The Death Star: Meet the New Plan, Same as the Old Plan

The Cold War may be characterized as a time when fear and paranoia guided the international system to a constant security dilemma, resulting in the largest arms race and military buildup in history. Despite a persistent perception of fear, with occasional spikes resulting from incidents such as the Cuban missile crisis, or others that remain classified, few instances could compare with the genuine fear the Soviet leadership felt on March 23rd 1983. On that day, President Reagan openly called for the United States to begin development of a missile defense system, with the aim of ultimately limiting the threat of strategic nuclear ballistic missiles. In effect, President Reagan kicked the arms race up a notch. As a recent declassified United States intelligence document illustrates, the Reagan administration was aware of the possible Soviet responses to the strategic defense initiative (or SDI, also known to its detractors as "Star Wars"), but believed the benefits would outweigh the costs.

The common assumption surrounding American missile defense policy is that it will increase security for the United States and its allies. Twenty-four years after Reagan’s announcement, the Bush administration has made a similar gamble regarding possible international reactions and has begun deploying the first elements of a new missile shield. However, there are no guarantees that an anti-ballistic missile system will aid security this time. While a missile shield appears to merely step up the arms race, Russia has a host of options with which it may respond to the latest deployment of missile interceptors rather than engaging in developing its own missile defense system. Russia could decide to secure their superpower status by redeploying an increased number of strategic nuclear weapons, if chosen as the best course of action, this would destabilize the current agreements between the United States and Russia on the deployment of strategic nuclear weapons.

Last week Russian President Vladimir Putin (seen in image to the left) brought forth strong rhetoric, warning the United States that "Analogous actions by the Soviet Union when it deployed rockets on Cuba provoked the Cuban missile crisis," said Putin. "For us, technologically, the situation is very similar. On our borders such threats to our country are being created." Russia views the United States’ missile shield installments in the former Soviet Union satellite states of Poland and the Czech Republic, now NATO members, as a return to the policy of containment aimed at decreasing Russia’s strategic deterrence. In my opinion, moving ahead with a missile defense system, which as yet has not demonstrated a high accuracy of success, is unwise because it creates a diplomatic problem with Russia long before such action would be necessary. Keeping a potential adversary such as Russia on its toes is one thing, but cornering the bear is quite another.

Russia has alluded to the possibility of reassembling its intermediate range nuclear forces, a class of weapon that was previously removed as a result of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. If Russian INFs were to materialize, then it is likely the United States would also bring INFs back onto the table. This could result in a reemergence of the Cold War era arms race. While both the United States and the Russian Federation have made offers to include or aid the other in the creation of such a missile shield, the United States has said that Russia has offered nothing new and Russia clearly does not want to be taken onboard for another costly military acquisition project. It would be better for the United States to continue perfecting the missile defense technology while attempting to gain greater support from Russia to lessen to diplomatic repercussions.

Although Putin has drawn parallels to the present situation and the Cuban missile crisis, he has made it clear that tensions have not reached a critical point because of the improved nature of Russian-American relations. Putin has pointed out the singular importance of such relations saying, "the relations of trust, help to smooth such problems. I have a full right to describe him [ President Bush] as my personal friend as he calls me his friend." However, once Putin and Bush leave office, there will no longer be a personal relation of trust to depend upon (seen in image to the right). Though a missile shield could be of strategic value, it would not be in the interest of the United States to cause the destruction of progress in removing INFs. The best result of creating a missile defense system would come from the world nuclear powers, such as Russia and the United States, working together to ensure the threat of strategic nuclear warfare is eliminated for all states. Without such cooperation, it is possible that for the foreseeable future, nuclear weapon states which cannot afford missile defense systems will instead deploy more strategic nuclear missiles to compensate for the amount of interceptors deployed by adversaries. This would be a large step backward toward the security issues realized during the Cold War with the massive deployment of strategic nuclear forces.