President Bush's National Missile Defense Plan

Transcript

MR. RON NESSEN: Good morning, and welcome to Brookings. I'm Ron Nessen. I want to welcome you to this briefing this morning on President Bush's national missile defense plan.

As you know, the president announced his plans for a national missile defense yesterday, so this briefing is timely. And it also coincides with the publication by Brookings this week of a book called, "Defending America: The Case For Limited National Missile Defense." The authors are — two of our panelists are the authors, Jim Lindsay and Michael O'Hanlon.

The issue is going to be around for a while. It's going to be controversial. It is going to be high on the national agenda, and we are now I think in the beginning stages of a really historic debate on defense of our country in the years and decades ahead.

The proposal made yesterday is already drawing comment and criticism. It has been opposed by many American allies, as well as Russia and China. There have been questions raised about the effectiveness of it, the cost of it. And the president in his comments about setting aside the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has also created additional grounds for controversy. So we are going to talk about all of those issues and more this morning, based on the announcement of the president's plan.

Let me introduce first of all the panelists. One of the authors of this book, Michael O'Hanlon, is sitting here. Mike is a senior fellow here at the foreign policy studies program here at Brookings. His specialty is U.S. defense strategy and budgeting and military technology. He was an analyst at the Congressional Budget Office, where he specialized in nuclear weapons issue, Mideast security and foreign aid. He has also worked previously at the Institute for Defense Analysis. His co-author is Jim Lindsay, also a senior fellow in the foreign policy studies program here at Brookings, and his main focus is on national missile defense, and also the domestic dimension of foreign policy. He served from 1966 to 1967 as director for global issues and multilateral affairs on the staff of the National Security Council. And he also served as a consultant — did I get that right or wrong?

MR. LINDSAY: It's '96, '97.

MR. NESSEN: He also served as a consultant to the United States Commission on National Security in the 21st century. And our other panel member this morning is Philip Coyle. He recently was appointed as a senior advisor at the Center for Defense Information, next door here. He came to the CDI from the Defense Department, where he served as the assistant secretary of Defense and director of operational tests and evaluations for over six years. He actually has spent more than 40 years in testing and test-related matters, particularly involving nuclear weapons. He was at California's Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for two long stints, and he also served the Carter administration as principal deputy assistant secretary for Defense programs in the Department of Energy.

Our format this morning I think will be to have our panelists talk very briefly about their views of national missile defense, react to the president's announcements and plans; and then we will have some discussion among ourselves. And obviously we will also involve the audience.

Let me say that this, like many Brookings events, is being Webcast live. And so for those of you who are watching this in your offices or at home on your computers, you are also welcome to send in by email your comments and questions, and we'll try to work those into the conversation too. The email address to do that is: communications@brookings.edu. After this event there will be a full transcript. There will be video and audio of this event archived on the Brookings Website. And obviously there's a great deal more information on the Website, both about the book and background on the issue of national missile defense. The home page at Brookings Website is at www.brookings.edu.

We do want to involve the audience. When it comes time for your questions, there will be people in the audience with microphones. You can raise your hand, be recognized, and then stand up and identify yourself and ask the question.

So with that by way of introduction, Michael, why don't you start off?

MR. O'HANLON: Thank you, if you don't mind I'll turn it over to Jim first.

MR. NESSEN: Okay, that was a short opening statement. (Laughter.) We'll come back to you.

MR. JAMES LINDSAY: Thank you, Ron. As we saw yesterday, President Bush made it clear that his administration is going to go forward with national missile defense. What the president didn't make clear in yesterday's speech is exactly what kind of system he would intend to build. There are a variety of ways to go about missile defense. In the book that Mike and I have just written, we lay out a specific architecture for addressing the threat to the United States. And Mike is going to talk about that proposal in a little bit more detail in a minute. But first I want to talk about the broader issues involved in thinking about national missile defense and why it makes sense.

Why build a national missile defense? I think, as President Bush laid out yesterday, there are basically three reasons. One is the threat of ballistic missile technology to more countries, giving them the ability not merely to attack the United States, but potentially to threaten to attack the United States, thereby undermining American global leadership by deterring us from advancing our interests abroad. Reason number two are advances in technology. Going back to the debate in the '60s and the '80s about ballistic missile defense, they were almost dismissed on the grounds feasibility. Nowadays even some critics of missile defense argue that some kind of defenses are likely to work to some degree. Third is the end of the Cold War. We no longer have the same relationship with Russia that we had with the Soviet Union, creating the possibility for as the Bush administration likes to say, new thinking on missile defense.

While each of those points is true, it is important not to push them too far or to exaggerate them. Consider first the issue of threat. Besides the United States and Russia, there are three dozen countries that possess ballistic missiles. That sounds like a very large number, but let's disaggregate it. Of those 36 countries, 27 own missiles with ranges less than 300 miles; another 6 have missiles with ranges under 3,000 miles. Looking at those 33 countries altogether, it is important to keep in mind that many of them are American friends and allies. Okay? Israel, Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Turkey. So that three dozen number tends to exaggerate the spread of ballistic missiles. When we look at countries that actually have the ability today to hit the United States with long-range missiles, we are talking about three countries besides Russia. We are talking about China, we are talking about Britain and we are talking about France. And of course, as you all know, we spend very little time worrying about Britain and only a little bit of time worrying about France. (Laughter.)

There's been a lot of talk by the administration about the threat posed by North Korea, but again let's be clear: the August 1998 test of the Taepo Dong showed that North Korea was farther along in ballistic missile development than U.S. intelligence experts had anticipated. But they did not — repeat did not demonstrate a working inter-continental ballistic missile, let alone demonstrate they had the ability to weaponize such a missile; that is, to build a nuclear warhead sufficient to withstand the rigors of inter-continental flight.

As you look at the ballistic missile threat around the world, the real threat is short-range threat to American forces deployed overseas. And the response to that is the development of theater missile defenses, an issue that didn't get a lot of play in yesterday's speech. Theater missile defense is something that the Clinton administration put a lot of time and effort into in the 1990s.

Second, the issue of technology. As Phil knows far better than I do, trying to build an interceptor to knock down long-range ballistic missiles or the warheads on top of the long-range ballistic missiles, is a very daunting task, particularly when you are talking about mid- courses, such as the Clinton administration proposal that attempted to shoot down warheads in space. And when we talk about the feasibility of building defenses, there may be some chance of building defenses, against the sort of small and crude missile attacks that a country like North Korea might be able to launch, or Iran or Iraq down the road, but still a pretty daunting task to build defenses that would be reasonably effective against a large sophisticated arsenal that Russia has, and China to a lesser degree.

Third is the issue of strategic climate. It is true that Russia is no longer America's adversary. But neither is it the case that Russia is America's ally. And a much as NMD — the most enthusiastic NMD supporters might wish it to be the case, Russia is still going to look upon any NMD deployment with a great deal of skepticism and concern, worried about how it affects its interests, which leads to a broader point. When we think about national missile defense, you have to think not only what national missile defense can do for you, but what it can do to you; that is not only the sort of the benefits it made hold up, but also its costs. And this particularly is the case in dealing with Russia and China. While Russia and China may be less powerful than the United States, not have the same financial or technological resources, they are not powerless in their ability to respond, if they believe their interests have been tread upon.

The problem is not arms races as is so often cast about. Russia has moved to actually go lower in terms of strategic nuclear warheads, and the Chinese could increase their missile force three or fourfold and still have fewer than 100 ballistic missiles aimed at the United States.

The real problem is that Russia and China have a variety of low- cost ways to retaliate against the United States. One possibility is China could put its missiles on higher states of alert, thereby increasing the prospects of accidental launch, with the case of Russia to keep its forces on high states of alert. Russia could refuse to cooperate or suspend the Nunn-Lugar cooperative bilateral programs with the United States designed to secure Russia's dilapidated, aging nuclear forces and nuclear materials.

You also have the very real possibility that Russia and China could cease to cooperate or even accelerate their efforts to help the very proliferators we are worried about. Even more broadly, Russia and China have the option of increasing conventional weapon sales to the countries that give us the most heartburn, particularly in the Middle East.

