citizens and its allies vulnerable to missile attack and nuclear blackmail.

A few weeks ago, the administration recognized the importance of effective missile defense for Israel, agreeing to expand our Theater Missile Defense program and proceed with the third phase of deployment of the joint U.S.-Israeli Arrow Missile program. Both of these programs are vital pieces of missile defense for the citizens of Israel and the Middle East.

In the next few days, Congress will consider the Defend America Act, a bill that will extend that same protection from missile attack to the citizens of the United States by the end of 2003 by deploying a highly effective defense system capable of protecting American lives and property against limited, unauthorized or accidental ballistic missile attacks.

As we are committed to helping Israel defend herself from missile attack, so we must now be committed to providing for our own defense.

We won the Cold War and eliminated that threat to our security through the combined strength of our ideals and our defenses. We can only maintain our new-found security if we remain able--and willing--to defend.