[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 3 (Friday, January 6, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Page S572]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


        STAR WARS OR MAGINOT LINE? CONTRACT TO BANKRUPT AMERICA

 Mr. SIMON. Mr. President, the Republican contract calls for 
the old star wars program--the strategic defense initiative [SDI]--to 
be retooled, reinvigorated, and deployed ``at the earliest possible 
date.'' We have spent a fortune on this program since 1983, with next 
to nothing to show for it, except perhaps how wasteful and foolish our 
defense spending can sometimes be.
  The following article, written by Robert Wright in the New Republic 
in December 1994, makes a clear case for discontinuing the high levels 
of treasure we spend on missile defense every year. President Clinton, 
who seems intent on spending far too much on defense over the next few 
years, must know that the new threats to our national security cannot 
be parried by building fanciful, expensive, uncertain missile defenses.
  The President and Congress instead ought to acknowledge that SDI by 
any name remains nothing more than a 1990's version of the old French 
Maginot Line. The Maginot Line didn't work in World War I, and star 
wars can't work today, for reasons made clear over the past 10 years of 
congressional and public debate. Sadly, we are visiting an issue now 
that should have gone away in the late 1980's.
  I commend the New Republic article to my colleagues, and I ask that 
it be printed in the Record.
  The article follows:
                              Crazy State

                           (By Robert Wright)