So, as Mike and I developed in the book, and we talk about national missile defense, given the potential downside of antagonizing Russia and China, given the limits on technology, but the real fundamental purpose of any national missile defense should be aimed at providing defense likely to work against the kind of threat from new emerging ballistic missile powers, like North Korea, and in a decade or more and down the road Iran and Iraq.

We believe it would be particular folly, given the state of technology, to try to build a very large-scale — (inaudible) — defense aimed at Russia and China. But you could also argue that there is no need to rush the development of national missile defense, put it on a crash diet. Neither the evolution is a threat, the state of the technology or the state of diplomacy on missile defense warrant haste. Indeed, if we are to build in haste we are likely to repent at leisure.

But the broader question is, given sort of the analysis we provide of the potential threat and likely reaction among other major nuclear powers is: can you in fact build or find an architecture that would provide the United States an effective defense against the new ballistic missile powers without provoking Russia and China into the sorts of behaviors that would actually lessen American security? We think the answer is yes, and Michael talks about that in a bit more detail.

MR. MICHAEL O'HANLON: Thank you, Jim. And thank you, everyone, for being here, and all our colleagues who helped us a great deal with this book. I wanted to do two things with my brief remarks. One is to talk a little bit about the president's words yesterday, and questions I still have about where he's really headed; and then, secondly, to just flesh out in a little bit of detail our specific proposal in the book, that as Jim says tries to balance the need to have some defense with the need not to provoke counterreactions that could leave us less secure.

When I listened to the president's speech yesterday, I hear a number of things that make me think that perhaps he's really thinking about — or perhaps he could be convinced to accept limited national missile defense the way we propose it in this book. But I also hear other statements that lead me to think that he's probably headed in a much more ambitious direction, which I very much hope he won't go in.

Let me just tick off the points as I try to analyze that speech, as it is a timely issue, given that it was just presented yesterday. Mr. Bush emphasized the so-called rogue state threat, which tends to make you think he's thinking about a limited threat. He talked about the idea that our defense should be themselves limited — at least that was the phraseology he used in one place. He also did not mention space weapons. And he also mentioned a framework that he would like to devise, that he would — he didn't use the word "treaty," he didn't use the word "amendments" to the ABM Treaty; but he did say perhaps we could be amenable to a framework for a new nuclear weapons and strategic relationship with Russia. All these things make me hopeful.

On the other hand, he used other expressions and other phrases that make me more worried that he's headed in a very ambitious direction with no effort at diplomatic reassurance or at restraint in our technology and our deployments. He talked about a multi-tiered system, with many kinds of defense abilities, the boost phase, the mid-course and the terminal phase, with missile defenses that will be based on many different platforms.

He did not lay out any specifics for what this framework he alluded to might be. And I think if you are telling the world you are dropping the ABM Treaty, if you want to you can say, Well, I have only been president for 100 days; give me time to come up with that framework. On the other hand, if you drop the treaty and don't talk about any sense of where your future restrictions or limitations may be, it conjures up the worst fears in people that you really have no such interests. And my guess is that may be indeed where is thinking is at the moment. The lack of specifics about a framework means that he really doesn't have any great interest in coming up with a framework, except perhaps for the framework to be that we will tell you what we are doing at whatever stage we may be at, and will be transparent; but otherwise we will make the call as we go.

And finally of course he was quite dismissive in his rhetoric of the ABM Treaty. I agree with his point, that the ABM Treaty is anachronistic. However — in a sense that it was formed 30 years ago during a U.S.-Soviet all-out nuclear arms competition. However, it still serves real purposes today. So even if the origin is no longer similar to the world we see today, the purposes the treaty serve are still useful. They may be different, but they are still useful. And, in particular, it does create enough trust between Russia and the United States that we can reduce offensive arms to a degree, that we can participate in the Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction program, nuclear cities programs, and so on. So there is a certain benefit in that, and we have got to be pretty careful about throwing out the baby with the bath water, even if the treaty is in one sense no longer applicable.

And of course Mr. Bush was silent for all intents and purposes for how this missile defense would face the potential Chinese threat. He mentioned China once in passing, but he made a great effort to say that he wants a cooperative relationship with Russia, and that he will work to develop such a relationship, and perhaps even have joint defenses somewhere down the road. He made no great effort to reassure China. On the one hand I understand why: We have a big problem with China, a specific problem over Taiwan. And it is not inconceivable by any stretch of the imagination that we could go to war against China. And if we do, there is a part of you that says it would be nice to have a defense against any Chinese capability they may have. On the other hand, I am convinced we cannot succeed in developing a workable defense against China, and in the effort of trying we are going to produce many of the counterreactions from China that Jim mentioned earlier. So it's an effort not worth attempting. And Mr. Bush left a lot of questions about really what he would do vis-a-vis China. My guess is that most of the administration thinks missile defense probably should have the option of targeting the Chinese deterrent somewhere down the road, but we just don't know.

Okay, as to the specifics of our plan and how we would try to adopt the more limited approach, and what I would consider the more optimistic interpretation of Mr. Bush's comments, how you might build on that with our approach, we favor essentially retaining the ABM Treaty's numerical limitations of about 200 interceptor missiles. That was the original limit in the 1972 treaty before revision in '74 down to 100 interceptors. So we would keep some effort to have a quantitative restriction. We would require radical surgery to the ABM Treaty, however, because it does ban any and all national missile defense. And in that sense it clearly is fundamentally inconsistent with deployment of a national missile defense. But as my colleague Ivo Daalder and others have pointed out very importantly, the ABM Treaty really has the other purpose of limiting and preventing strategically significant defenses. Literally speaking, it prevents any and all defense. But much of its motivation was to prevent an arms race, and thereby prevent a strategically significant deployment. The motivation was not necessarily to ban any and all defenses; it was to prevent the arms race dynamic. You can retain that piece of it with our proposal.

So the basic idea would be to say let's have 200 interceptor missiles, primarily boost-phase. Let me just quickly mention what that means, and then I'll wrap up and we'll look forward to Mr. Coyle's response to these proposals, as well as to other technology options that may be on the table.

Boost-phase defense of course means you shoot down an enemy missile shortly after it's launched, within the first three or four minutes after you have detected its launch; which means you have to be pretty close to where that missile was launched to shoot it down, which means you really can't threaten a missile launch from the interior of Russia — it's just too far away from any capability with the possible exception of a low-earth-orbit satellite, but we are probably 15 to 20 years away from having any such capability, and I think Jim and I would argue we should not be in any hurry to develop that.

But from the point of view of looking at land-based or sea-based or air-based boost-phase defense, you really do not have the potential to threaten Russian or even a Chinese missile launched from the interior of their country, because you can't get close enough to those points to shoot them down in that boost phase. So for our purposes — and in many ways that's good news, because it means you can be reassuring towards those two countries with boost-phased technology.

A technological advantage of boost-phase defense is you shoot down a missile before it's had a chance to dispense its warheads and its decoys. So there are ways in which an attacker could try to make its missiles somewhat impervious to a boost-phase defense, but it's very hard, especially for a rudimentary missile power, like North Korea, Iran or Iraq. So I think technologically speaking it's much more promising.

Now, what you would probably do — and I'll just quickly mention each of these three countries of greatest concern and then wrap up. With North Korea, you would have the option of deploying a barge in the Sea of Japan, or interceptor missiles in Southeastern Russia near Vladivostok. These would not be the missiles on the Aegis destroyers or cruisers, because those missiles almost certainly are not fast enough to handle an ICBM. Because North Korea's launch site today is on the eastern side of its country, it's theoretically possible you could shoot down missiles launched from that launch site, even with a rudimentary Aegis capability. But if North Korea simply moved its launch site to the western side of its country, you would probably need a much faster interceptor missile. So I think you have got to have a large missile, not as big as an ICBM but still significant in size, the way Richard Garwin (ph) has described. And you probably need to be either in the Sea of Japan or southeastern Russia.

Against the possibility of an Iraqi missile, which is probably at least 10 years away, given the constraints on Saddam's ability to develop technology that has been imposed for 10 years now — but still that's a real possibility somewhere down that road. Against that possibility you probably want to deploy a boost-phase capability in eastern Turkey. That's the geographically appealing position, and obviously on land. I find that a fairly appealing prospect. There are obviously some things we have to work out with Turkey. I don't pretend to presume their acquiescence; and it could complicate our ability to use certain influence over Turkey in other areas of our relationship. But, nonetheless, I think that it is a very promising concept, to base land-based interceptors in eastern Turkey.

