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the New York Times today, Thomas Friedman trots out — with
a dollop of sarcasm — what has become the
standard liberal
line on missile defense.
In a nutshell,
his piece goes like this: the Bush administration is arguing that
rogue states are too nuts to be deterred from attacking the U.S.
by the threat of a massive nuclear retaliation, but that they will
be calculating enough not to attack us if there's a chance
that a partially effective U.S. missile defense will knock down
one of their ICBMs. So, what gives? Friedman urges the U.S. to abandon
this jumbled business, and trust — as we have for 50 years — in
the threat of catastrophic U.S. retaliation to protect America from
attack.
There is so
much wrong here it is difficult to know where to start. First, Friedman
ignores the fact that there are two complementary reasons for a
hostile state to pursue nuclear missiles: 1) to attack the U.S.;
2) to deter America's ability to act in the world merely by holding
out the possibility of attacking the U.S. Friedman's position is
that rogue states, whatever else you think of them, act rationally
— so, how then does he explain the fact that so many of them are
pursuing ICBMs? The answer is, obviously, that the missiles have
important uses.
When it comes
to attacking the U.S., a rogue state would not necessarily have
to be "crazy," as Friedman puts it, to entertain the possibility.
It would just have to have drastically different ways of making
cost-benefit calculations than we do — which is not so outlandish
to imagine (a blockbuster movie is going to be released on Memorial
Day, dealing with one prominent instance from history when a foreign
nation attacked the U.S., seemingly irrationally). Also, it's not
quite as certain as Friedman makes it seem that the U.S. would be
willing to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians in retaliation
for an attack, and as long as there is the barest hint of uncertainty
about this, an attack on the U.S. would not necessarily be an act
of suicidal madness.
Indeed, Friedman
doesn't just take U.S. retaliation as a given, but U.S. preemption
as well. As soon as a serious missile threat emerged, in Friedman's
telling, we would just take the offending missiles out. One hopes
so, but in the real world there are factors making such an option
more difficult than Friedman portrays it. Remember the international
condemnation that Israel endured when it took out an Iraqi reactor
in the early '80s? Remember how President Clinton threatened to
obliterate North Korea's nuclear weapons, but we ended up helping
build North Korean nuclear reactors instead? Then, there's
the problem of locating and destroying every nuclear-tipped ICBM
in a given country — such an operation wouldn't be guaranteed 100%
accuracy any more than a missile defense.
Finally, when
it comes to deterrence, there is a moral question involved: Does
Friedman really want the U.S. to have only one option should a country
launch a missile at us — incinerating thousands and thousands of
its civilians? If so, he should be ashamed of himself.
But missiles
would have uses to a hostile power that wouldn't necessarily involve
attacking the U.S. If Friedman is such a believer in deterrence,
he should be willing to acknowledge that it works both ways. A hostile
power armed with nuclear missiles is obviously totally different
from one without nuclear missiles. Saddam Hussein would have been
in a much better position to hold on to Kuwait had he been capable
of threatening to destroy New York City. And, in turn, a nuked-up
Saddam wouldn't be in such a strong position if the U.S. had a missile
defense that would eliminate, or at least diminish, such a threat.
In Friedman's
world, however, no rogue state should be investing in missiles,
but instead buying Hondas and Fords — to deliver what has become
the liberal's weapon of choice, the car-delivered nuclear bomb.
But hostile nations are still stubbornly pursuing missiles because,
among other reasons, it would be a little awkward in a crisis to
say, "Let us keep Kuwait, or we will place a car on a cargo
ship, offload it somewhere in remote Canada, then drive hundreds
of miles, wait in hours of traffic, and pay a $3.50 toll, until
it finally reaches mid-town Manhattan and destroys all of New York
City!" An ICBM, obviously, offers a much more practical long-distance
delivery device — hence, their popularity among Friedman's rational
rogue states. (Something that missile-defense critics always forget
to mention in their car-bomb scenarios is that the U.S. is already
spending billions a year in protecting against this threat.)
Friedman makes
much of the fact that a missile defense would not be 100% accurate.
But no weapon system is. Does Friedman oppose the M-16 because it
sometimes jams? Having some capability against ICBMs is better than
having none. It will, among other things, change the calculations
of hostile powers, and diminish the value of nuclear missiles because
they'll no longer be such a sure-fire way to attack or threaten
the U.S. If a missile defense system fails, deterrence and retaliation
can always be a backstop. But, if Friedman's view prevails, the
U.S. won't have any recourse if deterrence should ever fail to prevent
a launch against the U.S. You don't have to be a rogue state dictator
to know that that, well, just isn't rational.
EDITOR'S
NOTE: In my
piece last week about missile-defense critic Ted Postol, I should
have mentioned that Bloomberg originally reported the story of the
FBI's dismissal of Postol's allegations. Also, the Postol quote
in my piece came from the Bloomberg report.
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