‘Star Wars’: it will not work

Press, 23 March 1985, Page 20

‘Star Wars’: it will not work

Dr Harold Brown, writing in the “Daily Telegraph,” argues the case against the Strategic Defence Initiative — the “Star Wars” proposal. Dr Brown was United States Secretary of Defence under the Carter Administration, having earlier served in the Pentagon as Director of Defence Research and Engineering, and as Secretary of the Air Force under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson. He is now chairman of the foreign policy institute of the Johns Hopkins University’s school of advanced international studies. On Monday, Dr Brown’s former colleague, Zbigniew Brzezinski, will put the opposite view.

There are now really two different debates taking place in the United, States about nuclear strategy. The first is whether to replace the time-tested policy of nuclear deterrence with a new strategy based on defence of the United States. The second is whether and to what extent America should deploy active defences with more limited objectives and capabilities. Since the advent of nuclear weapons, American political leaders have sought an alternative to deterrence based on the threat of massive retaliation and where the American people are vulnerable to catastrophic destruction. From my own experience, the fact of American vulnerability erodes the confidence that political leaders have in deterrence. It affects all of our national security policies and limits our military and diplomatic behaviour. If technology promised the certainty of a successful defence of the American population against strategic nuclear weapons, or even a high probability of over-all success, it is likely that policy-makers and defence analysts would agree that the United States should seek

that objective. But technology does not offer even a reasonable prospect of successful defence of the population. New concepts and Anti-Ballistic Missile (A.8.M.) technologies have appeared since the 19705. But the same problem remains: both the United States and the Soviet Union will be able to undertake successful counter-measures against any system intended to defend cities — however many the layers of defence. They can do any number of things to counter missile defences: hardening the missiles. They could complete the boost phase at a lower altitude to make the missile launch more difficult to detect from space. They could employ tactics of concentrating forces to saturate and overwhelm the defence. They could also undertake efforts to attack the defensive systems directly. The space segment of the defence system in particular (sensors and satellites) is more vulnerable than the ballistic missiles it is designed to attack. And both sides could always increase their strike forces. A shift in strategy to one of defence of population would also require measures against air-

breathing weapons, bombers and cruise missiles. It would also require successful civil defence. None of these is feasible. In sum, the combinations of limitations — scientific, technological, systems engineering, cost — and especially the potential counter-measures make the prospect of a perfect or near perfect defence negligible. An alternative strategy is, therefore, not practical and the U.S. must continue to maintain its security by deterrence.

In certain circumstances, A.B.M. defence could become critical to maintaining America’s deterrent strike, particularly land-based inter-continental ballistic missiles. If it is concluded that other methods of protecting these forces may be inadequate, the United States should then pursue active defence by modifying the A.B.M. treaty to permit a last ditcli defence of nuclear forces. But such a threat to America’s retaliatory capability does not exist today. As a second limited objective, the United States could pursue defence to hedge against the possibility that deterrence might fail. Such a failure could occur in the form of a war between the superpowers, an attack by a third country, or an unauthorised launch.

an accidental, unauthorised or demonstration attack of a few to a few dozen missiles from the Soviet Union. This could be very sophisticated, involve up to hundreds of warheads, and be aimed at targets of any kind anywhere. A limited space-based system, automatically covering the entire country, may seem ideal for defence against such small attacks. An alternative would be a relatively thin nation-wide last ditch defence similar to that proposed by President Johnson in 1967. But if a small ballistic-missile attack were sophisticated and concentrated on a single target area even a combination of these two defensive systems could probably be saturated and penetrated. Thus America would need to deploy a defence system approaching an all-out A.B.M. deployment. Any A.B.M. defence could prompt Soviet countermeasures. Arms competition — offensive and defensive — would be accelerated. With or without constraints on the build-up of offensive forces, defensive systems would create uncertainties as to the effectiveness of the retaliatory capabilities on each side and could lead to pressures to pre-empt with nuclear weapons in a crisis. While it is most unlikely that either side could confidently believe that it had a first strike damage-limiting capability, any such possibility could prove enormously destabilising. The costs of A.8.M., air defence and civil defence to replace the deterrent strategy could approach $1 trillion. Deployment costs for A.B.M. defence of 1.C.8.M.S would be $lO billion or more; defences for damage limitation within a deterrent strategy could cost upwards

Groups or nations could also potentially threaten America, with nuclear weapons as an instrument of terrorism. But in these cases the threat would be, at least in the near term, through delivery of nuclear weapons by surreptitious means by low-flying aircraft, not by ballistic missiles. So an A.B.M. defence would not help. Deterrence might fail through

of $lOO billion. Such claims would reduce funds available for other forces.

An extension of strategic defence to cover our allies from an all-out Soviet nuclear attack raises additional problems of feasibility and cost. Defence of the United States only could raise Allied concerns about the continued American commitment to the defence of Europe. If the superpowers’ nuclear forces were neutralised, the Allies could become concerned that they were more vulnerable to conventional attack. Finally, the British and French would have additional concerns about the continued viability of their independent nuclear deterrents if the Soviet Union pursued an expanded programme of active missile defence.

The risks of deploying an extensive A.B.M. system outweigh its advantages. I therefore continue to oppose moves to abrogate or modify the A.B.M. treaty. The President should reaffirm the current American nuclear strategy and back off from his objective of trying to substitute defence of the population for deterrence by retaliation. American political and military leaders should publicly acknowledge that there is no realistic prospect for a successful population defence, certainly for many decades, and probably never.

The President and his advisers should make a determined effort to explain the elements of current American nuclear strategy and to convince the public of the need to continue to pursue peace and the prevention of nuclear war through the threat of retaliation. The President should also modernise strategic offensive forces.