Iran is the tough one, because Iran is big, and because countries to the north of Iran are not our friends for the most part, the former Soviet Republic of the various "stans — Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and so forth — as well as the Caspian Sea. These are the regions you might want to deploy a boost-phase interceptor. I am not sure we can really work out an arrangement to do so. And therefore I think the only way you could probably have a boost-phase capability against Iran would be in the course of a war. After you would establish their superiority you could deploy an aircraft with an airborne laser or an air-based interceptor missile. I think these are promising concepts. And because I don't worry about a bolt from the blue from Iran, Iraq or North Korea, I worry about missile launches in the context of an ongoing war — I think it's not that bad of a handicap to have to establish air superiority before you would have the capability to shoot down their missiles.

So I just wanted to put these very specific points on the table for the three cases of how you would develop a boost-phase capability against Iran, Iraq or North Korea. We don't necessarily have to deploy these sorts of capabilities before the threats would actually manifest themselves; these are the sorts of capabilities you could research, develop and possibly build and keep here in the United States until you needed to deploy them. But, nonetheless, those are the sorts of options that we are most interested in. And, again, we do think it is consistent with at least the spirit of the ABM Treaty or a similar kind of framework that would limit strategically significant defense and prevent any such arms race dynamic. But it would require a radical overhaul of the treaty or a new framework. And we propose I think, without getting into great diplomatic detail on the negotiating strategy, we would propose the United States work with Russia to try to work out such an arrangement before it considers the more drastic step of treaty withdrawal. I'll stop there.

MR. NESSEN: Phil Coyle?

MR. PHILIP COYLE: Thank you. As both Jim and Michael said, the Bush administration hasn't really said yet exactly what sort of national missile defense system or systems they would try to develop. I expect we will see much more emphasis on boost-phase defenses, and also on layer defenses — boost, mid-course, terminal — than in the Clinton administration. Otherwise there would have been no point for President Bush to have made an issue of NMD during the last presidential election.

Each of these approaches has its own strengths and weaknesses. And where you heard a lot about the weaknesses of mid-course defense during the Clinton administration — scientists were lambasting mid- course defense for the problem of dealing with decoys and countermeasures; you haven't really heard much about the limitations, the challenges that mid-course and other schemes would face. And you will see more and more about that in the coming months.

One of the biggest challenges for boost-phase defense, as Michael said, is a very short time scale — a few minutes in some scenarios, less than two. So that means you have got to get warning from, let's say, a satellite, back through a command-control system — Cheyenne Mountain or what have you — and then out to a Navy ship or a forward-based land-intercept system in just a couple of minutes. That will mean that the system will have to be essentially automated. It will be a Navy captain or an Army colonel forward who might be able to stop the process, but won't have time to really think about it and decide what to do.

So this is not a process where the president of the United States is going to be involved or the secretary of Defense or the National Security Advisor. There won't be time for that in the boost phase.

Some people have said, Well, it would take, say, North Korea so long to erect and stage their ICBM that that would give us plenty of warning to get ready for the two minutes that we would have. I would say that if we have that much warning the best national missile defense system is an F-15 aircraft carrying bombs from an aircraft carrier, because they are talking about days of warning. B-52s can flatten this country, or B-2s for that matter, in that amount of time.

So, you will be hearing a lot more about the technical challenges for the other approaches, and you may have questions about all of that later.

I want to make another point. Recently we observed the 10th anniversary of attacks — Scud attacks on U.S. soldiers in the Persian Gulf where 28 soldiers were killed and over a hundred were wounded. And I think it's quite remarkable that a danger which we actually experienced 10 years ago — our soldiers experienced, died from — is not the issue today. Think about other areas of the United States 10 years behind any other area. You would expect that members of Congress would be having hearings about this and making speeches about it and saying what a terrible thing this is that we haven't developed the short-range defense systems that can protect our own soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines overseas. After all, the threat from Scuds and other short-range missiles is not debatable; we have already seen it, and it could arise today or tomorrow again. Whereas whether or not, say, North Korea would be crazy enough to launch an ICBM at the United States is certainly debatable — it's been debated for quite a number of years.

Similarly, the technology for short-range defenses is not so debatable. It's not easy, but we are making progress; whereas the technology for a national missile defense is still quite debatable.

And so one of the things that I find very odd is that there is so much emphasis on national missile defense and not on defending our own troops against a real threat that we have already faced 10 years ago and will perhaps have to face again in the future. And I'll stop right there.

MR. NESSEN: Before we go to audience questions, let me see if I can spark a little discussion on some of the issues that have been raised here. Does it bother anyone that Phil has spotlighted this question of it's going to be an Army colonel or a Navy captain who is going to make the decision of whether to stop the launch of a missile defense system?

MR. O'HANLON: It doesn't bother me a great deal. I take the point. But the reason why it doesn't bother me cuts to the heart of the question of why you would need a missile defense and under what circumstances. I think the only plausible situation in which a North Korea or an Iraq might launch missiles at us, or threaten to do so, is during a war in which we are seriously contemplating marching on their capital city and overthrowing their regime. At that point there is no reason to think deterrence should work. They have nothing more to lose, and I think they play for keeps a that point. So in that situation we are already at war, we are marching on a capital city, and anything that comes out of North Korea or Iraq looking like a ballistic missile I would have no qualms about predelegating authority to shoot down. In peacetime you would have greater concerns perhaps. But I don't think a bolt from the blue is plausible. So for that reason, because of the context in which I think missile defense might be useful, I am not particularly concerned about that problem.

MR. LINDSAY: Well, the thing I would add to it, Ron, is I think you have to look at the question of what would be the cost of making the mistake, because I don't think anyone would seriously say well if the Navy captain pushed a button and shot down a nuclear-armed missile that was going toward Los Angeles, that was terrible — the president should have been brought in on that decision. I think the real question is what would happen if they shot down a missile or something else that they weren't supposed to. And I think there are a variety of ways that you can limit the potential of shooting down let's say a space-launched vehicle, what have you. Even if you did shoot you would probably get insurance for those sorts of mistakes — presumably not going to be carrying people, so the loss of life would be nonexistent. I guess the real question would be could there be some possibility that the Navy captain could push the button and shoot down an airliner rather than a missile. And I think my understanding is that is a pretty low probability. I wouldn't rule it out, because those things can happen. But I think it's on a real low side given the potential cost of an actual missile being fired.

MR. COYLE: May I just add something?

MR. NESSEN: Sure.

MR. COYLE: If you take North Korea at their word, you know, when they did that test a couple of years ago that got all this stuff started, they said they were trying to launch a small object into space; you know, a satellite into orbit. They said they were trying to demonstrate their own capability to do that. I think there are some people who don't believe them.

But if you take them at their word, we launch satellites from the coast of Florida all the time, and if somebody had a ship parked off the coast of Florida shooting down our satellites as they were launched, we wouldn't be very happy about that. I agree with what Jim and Michael have said about, you know, when you're in a real war. But the operational considerations of how you would use this system at other times, which might be virtually all of the time, I think, haven't really been thought through.

Some of the initial reaction to the president's proposal has gone to the issue that Jim referred to as feasibility. The Senate Democratic leader, Tom Daschle, said he's worried that the president is buying a lemon. And a member of Congress said that he thought that the principle ought to be to fly before you buy. Your whole career, virtually, has been involved in testing weapon systems. Is this going to work?

The thing we see in the testing programs is when you finally get to what the Department of Defense calls operational tests — those are tests in realistic operational situation, as realistic as you can make them, against countermeasures — we haven't talked about countermeasures in the boost phase yet — but against countermeasures and other deceptions which an enemy can use, operated by real soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines in good weather and bad, night and day, without warning, all of that sort of stuff.

When you get to realistic operational tests, systems that have done quite well in the laboratory, so to speak, often develop or reveal various problems. That's going to be the biggest challenge for missile defense of any kind — short-range, mid-range, long-range, national; it doesn't matter. The biggest challenge for any kind of missile defense is going to be demonstrating that you can rely on it in realistic operational situations. So far, none of our missile defense system, even the short-range ones, have been through realistic operational tests of that sort.

MR. NESSEN: And just following on to that, could you talk a little bit about the cost and the timetable for trying to overcome some of these problems?