       Gingrich argued that conservatives adopt space exploration 
     and Reagan's Strategic Defense Initiative, the so-called Star 
     Wars program, as causes for tactical political gain. ``Young 
     people like space,'' he said.--The Washington Post, 1985)
       The Strategic Defense Initiative is back. It's right there 
     in the Republicans' Contract with America--or, at least, in 
     the exegesis. The National Security Restoration Act, one of 
     ten bills the contract would bring to a vote by spring, 
     demands ``deployment at the earliest possible date'' of an 
     anti-ballistic missile defense. The Republicans haven't said 
     whether that means a space-based defense or a land-based 
     defense. Either way it means trashing the 1972 Anti-Ballistic 
     Missile Treaty, upping Pentagon spending by several billion a 
     year for research and upping it by much more when deployment 
     starts. Why aren't you excited?
       A surprisingly large number of people are. The new SDI 
     comes with a new post-cold war rationale that has attracted 
     not just Republicans, but some centrist Democrats. Indeed, 
     research for a land-based SDI has stayed alive--if barely, 
     and under another name--during the Clinton administration. 
     Accelerated research and early deployment are thus a real 
     political possibility, even if space-based weapons are a long 
     shot. But before we make that leap, could somebody explain 
     why the post-cold war rationale deserves anything less than 
     the derision that finally overwhelmed the cold war rationale?
       The cold war derision had two pillars. First, there were 
     firm doubts about technical feasibility. Nothing has since 
     happened to undermine them. The Pentagon's initial claim of a 
     96 percent success rate for the Patriot Missile against Iraqi 
     Scuds turned out to be fantasy.
       Second, we realized that plain old deterrence worked just 
     fine as a missile defense; so long as Leonid Brezhnev could 
     count on tit for tat, he wouldn't attack. If anything, 
     indeed, a missile defense could weaken the perverse logic 
     behind deterrence by making mutually assured destruction less 
     assured; the ``protected'' nation might feel too nervy and 
     the unprotected nation too nervous.
       Now, all of a sudden, we're told that deterrence won't 
     work. Why? Because now we face not coolly rational, game-
     theoretical Soviets, but a different class of enemy: ``rogue 
     states''--Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Kim Jong Il's North Korea, 
     Muammar Qaddafi's Libya. How does one qualify as a ``rogue 
     state''? So far as I can tell, it helps if your leader (a) 
     doesn't have white skin, (b) dislikes the United States and 
     (c) does not behave in genteel fashion (often failing, for 
     example, to wear a necktie during affairs of state). The less 
     polite term for ``rogue state,'' and its real meaning, is 
     ``crazy state.'' But there is zero evidence that any of these 
     leaders is ``crazy'' in the relevant sense: suicidal. Quite 
     the contrary. Ronald Reagan gave Qaddafi the litmus test for 
     sanity and he passed: we bombed his house, and he modified 
     his behavior. Hussein has shown repeatedly that, once he 
     knows where the brink is, he doesn't step over it.
       Bear in mind that a nuclear attack on the United States 
     would be more suicidal for these men than it would have been 
     for the Soviets. Brezhnev might conceivably have weathered a 
     firestorm and emerged from his bunker to inherit a world 
     destroyed. If Saddam Hussein tried that, he would be squashed 
     like a bug upon emerging. And he knows it.
       Besides, if any ``crazy'' leader does want to blow up an 
     American city, there are SDI-proof ways: drive a bomb across 
     the Mexican border, sail it up the Potomac on a yacht or mail 
     it. For a seventy-pound package, second-day UPS costs less 
     than a ballistic missile.
       Neo-SDI advocates also invoke fear of ``accidental 
     launch.'' But, as John Pike of the Federation of American 
     Scientists has written in this magazine, ``Lots of things 
     have to happen for a missile to fire. The chances of its 
     leaping unbidden from its silo are about the same as the 
     chances of a car starting itself up, opening the garage door 
     and backing out into the driveway without human assistance.'' 
     Besides, how many missiles are aimed at America these days? 
     Russia has agreed to point no missiles at us in exchange for 
     our reciprocal pledge. And whether or not you trust the 
     Russians, their own strategic logic argues increasingly for 
     aiming elsewhere (e.g., at other former Soviet states). 
     Similarly, North Korea's top two targets would be South Korea 
     and Japan. That's the way tensions are in the post-cold war 
     world: regionalized. The surest American defense against 
     ``accidental launch'' is to stay on good terms with Brazil.
       Of course, however slight the chances of nuclear attack, 
     and however real the chances that a missile defense would 
     fail to repel it, a little insurance would be appealing if it 
     were cheap enough. First of all, it isn't cheap ($50 billion 
     assuming meager cost overruns). Moreover, ``insurance'' 
     conduces to solipsism; if we feel (however falsely) safe 
     inside our little shell, waning support for internationalism 
     will wane even faster.
       I'm not saying the new SDI enthusiasm is driven by nascent 
     Republican isolationism. But the enthusiasm accommodates and 
     nourishes the party's isolationist strain. In the Republican 
     summary of the Security Restoration Act, only one goal gets 
     more prominent billing than SDI: ``to ensure that U.S. troops 
     are only deployed to support missions in the U.S.'s national 
     security interests.''
       We all care about ``national security interests.'' But some 
     of us think that national security (in various senses) is 
     increasingly tied to global stability. The Republicans' post-
     election rhetoric, in contrast, fixates on keeping U.S. 
     troops out of peacekeeping roles, keeping U.S. dollars from 
     supporting other peacekeepers and stifling the foreign aid 
     that helps stabilize places like Russia and the Middle East.
       Also, of course, the Republicans don't favor one-worldish 
     projects like . . . well, like continued adherence to the 
     1972 ABM Treaty. And violating that treaty (which, alas, even 
     the Clinton administration's battlefield missile-defense 
     research program threatens to do) is itself a dangerous 
     retreat from internationalism. What's scarier than an Indian-
     Pakistani border flanked by nuclear arsenals? An Indian-
     Pakistani border flanked by destabilizing ABMs as well. We 
     might yet be able to head that prospect off, but not once 
     we've built our own shell.
       The United States is now uniquely positioned to lead the 
     world in avoiding two bad things: a global race to build 
     destabilizing missile defense systems, and a global race to 
     carry destabilizing weapons into space--not just anti-missile 
     weapons, but anti-satellite weapons. The Republicans are now 
     on record as wanting to start the first of these races, and 
     they are clearly inclined to start the second. It's time for 
     President Clinton to crawl out of his bomb shelter, survey 
     the wreckage and start fighting.
     

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