Monday, June 18, 2007

DAR AL HARB- U.S.A.: UNITED STATES OFAMERICA & ITS BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE

US: The reason behind missile defense

Washington has spent the last six months trying to convince the world that the expansion of the nascent US ballistic missile defense (BMD) system into Europe poses no threat to Russia's strategic deterrent, but rather is only intended to counter Iran and other Middle Eastern threats. The US claims are accurate-for now.

In 1998, the world was stunned when North Korea launched a Taepodong-1 that very nearly put its payload into orbit. Through force of willpower, persistence and innovation, North Korean engineers effectively built an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with little more than Scud missile technology (which essentially is little more than World War II-era German V-2 technology). That launch provided a signpost for the future of strategic security since, if North Korea could do it in 1998, almost any nation in the world might be in a position to threaten the continental United States in the next 50 years.

Washington has now placed a rudimentary ground-based midcourse defense (GMD) system in Alaska to counter the North Korean threat. The same system is slated for deployment in Poland and the Czech Republic to counter a similar threat from Iran in the near future. Such a BMD system accomplishes three things:

1. It protects the United States from a small-scale rogue missile launch from very specific regions of the world.

2. It undermines the use of a yet-to-exist Iranian or North Korean ICBM as a negotiating tool.

3. It deters the development of such systems (which represent a huge national investment for countries like Iran and North Korea).

While the US plan is all well and good, is it worth the price? There is certainly an economic argument in favor of BMD. If the system stopped a nuclear missile from striking a large US city, then the costs of development (already at some $110 billion since former President Ronald Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative) would pale in comparison to post-nuclear-strike reconstruction costs.

But building a crude nuclear device is difficult enough. The specialized materials and technical skill required to miniaturize a weapon and harden it against the strain of launch, the cold of space and the heat of re-entry is prohibitive for all but a handful of nations. If BMD is to be understood as a defense against nuclear terrorism, then there are far more likely scenarios to be considered, and the massive investment would be better spent elsewhere-such as on port security, where a much more rudimentary device could be slipped into the United States.
The true utility of BMD is measured by its congruence with the five imperatives that have dominated US strategy for the better part of two centuries:

1. maintaining control over North America

2. securing strategic depth for the continental United States

3. controlling sea approaches to North America

4. dominating the oceans5. keeping Eurasia divided

BMD is not just consistent with one of these themes; it is the logical outgrowth of three of them, and has contributed incidentally to a fourth (e.g., rivalries within Eurasia). At the end of the 19th century, Rear Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan advocated the foundational importance to US geopolitical security of a strong Navy. Now as in Mahan's time, the US Navy provides North America the buffer that has been the foundation of US geopolitical security and stability since the mid-1900s. BMD will help secure the same strategic depth for the continental US and extend control of the sea approaches and dominance of the ocean into space.

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Pertinent Links:

1) US: The reason behind missile defense

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