MR. O'HANLON: Well, I would — of course, you've got the real expert here, but I'll just very quickly say that I think that it's not plausible to have any of these technologies that we've mentioned in our book or today so far for at least half a decade, realistically. Now, the Bush administration could have perhaps a few missiles in Alaska in 2004, if that's an option they're really serious about.

It strikes me as a pretty rushed schedule, because we're not even planning on testing the actual booster that would carry the HIPIC (ph) vehicle until, I believe, 2003. And that's contingent on the schedule not slipping any further. So that strikes me as a bit of a hasty decision when we don't even know when and if North Korea will have a capability.

Again, Jim alluded to the fact that North Korea hasn't shown it can do an intercontinental launch. Jan Nolan wrote a great book here at Brookings 10 years ago laying out the difficulties of building long-range ballistic missiles, and getting the re-entry vehicle right is very high on the list of the challenge. They haven't even made any progress towards that that we are aware of.

The guidance system — we really have no reason to think they could even hit the right state they were aiming at, much less the city they were aiming at. So I think prejudging a date of 2004-2005 as the date we have to be deployed by is a mistake. It's an option you may want to invoke down the road if indeed North Korea really does speed up its development. But my guess is that we should take that half- decade or more to do this right, because it's probably going to take us that long.

MR. NESSEN: There are two collateral issues that have been raised, and one has to do with what do you do about the anti-ballistic missile treaty. The other has to do with "Will this simply spark a new arms race?" On the ABM Treaty, did anybody find it interesting that the president really was pretty vague on that issue and didn't call for outright abrogation?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, don't think it's surprising that he didn't call for outright abrogation, given what happened two months ago when they unilaterally announced that the Kyoto protocol was dead. It sent the Europeans up in arms. And I will give this administration credit, and that is, it learns from its mistakes. And if their intent is to withdraw — and there seemed to be a subtext in that whole speech yesterday that, at a minimum, the days of the ABM Treaty are numbered — that they clearly don't want to appear to be doing it precipitously.

To go back to the point Mike raised, the real question is what's sort of the president's bottom line? Was the president's speech yesterday really about establishing a strong bargaining position so he can maximize the kind of concessions that he's going to get from the Russians, but at the end of the day he is willing to accept binding constraints that limit not just the United States but also what the Russians can do? Or is it simply just a public relations gambit designed to say, "Well, look, we tried. We were reasonable. We're sending a delegation out. The Russians didn't want a deal, and so now we can walk away."

And the real question is, they're going to send this high-level delegation out, I guess, beginning next week, and we all know they're going to go over and talk. The real question is, are they going to listen? And when they hear objections from the Europeans, are they going to change whatever their plans are, because, again, we're not really sure what the architecture is they want to build.

And it's important to point out there are a variety of different architectures, and they have very different consequences for the security of other countries. And reading the president's speech yesterday, there was no sense of where he would come down. That may indicate that he hasn't decided himself. And I guess he'll engage in consultation so he can solicit European opinion.

MR. NESSEN: Any other thoughts on the ABM Treaty?

MR. COYLE: Well, I might observe that until a few months ago, the BMDO was saying that the lawn pole and the tent was starting construction on a radar site in the Aleutians, and also beginning construction on a missile field near Fairbanks. But especially they were emphasizing the lawn pole and the tent starting that radar site.

I felt that was misleading, and said so at the time, because to focus on that particular piece of construction, while it takes a long time to do construction out in the Aleutians — I've had experiences with that myself — was the least of our problems. The real problem was figuring out what we were going to do, what we could afford, who the enemy was, and why we needed a missile defense, and whether we could make all of that technology work. And then it was time to build that radar several times over before we would figure out those other questions.

Now it seems that the administration, Bush administration, is saying that the lawn pole and the tent is the ABM Treaty. And, again, I don't believe it is. Obviously, as these gentlemen have pointed out, eventually it becomes a problem because it's intended to prevent national missile defense. It does not prevent site defense, because we built that system in North Dakota as a site defense system. But, indeed, it does intend to prevent national missile defense. But we've been trying to develop national missile defense systems for 20 years and have been able to do so within the ABM Treaty, and there's nothing that's happened in the last few weeks or months that has suddenly changed that.

MR. NESSEN: Mike.

MR. O'HANLON: Well, just one quick follow-up, but also a question for Dr. Coyle, because, as you know, the ABM Treaty does ban even the development of mobile systems, such as these boost-phase concepts, most of which would be — but it doesn't really define the word "develop."

I don't know at what point, in your judgment, you would think that if we were going to try to develop, let's say, an airborne boost-phase interceptor missile or a sea-based boost-phase interceptor missile, at what point will we have to withdraw from the treaty or at least selectively violate that particular part? I'm assuming it would be within one to two years of the beginning of the serious research-and-development program on such a technology. Would you agree?

MR. COYLE: Well, it would depend on how fast we were moving. We have been — you know, we test these systems now at White Sands and at Kwajalein and other places. And testing of missile defenses at Kwajalein is permitted in the ABM Treaty. Now, we've been saying that those are NMD defenses that we've been testing at Kwajalein, but the Russians have not demurred on that point, even though they could have. So the accepted interpretation these days of the ABM Treaty on both sides is that you can be testing missiles for some kind of defense — maybe it's a point defense, maybe it's a national missile — you can do that kind of test work for years and years and it's okay.

MR. NESSEN: On the question of sparking a new arms race, which I guess is really the question of what will be the reaction of Russia and China — unless you think the French are going to try to knock out all the McDonald's — what do you think on Chinese and Russian reaction, possibly being a new arms race?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I think you really should have three potential kinds of arms races. One argument is it will cause the Russians to arm. Another one is it will cause the Chinese to arm. Another one is that because it causes the Chinese to arm, it will spark an arms race in South Asia as India decides it needs more missiles vis-a-vis China, and then Pakistan responds in kind.

I think the South Asian arms race tends to get overblown. I wouldn't rule it out, but I think the administration could fairly point out that India and Pakistan have been doing a fair job of racing without the United States building anything.

In terms of China, I think if you build — well, two things — one is that China is currently modernizing its nuclear force posture, which is not an unusual thing to do. We continue to do that to this day. And there is likely in the future that China will have a larger strategic nuclear force than it currently has. It's now somewhere between 18 and 24 long-range missiles.

How big that build up is going to be, no one knows for sure. It's quite likely that if the United States proceeds with a national missile defense, particularly one that clearly is capable of nullifying the Chinese deterrent, that the Chinese long-range missile force will get larger. But, again, it's starting from a very small base.

In terms of Russia, Russia clearly — its preference is to go lower, and it has shown a willingness to go down to a thousand warheads. And clearly Russia is financially strapped in its ability to build new missiles, but it has one low-cost option, and that is it can simply refuse to abide by its commitment to the START II treaty to go down to 3500 warheads and also refuse to stand by its commitment under START II to give up all MIRVed missiles. And so the Russians could end up sort of maintaining the force they have right now. And the great danger to that is you have an aging nuclear force structure married to a decaying and obsolete early-warning system, and I'm not sure it's necessarily the ideal recipe for this new role that we keep talking about.

And, indeed, one of the sort of disappointing things I to me personally in the president's speech yesterday was that there was some sort of more forward-leaning posture on reductions in offensive nuclear weapons. To a great extent, the president merely repeated language he had used in his speech last May 23rd at the National Press Club in terms of going down to numbers, the lowest numbers consistent with the U.S. national interest. And that's almost any number you want it to be.

And, indeed, we haven't even seen the administration make a public commitment to the numbers that the Clinton administration worked out on the sort of outline agreement for START III. It would have us go down to 2000 to 2500 warheads. And so, on that score, in some sense, I guess the expectation going into the speech was the president was going to deliver some medicine to the Russians, but the expectation also was he was going to bring sugar along with it to help that medicine go down. And there wasn't a whole lot of sugar in the message yesterday.

MR. NESSEN: Mike.

MR. O'HANLON: I would just very quickly add to that and build on the point that I worry less about an arms race than about certain asymmetric responses. And a couple of them — there's a lot more work to do to improve Russian nuclear security. Our former colleague, Bruce Blair, has talked about the need to reduce alert levels because of the decaying warning system. And the idea that Russia is going to agree to trust us and stand down its nuclear forces at the same time that we're building an unlimited missile shield is implausible. And we need to find a way to reassure Russia.

We also need to take the Nunn-Lugar program to the next step. A lot of the warheads in Russia have now been consolidated and secured in a smaller number of sites, but a lot of the excess plutonium and uranium have not yet been. They're under poorly-guarded watch in facilities that are strewn throughout the country in a place that's just not really a stable society.

You don't want that. You want to be able to go to the next step, bring these materials into a smaller number of well-guarded facilities with guards who are properly compensated and well-trained. Russia is not necessarily going to buy into a cooperative effort to expand these programs if, again, we seem to be reviving a nuclear competition.

And the third point I would make would be, again, the broad question of proliferation. What are Russia and China going to do to help the North Koreas, Irans and Iraqs of the world, above and beyond what they've already done in the past, which unfortunately has been too much in some cases, to help defeat our defense? Are they going to sell them decoys? Are they going to sell them more advanced sorts of rocket boosters that could even defeat a boost phase because they burn so quickly?

There are a lot of things that Russia and China could do to hurt us by helping the countries we're most worried about. And, again, it doesn't mean you give Moscow and Beijing a veto over defense, but it does mean you've got to anticipate their reaction and assuage their worst-case fears, because otherwise they could hurt you worse than or more than missile defense will help you.

MR. NESSEN: Jim.

MR. LINDSAY: If I can just piggyback on Mike's comments. It's not even the fact that Moscow and Beijing have to make a conscious decision to go out and sell stuff to the North Koreas and Irans and Iraqs of the world, which they well could. They could just simply decide that they're not going to invest their political capital to keep any subsidiary organization from going out and freelancing.

The president goes and meets with Putin at a major summit and says, "We want you to do more on keeping elements of the Russian army from selling things," and Putin says, "Okay," and then just walks out and does nothing. So I think it's important to keep in mind to what extent do Russian or Chinese political leaders have an incentive to do the sorts of things that Washington would like to see them do?

MR. NESSEN: Phil.

MR. COYLE: I was just going to make the point that Michael did about de-alerting. Why should China or Russia agree to the alerting proposals that Bruce and others have been working so hard on if, surprise, it's their greatest asset against a national missile defense system? They don't want it to go to a situation where it takes them a long time to build up.

MR. NESSEN: Let me ask one last question and then we'll go to the audience. Jim, in your opening remarks, you talked about not building in haste and repainting at leisure. What'd you mean by that?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I think there are some people in the debate who argue for going ahead with a crash program, to get something up and running on the argument that something is better than nothing. I would just point out, if it doesn't work, something is nothing. And I think, you know, again, part of it in going forward, what you have to worry about is the desire that what a crash program is designed to do is not necessarily to defend America but simply to shred the ABM Treaty and establish sort of a fait accompli and we'll go from there. And I think that's a real danger.

I'm just very skeptical. And I think Dr. Coyle knows the technology and the test results better than probably anybody. When Donald Rumsfeld says we know these things aren't going to have high effectiveness in a crash program, he really means they're not going to have a high effectiveness in a crash program. And so I understand Senator Daschle's comment about being afraid about buying a lemon.

And I would also sort of weigh more broadly the extent that national missile defenses are needed, that if you go on crash programs, that you're really going to sort of sour public support and turn this into sort of a staple of stories on Dateline NBC as they talk about the fleecing of America and corporate welfare for the Boeings and Raytheons of the world. And I think that would be not serving the country's interest.

MR. NESSEN: Let's take some questions from the audience. We do have folks with microphones, so raise your hand and wait for the microphone to reach you, and then identify yourself and stand up. Right here; let's start right here on the front.

QUESTION: Rik Winkel, Financieele Dagblad, Amsterdam. Could you address the question of how the national missile defense system would be? In other words, what would be the potential benefits or risks for other countries?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I think the answer there depends upon the architecture you choose. Let's consider the land-based mid-course system that the Clinton administration was proposing to build. If it could be made to work, it would protect the United States and Canada, possibly a little bit of northern Mexico. It would not provide any defense to the allies, which is one of the things the Europeans complained about particularly, because that system to work, in theory, at least, would require the construction or upgrading of radars at Thule in Greenland and also at Fylingdales in England. And the criticism from the Danes and the Brits is that "You want us to build these systems, making us targets of attack, but we get none of the benefits." That's not a particularly enticing offer to make.

However, if you go to boost-phase interceptors, if they could be made to work, they're going to protect the United States, all its allies, and anybody else that might be in the path of the missile, because with the boost-phase interceptor, because it operates in the first few minutes of a missile's flight time, it's going to knock it down regardless of whether it's headed toward Paris or Peoria. So in that sense, if it can be made to work, it can provide widespread benefits to other countries.

MR. NESSEN: Other questions? Right over here.

QUESTION: John Omicinski, Gannett News Service. You gentlemen don't seem to accept President Bush's statement that he'd like to get rid of mutually assured destruction and that this NMD is a method to start that. Am I correct in thinking that? What do you think of his idea of this as a beginning of the end of MAD?

MR. O'HANLON: I'll be very brief and simply say that we're a long ways from moving away from that, because you look at the two nuclear establishments in these two countries; we're still pointing 6,000, 7,000 warheads apiece at each other. We still have war plans that look a lot like the SIOPs of the 1960s. There are some changes, but it's remarkable the inertia that lingers on.

And I don't see how preemptively beginning with the unilateral U.S. advantage in defense technology helps you get to a less confrontational offensive posture. I accept that the president sincerely has the goal of getting to a world with less reliance on sheer terror and the threat of societal destruction. I accept that as his hope. But I don't think that a large-scale missile defense is the right first step to getting there.

MR. NESSEN: Jim, do you want to add anything to that?

MR. LINDSAY: I'd just point out that, given the state of technology, it is highly unlikely that we will move beyond mutual assured destruction. I mean, if you want to supplement or replace mutual assured destruction with what some refer to as mutual assured security, you're going to need to have very effective ballistic missile defenses. And I just don't think they're in the cards. And I think everything else that Mike said about building defenses, straining relations, antagonizing other countries, holds true.

MR. NESSEN: What the president said was, "We must seek security based on more than the grim premise we can destroy those who seek to destroy us. Deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation." Do you have anything to add to that, Phil?

MR. COYLE: Well, I think that NMD is still so early in its development that we have to be careful about talking down deterrence. You know, it's sort of like talking down the economy. What can happen is people may start to change their behavior, and that could be — you know, you could have countries start to consider very dangerous options by talking down deterrence before we really have something to replace it with.

MR. NESSEN: Other questions? Right there.

QUESTION: Thank you. My name is Vince Sinning with the Council on Diplomacy. And my question is a follow-up to the feasibility of Bush's plan. I have been reading Mike and Jim's articles and editorials in the paper, but I would like to hear the panel's idea on the challenges that the Carnegie Endowment for Peace said in regards to the feasibility of President Bush's plan. In a recent article, they said, "There is not now and never has been an effective national missile defense system. It is highly unlikely that any candidate system can be shown to be militarily effective during the next eight years." And I would like your comments on that statement by Carnegie Endowment for Peace. Thank you.

MR. NESSEN: I think we've sort of gone around on the feasibility of this.

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I'll give you a brief answer, and that is, it's hard to give an abstract question, because because it all depends effective against what? If your premise is we can build the defense that will handle — one of the common things right now is resuscitated talk about an accidental launch. If your hope is — if the question is, "Can we build an effective missile defense against a large-scale Russian accidental launch in the next eight years?" the answer is no. It's simply beyond capacity.

If you're talking about "Is it possible we could build a defense with a reasonable chance of shooting down one, two, three, four ballistic missiles launched from North Korea? Could we do that in the next eight years?" I think the chances are pretty good. So the question of effectiveness has to do with effectiveness against what? And I think the hopes for big and bold systems are overblown and oversold.

MR. NESSEN: Anything else on that? Let's get someone over here on this side. There in the back.

QUESTION: (Inaudible) — French television — (inaudible). There's one point that you did not mention, is that I would assume that once the killer missile hits the actual missile, its nuclear warhead either explodes or falls. Have the consequences of these two cases been studied in either stage, (earlier?) boost phase or the two other phases?

MR. COYLE: I might comment about that. That's obviously a concern. If, for example, you're talking about missiles launched toward the United States, it's a very constructive thing to get a globe and stretch strings across it from Iraq or Iran or whoever you think the enemy might be. Then, say, France is the place where the debris could fall, and so that's a real concern, but not if it's going to —

QUESTION: (Off mike.)

MR. COYLE: It would depend on many things. It would depend on how well it was killed by the interceptor, if it was. Was it pulverized, or was it a glancing blow and it could still work? It would depend on what sort of fusing system the rogue country had used in the first place. It would depend on many things.

MR. O'HANLON: In other words, it couldn't be entirely ruled out. And this is part of why I would favor — and we allude to this in our book — for the United States, we favor a small backup system in North Dakota, based on the Clinton-proposed exo-atmospheric technology.

And we would propose that perhaps Europe consider collectively deploying a similar capability with one or two large radars and a base of perhaps a couple of dozen interceptor missiles somewhere in Central Europe, because that way, even if the boost-phase interceptor destroyed the rocket somewhere two-thirds of the way through its flight, for example, there'd be a decent chance that the midcourse system could still go after the warhead and reduce further the odds of any such problem down the road or down the flight path.

But, you know, I don't know how to evaluate quantitatively the probabilities. Clearly there is at least a decent chance of dispersal of radioactive material, even if the warhead itself does not detonate. If that were in the countryside, it would be a relatively limited problem. If it happened to be in a populated area, obviously it could be a nightmare. So I think there would be a reason for Europe to consider a midcourse backup itself, just as we propose a small midcourse backup system for the United States.

MR. NESSEN: You mentioned President Clinton taking a pass on this issue, really. And then 101, 102 days into his administration, President Bush announced going forward. Nothing really happened in those 100 days to cause a different decision to made, was there?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, President Clinton took a pass on building a very specific system. He did not take a pass on research and development. I think the big change, you've got a new administration that is much more optimistic about the benefits to be had and less persuaded that there are substantial costs to proceeding, and so they want to speed things up. But, again, the president yesterday did not commit to a specific system. He did not go out and say, for example, "What we're going to do is we're going to start building in Shemya.

So, I mean — and this is sort of one of the difficulties in evaluating what the president said — is that while he talked for a relatively long time, he said very little in terms of specifics. And the question is, is that because they haven't made up their minds? Is it because they're not going to make up their minds for some time down the road? Or do they know what they want to do and they're simply waiting a decent interval before they do it? And we simply don't know.

MR. COYLE: Could I comment?

MR. NESSEN: Sure, Phil.

MR. COYLE: I don't think it's quite correct to say that President Clinton took a pass on this issue. He made a definite decision that we were not ready to try to deploy, begin deployment of an NMD system in Alaska. And I believe that history, since he made that decision, has borne that out. It's been almost a year since the president made that decision. And in that year, the technical progress has basically slipped day for day. So we are no closer, a year after the president made the decision he made, than we were at the time he made it.

MR. NESSEN: Other questions? Yes, back there, that lady.

QUESTION: — Reduce Nuclear Dangers. And my question is for the two authors. You discussed a lot emerging threats from countries like North Korea. What about non-military measures to deal with that, such as negotiating away the threat before it evolves instead of having to rely on a shaky technology?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I think you raise a very good question. I think there's a tendency to focus on national missile defense as the only solution to proliferation. Clearly the old saying that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure holds true. And, indeed, it may be the case, if you can nip this problem in the bud, that you would need to go and employ a national, I think, theater missile defense, because quite clearly we've already seen the threat. We saw it in the Gulf War. And I think there's a clear need for theater missile defenses.

The Clinton administration reached sort of a tentative or outlined an agreement with North Korea in which apparently, according to press reports, the North Koreans are prepared to give up their mid- and long-range ballistic missile program and also agree to cease exports, which would be critical, because if you look at the Iranian missile program, which is far behind the North Korean one, it is based, to a large extent, on North Korean technology.

So if you can shut down North Korea as a missile proliferator, it would really buy you quite a lot of time. For a variety of reasons, the Clinton administration decided not to conclude that deal, largely having to do with the problems that surrounded the election, and then by the time we knew who the new president would be, they thought that it was too late to actually take a step of that magnitude. I'll leave it for the historians to judge whether that was a sound decision or not. But clearly what has happened with the Bush Administration as you might recall when President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea came earlier this year, there were initial positive signs from Secretary of State Colin Powell that the Bush Administration intended to pursue those negotiations.

And I think the South Koreans were expecting to get a positive message. And after that, when they talked to the president of the United States he dismissed the idea out of hand and basically shot that down as a possibility.

And again I will note, in yesterday's speech the president said quite rightly that when we look at the issue of missile proliferation we have to think in terms of a broad strategy of, and he said, nonproliferation, counterproliferation and defenses. But I'll simply note that in his speech he said nothing more about nonproliferation. And again, I think the point about prevention being worth a pound of cure is true.

MR. NESSEN: Mike?

MR. O'HANLON: I certainly agree with everything Jim said, but I would also note — and I don't think he would disagree — that our policy towards North Korea has constantly combined carrots and sticks. And I don't think we should preemptively assume that this sort of outcome of — positive outcome would be assured, and therefore we wouldn't have to worry about missile defense. If you go back to the history of our involvement, we've been on the peninsula for 50 years, we dismiss categorically any North Korean suggestions that we should withdraw American troops from the peninsula. Secretary Perry publicly signaled that North Korea would not be allowed to develop a nuclear arsenal back in '94, which I consider to have been an important part of the reason why North Korea ultimately accepted the agreed framework. So I think you need to have a package of carrots and sticks vis-a-vis North Korea. It doesn't mean you jump to deployment on national missile defense, but it also means that I don't want to give that tool up out of my tool kit, you know, in advance.

MR. NESSEN: Other questions. Yes, sir, right here.

QUESTION: Paddy Smyth, Irish Times. What I don't understand in this discussion is that it seems that the idea of NMD would leave a gaping hole in defense terms for the case of the suitcase bomb.

Supposing Iraq or North Korea simply wanted to deliver a bomb, almost in the post, why do we still continue to think that there are military solutions to these when it's clearly, with the technology that's available now and proliferating increasingly, the case that it's only political means will stop these threats?

MR. O'HANLON: I'll begin, and Dr. Coyle may want to comment as well.

The suitcase bomb question is a very important question in national missile defense because it raises the broader question of why focus so myopically on one means of delivery of a weapon that you don't think about others? We come out with a very mixed and, in think in the end, balanced approach to this question because we say first of all, the United States does have at least minimal defense against the so-called suitcase bomb today. We have intelligence, which often picks up threats as they come in across our borders. We have Customs, we have the Coast Guard.

The odds of any one of these lines of defense working are usually not that great. They're usually 10 percent here, 15 percent there. But when you accumulate them across several layers, the chances that someone is going to get into the United States with a suitcase bomb become, you know, lower than 100 percent, maybe still too high.

Secondly, a nuclear suitcase bomb is really an oxymoron, unless you are a very advanced nuclear weapon state. And the kinds of nuclear weapons that we could expect North Korea or Iraq to develop would be truck bombs, they would not be suitcase bombs, which may still be something they could smuggle into the United States, but it's not going to be trivial.

Third, of course, they could still smuggle in chemical or biological agent, and that may be comparably deadly, especially a biological agent if properly distributed. My response to that scenario is two-fold. On the one hand, we do have some means of trying to stop that, even if those means aren't too compelling; but secondly, in the context of a regional war, a suitcase bomb threat, I think, is less useful to a country like North Korea, Iran or Iraq — and Jim has made this argument, developed this argument in our book — for the simple reason that we hear about people who supposedly have chemical and biological agents on our soil all the time. There are these sorts of threats all the time, and they're not always credible, and it's fairly hard to make them seem and prove that they're credible; whereas, if you're a missile state and you have a nuclear missile, a nuclear arms missile somewhere or a biologically arms missile somewhere, the threat sort of speaks for itself.

Now, going back to Dr. Coyle's point that the threat may speak so loudly that you know where it is and you can destroy it preemptively, which I'm sure we would if we could, but to the extent that you know North Korea has missile technology but it's found a way to hide those missiles in silos that we did not see constructed because they were covered by building superstructure or by large tents, there are ways in which there is some chance that a North Korea, Iran or Iraq could hide its missiles, but we would still know they had them.

In that situation — sorry to get on this long, tortured logic, but there is a lot to be said here — in that situation, I think the long-range missile threat has a certain coercive power in a crisis that a suitcase bomb may not have.

So at the end of the day, I would like to have defenses against all these t threats. Maybe that's just what I should have said to start with. And what that means is you should have some missile defense but you should also not spend so much money and so much attention on the long-range missile threat that you don't spend more money improving these other capabilities. There are a number of very good ideas that have been voiced for how to improve a homeland defense against other kinds of threats that we have not sufficiently acted on yet. I won't bore you now with an itinerary of some of these proposals. But if we put all of our money into missile defense, we're not going to have money to improve the Coast Guard, improve Customs, improve vaccine stockpiles and so on. So we need a balanced approach.

MR. NESSEN: Questions? Yes, sir, this gentleman on the aisle here.

QUESTION: Richard Anderek (sp), AJE Suisse, French-Swiss financial paper. What happens after the first rogue bomb and after the suitcase? It's not a matter of having an international jury mark down, "They got one hit there, one hit here." It's the end result of the conflict. And that is never addressed in this whole thing.

MR. NESSEN: Anybody want to address it?

MR. LINDSAY: I have to ask you to maybe reformulate the question. I'm not really sure I understood what it is you're asking us to respond to.

QUESTION: You have a suitcase bomb. You have a rogue missile or two. What happens afterwards? A nation survives the result of a war, not a first strike. And that is not addressed.

MR. LINDSAY: I think from the vantage point of the administration, it would argue if you build these defenses and make them work, you don't have to worry about the rogue missile hitting you. And indeed, if you can by building them and clearly show they can work, and render an attack both fatal and futile, you won't get an attack in the first place.

As to the question of should a terrorist delivering a suitcase bomb or any sort of non-state attack, I mean, that's sort of the problem you've always found was in a terrorist attack, in that who do you retaliate against. And that has been the problem with terrorism since Day One, and the problem posed by non-state actors.

MR. NESSEN: Right here.

QUESTION: Isn't it like wanting it to have your spy plane absolutely invulnerable? And now it's been shot down. What happened? Nothing. Is it worth having all that expense to kill the first mosquito?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I think if it is a missile armed with a nuclear warhead, I'm not sure I would dismiss it as a mosquito. I mean, what we're talking about here, I think it's important to keep in mind. These are, an attack by a ballistic missile is a low probability event. Very low probability, but if it should occur, it is a very high cost. And the question is in that situation what is the wise thing to do. And it seems to me there really is sort of four ways to deal with the problem. Problem number one, the lady in the back quite rightly reminded us, is prevention. But prevention doesn't always work. Okay? We see some missile technology spreading.

Number two is the notion that Dr. Coyle raised, the preemption. I think Mike indicated, preemption is something that is easier said than done. Because number one, you gotta be able to locate it; make sure you hit it, and hope that the mere process of attacking doesn't bring about the attack that you're trying to avoid.

Number three is deterrence, which is what we've rested on for 50 years. The problem is that deterrence can fail, not because people are irrational or because there is — that they're different and they don't value life in the same way. It can break down because of accident, in which intent doesn't matter. Or it may be this is the last flailing shot of a regime going down.

I think that finding that leads you to defense, and defense is there primarily at this stage of given technology, given the state of diplomacy, largely as an insurance policy against the unthinkable. And the question really is is how big of an insurance policy do you need before it becomes profligate and a waste of your resources.

MR. NESSEN: Right here.

QUESTION: Claus Kleber, ARD, the German Television network. I wondered whether we are all engaged here in a bogus debate. From what the president said yesterday to the title of your book, Defending America, it looks like the real issue is defending Los Angeles, San Francisco or any city on the east coast against an imminent threat from North Korea or Iraq resulting in millions of death.

Isn't the much more likely scenario that within the next couple of years, the next Gulf crisis — some nation somewhere around the globe behaving in a way that is displeasing the United States — they'll find a United States with their hands tied? You remember the debate about engaging in the Gulf War 11 years ago in the Senate, how difficult that was. If he now would know there is an immediate danger to the United States, that this tiny, mean little nation may really threaten millions of American lives, the president may find himself in a situation where he cannot act. Isn't what the NMD or missile defense should defend, is that really America or is it not much less, namely the ability for the only remaining superpower to act at liberty as it is becoming the only remaining superpower? And is the immense — is this much lesser goal really worth the immense diplomatic, military, financial, et cetera, costs it may involve? Isn't that the real issue?

MR. O'HANLON: I would simply say that — and maybe this is only a partial response to your question, but I would simply say, the world would be much better off if Saddam Hussein were not president of Iraq, not just the world in general, but his own people. They're the ones who are suffering the most. Same thing in North Korea. We like to think about the possibility of engagement in North Korea. Even as this process has continued, probably hundreds of thousands of North Koreans have starved in the interim.

If there's another war on the peninsula or in the Persian Gulf, I don't believe the world community in good conscience or in good judgment should leave those regimes in power. At least, I don't think we want to be committed to leaving them in power and just fighting back to the status quo ante in advance.

If you want to overthrow them in the event of another war that they provoke, you have to think of what they might do in their death throes. And at that point there is no reason to think that a country would restrain itself. And so I think a missile attack may not be the only thing you have to worry about under those circumstances, and I think you were alluding to other threats as well. So I think there would be dangers, and we would have to accept them if we marched on Baghdad or Pyongyang even if we had a pretty good workable missile defense system for the entire alliance system as a whole. But nonetheless, I would like to have that capability and have that option, because again, if we fight Saddam again, I don't want to feel that the best we can do is march back to the Iraqi-Kuwaiti border and stop there. I'm not sure if that's the perfect answer to your question, but —

MR. NESSEN: Let's take about two or three more questions. I think that gentleman there has been trying for a while to get a question in. Yeah, right?yeah.

QUESTION: Thanks. Dan Charles with Science Magazine. A technology question related to boost phase intercept, which seems to be sort of the new thing in your proposal. I've read Dick Garwin's assessment that boost phase intercept is feasible: you know, it could be done much more easily than the task set by Clinton's mid-course thing. My question is that's based on basic physics. Is that — was that true 15 years ago? What has changed in the intervening years with the, you know, $4 billion a year spent on missile defense? Does that make that statement true now, that it would not have been true 10 years ago? I'm interested in some specific what's been accomplished technologically that brings people to this conclusion?

MR. COYLE: I think there have been some technical developments over the years. For example, the seekers, the infrared seekers have gotten better and better over the years, just as the digital cameras that you can buy have improved amazingly. You know, just think in just the last five years how they've changed. So that's an example of a place where the technology has gotten better. The operational considerations, however, are still just as difficult. Some people have said, well, the Navy theater-wide system launched from Navy cruisers could be adapted, evolved to become a boost phase system. And that implies that all of these systems from the shortest range air defense systems to national missile defense systems are sort of a continuum. That's not correct. There are actually quantum steps that you have to go through technically as you move from one of these to the next.

So, for example, the radars on those Navy cruisers are not powerful enough, do not have the resolution to be able to handle NMD-class engagements. They may be good for theater-level engagements, a few hundred miles, but they're not suitable for NMD-class of engagements. Similarly, the booster rockets on those Navy ships have only about half — achieve only about half the velocity they would need for NMD-class engagements. And so we're talking about a whole new rocket, much larger, that achieves much higher accelerations because, as Michael and Jim have said, you've got to get close, and you may be in a tail chase with the missile you're trying to shoot down.

MR. NESSEN: Mike?

MR. O'HANLON: I would just very quickly add, the other thing that's changed, of course, is that we no longer are dealing with big countries as our presumed threat. So, therefore, you have the chance of getting close with a land-based boost-phase capability. During the Strategic Defense Initiative debate, the most common boost-phase concept was a space-based one because you were dealing with such a large country, the Soviet Union. So the main change is strategic, or at least the additional big change is strategic. The foe that you would deal with now is small enough that an earth-based system could be within 500 to 1,000 miles range of the launch point of the enemy missile, and that's the big development that makes it possible.

MR. NESSEN: I think this gentlemen here was previously trying to get a question answered.

QUESTION: Yes, Oliver Nette, the European Commission. A question which is asking you gentlemen to try to predict the future. I mean, in the past, clearly, the strategic architecture was based on negotiations between two adversaries. What is the new paradigm? Is it going to be a sort of succession of unilateral decisions in the U.S. and then other countries reacting to this? Have you given any thought to that, how this will be built up?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I must say, I had hoped the president of the United States was going to use his speech yesterday to tell me what the new paradigm was. He didn't. All I know is that we're going to have a framework.

Clearly, you can try to infer what they might do on the basis of the writings of many of the people in the administration, what they wrote before they joined the administration, but that's always at peril because it's one thing to say something when you're in the cheap seats; it's another thing when you actually have to deal with the consequences of your words.

I think, without sort of point specificity, I think this can be a very real temptation, clearly, to want to do things unilaterally, that they're going to want — a general trend in the administration has been toward lessening constraints on America's freedom to act. I think there's an underlying assumption, which I'm not sure I agree with, that the way to maximize American security is to minimize constraints on American freedom of maneuver.

(Inaudible) — the direction they're going to go. And what we didn't get a sense of yesterday from the speech, and it's really the pivotal question, and it really gets back to the heart of the ABM Treaty — forget numerical limits; forget the actual language, what the ABM Treaty says is that we are willing to abide by binding constraints that again, not only bind us but bind the other guy. And the real question at the end of the day is is the Bush administration, whether you want to call it treaty succession, treaty modification, a new treaty, what have you, is it willing to abide by the notion that there has to be some agreed-upon, binding constraints on what we can do. Or is it going to be something much less formal? If it is something much less formal than that, then I think we can be ending up going in down a very bitter road.

MR. NESSEN: Yes, sir.

QUESTION: Wade Boes with the Arms Control Association. This is kind of a follow-up question actually. What are the consequences for the future of arms control specifically and treaty frameworks in general of the Bush administration's preferred preference for unilateralism and not wanting constraints on its behavior and wanting to preserve its freedom of action? What messages does this send other countries? What do they take away from this?

MR. LINDSAY: Well, I mean, I would — there's a hypothesis there, an assumption that in fact they're going to go down this road, and I don't know for sure whether they will or not. And perhaps part of their decision-making will be if we begin to go down that road, what kind of reaction are we really going to get from elsewhere? I mean the question is, okay, the Europeans may complain, but what are they going to do? And is that a cost we're willing to pay.

But I think if the administration does choose to go down the road of unilateralism, you run the real risk that, in essence, from the vantage point of the Russias and Chinas of the world, it's if you're not willing to live by constraints, why should we? And to the extend that international relations is a two-way street, that reciprocity really governs the interaction among nations, I again think it's a very problematic development.

But I guess I'll adhere to the optimistic view the Mike laid out at the — in his opening remarks that perhaps this is really just about putting a stake in the ground to really sort of have that moment that you make everybody realize you're really serious and make them really willing to bargain, and that you're willing to give away a lot along the way. And I think over the next six, 12, 18 months, we're going to get some sense of whether it is just sort of bargaining leverage and we're going to get some sort of variation of what we have now, or whether we really are entering uncharted waters.

MR. O'HANLON: I'm not really optimistic. I'm just hopeful, like Ronald Reagan. (Laughter.)

MR. LINDSAY: There's a pony somewhere in that pile of manure? (Laughter.)

MR. NESSEN: Let's take about two more questions. One over there, and then we'll come back over here.

QUESTION: Otto Kresher with Copley News Service. The Gulf War and the proliferation of Scud-type missiles around the world indicates that tactical missile defense is a legitimate need, you know, whatever the argument for national missile defense.

A question — my question is, you know, should we be working, you know, to perfect the theater missile defenses in the area, in the stepping stone there, and then consider that as a possible use for a national missile defense somewhere down the line? Would that be a less irritating approach to take as far as the world community and more practical technically?

MR. COYLE: Yeah, as I commented earlier, I believe the threat is much more urgent when you talk about short-range missiles, such as Scuds. Think how this country reacts when a few of our soldiers or sailors or airmen are killed. Imagine how foolish we would feel, we would seem, if tomorrow a bunch of our soldiers were killed in Korea or in the Persian Gulf from Scuds because we were fixated on NMD and let the priorities and pressures for NMD take resources away from the shorter-range defense systems. And think what a tragedy it would be if we lost those lives when we could have done so much more but didn't because NMD took the priority.

MR. NESSEN: I'm just going to quickly add to it. I mean, again, to go back to my opening remarks, I think it's important to note that the Clinton administration early on made a decision to commit a fair amount of resources to theater missile defense. We have a variety of programs under development — what, PAC-3, Patriot PAC-3 is coming on line this year; Navy area defense, I think, 2003. Looking a little bit further out, you have the Army Theater High-Altitude Area Defense and Navy Theaterwide, which are much earlier on. And I think that — I know there are people in the defense community that want those sped up. I think it will be a challenge for the Pentagon just to keep to its current time line and to deliver operational theater missile defenses by 2007, as you're talking, because, again, even?you should not come away thinking that simply because they're shorter-range missiles, somehow that's an easy task.

MR. COYLE: Right.

MR. LINDSAY: It is a very difficult technological problem, and it's very easy to sort of go back in envelope and say, "Here's how I solve that," but translating that sort of broad conception to a working system is a tremendous challenge.

MR. COYLE: If I could just follow up, the last I knew — and I believe this is still correct — the interim operational capability date for THAAD, the Army's theater system, is fiscal '08, 2008, and for the Navy's theater system is 2007. And both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration have been talking about IOC dates for national missile defense before that. To me, that's backwards. The IOC for the theater systems ought to be first, and then later, when we learn how to do NMD, that can come next.

Sorry.

MR. NESSEN: Okay, we'll do the last question here.

QUESTION: Tariq Ali from the embassy of Pakistan.

What I fail to understand is that even if the missile which is carrying a nuclear warhead or any warhead is intercepted and destroyed, but if that very head which it is carrying is not neutralized completely — and what I gather from the discussion today is that there are many variables which go into ensuring that — so if we fail to take into account that factor, so that means that that missile is going to in any way affect some people, maybe a huge number of people, and that people could be very well the allies of U.S.

So if we don't really, first of all, emphasize on the neutralization — that is, complete neutralization — of that very warhead, how can we gain anything from this? You know? Because there are people living all over the world, you know? If any of these U.S. allies gets, you know, to know about the real dangers, how can the U.S. get everybody on board?

Thank you.

MR. LINDSAY: I think your point is well taken. Nobody likes — it's easy to talk about collateral damage unless you're the one who's among the collateral damage. I think it's important to keep in mind that where you're talking about boost-phase defenses over some trajectory, say a missile fired from North Korea, does it raise the sort of problems you're talking about because let's assume it doesn't destroy the warhead and it falls and it's going to fall either in the ocean or in the vast tundra of the great desolate North. As for a mid-course defense, if you can in fact make them work destroying warheads in space, then you don't have those problems that you're talking about.

But it takes us back to a bigger question, and that is, the broader community of nations has a very strong incentive to do everything it can to prevent the spread or proliferation of ballistic missiles, because if they continue to proliferate, and let's say the worst fears of NMD enthusiasts occur, the United States will do what it takes to try to protect its interests.

MR. O'HANLON: Just a very quick technical note. Dr. Coyle might want to comment on this, too. But my understanding would be that if five to 25 kilograms of fissile material were essentially dispersed high in the atmosphere or above the atmosphere, the distribution of that in the ensuing descent to Earth would make it so, so dilute you would have extraordinary low health consequences. I can't quote you a figure on the actual estimated casualties, if any, but it would be — it's just not of the same sort of risk that you're talking about with a nuclear warhead or even with any kind of a limited radioactive release on the surface of the Earth.

MR. NESSEN: Well, thank you to Phil Coyle and to Jim Lindsay and Michael O'Hanlon. Their book, called Defending America: The Case for a Limited National Missile Defense, is being published this week. I think if you talk to some of the Brookings folks outside, they'll tell you more about how to get a copy of it. I think our panelists will probably stick around a while if you have additional questions.

And we thank you all for coming and contributing to a very lively and informative discussion.

END.