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two "Earthling" columns in Slate, Robert Wright responds
to a piece I wrote a couple of weeks ago criticizing his missile-defense
arguments. Is this one of those tiresome and self-referential debates
that give Internet journalism a bad name? Yes. But let's roll through
Wright's re-stated arguments one more time, for the sake of thoroughness
if nothing else.
1) The suitcase option. In Wright's telling, rogue-state
leaders are perfectly rational actors who will carefully study their
options to deliver weapons of mass destruction with spread sheets
and graphs, and after crunching the numbers will inevitably conclude
— suitcase!
There a couple of things wrong with his analysis. First, a suitcase
bomb is a wonderful instrument for a random terrorist attack, but
it has its limits as a way to project state power. In a crisis,
it might be too difficult for Iraq to get its magic suitcase through
customs, and delivered to the appropriate location in the U.S. for
it to serve any geopolitical purpose. (Even if it could, this would
mean such an attack would lose its deniability, upon which Wright
rests so much of his logic.)
This is why Iraq is trying to build missiles in addition to presumably
buying lots and lots of carry-on bags — because suitcases and
missiles have different capacities and uses. It also, by the way,
is why Iraq launched SCUDs at Israel during the Gulf war and not
just a bunch of Samsonite bags.
Second, Wright says that the question when it comes to thinking
about defense is, Which of the two options, suitcase or missile,
is "the cheaper and easier and safer" of the two. And then we should
defend only against that option. This is obviously moronic
— as if we should prepare our military only to defend against
hand grenades because they are cheaper and easier to deploy than
heavy artillery.
If suitcase bombs have their utility, so do missiles, which is why
so many of Wright's hyper-rational rogue-state leaders are pursuing
them. It makes sense to defend against both. If we spend billions
against the possibility of a suitcase attack, we should spend billions
against the possibility of a missile attack as well.
Finally, if Wright truly believes that rogue-state leaders make
all decisions based on a carefully calibrated cost-benefit analysis
he should be in favor of a missile defense that makes the missile
option "more expensive and harder and more dangerous" to rogue states.
Or do rogue-state leaders only respond rationally to incentives
when it's convenient to Wright's argument? Earth to earthling —
hello?!?
2) Rational actors. According to Wright, rogue-state leaders
care only about their personal well-being and would never be motivated
by something so illogical as national honor. He seems incredulous
at the idea that anyone might not "comply with Western notions of
rationality." But most of human history, certainly the blood-splattered
history of war, is about people not complying with Western notions
of rationality.
In World War II, to cite an example, powerful elements of the Japanese
military knew that it was a mistake to attack the United States
— but the attack happened anyway. According to Wright's line
of analysis it would have been ill-considered for the U.S. to take
any really expensive steps to guard against such an attack, since
the whole idea of such an attack was irrational. And we all know
nothing irrational ever actually happens in the world.
3) Assured retaliation. Wright knows — and, more importantly,
Wright knows that every single rogue-state leader from now until
kingdom come will know — that the United States would respond
with a massive nuclear retaliation to any nuclear attack against
it. Let's assume that Wright is correct that such retaliation would
automatically be forthcoming. This doesn't mean a rogue state couldn't
miscalculate.
How could it possibly get the wrong idea? When North Korea pursued
a nuclear program, our reaction was to…agree to build it nuclear
reactors. Pretty fearsome, huh? When Saddam tried to assassinate
the first President Bush, we reacted by…blowing up an empty
warehouse.
And the circumstances in which the U.S. would be called upon to
launch a nuclear strike might be a little more complicated than
the retaliation for an attack on Manhattan that Wright posits. Say
in a Korean crisis, North Korea threatens 1) to nuke Seoul, and
2) if we were to retaliate, to strike a U.S. city in return. What
do we do then? It gets complicated.
Finally, there is the moral question. Should a rogue state launch
a nuclear missile against us, missile-defense skeptics like Wright
want there to be only option open to the U.S.: a retaliatory strike
that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians. This
is truly indefensible, so Wright tries to wiggle out of it by advocating
the assassination of any foreign leader who launches a nuclear attack
against us. So, nuke us and we send in the sharpshooters —
this is beyond silly.
4) Bluffing. Wright makes an enormous concession when he
says, "I don't deny that possession of nukes would probably give
the dictator more leeway in world affairs, or that, specifically,
great powers might be less inclined to confront such a dictator."
Here, Wright acknowledges that a nuclear missile is an extremely
important tool to a dictator. He should admit, then, that it is
a legitimate and important aim of U.S. defense policy to deny such
a tool to hostile states, or at least limit its effectiveness.
This, of course, is what missile defense is all about. Wright argues
essentially that a missile defense is worthless if it is not 100
percent effective. But this is a standard to which we hold no other
weapons system. Anti-aircraft guns aren't 100 percent effective,
but they still are useful, for the way they increase the danger
and expense of launching an air attack. (And I assume that Wright
doesn't want to suspend all of our extremely expensive counter-terrorist
activities just because they are not guaranteed a 100 percent success
rate.)
There is no reason to believe that the U.S. missile defense would
not be highly effective against a primitive missile force of the
sort North Korea or Iraq is likely to be able to field in the short
term, nor that, as the defensive technology advances, it will get
even more effective and be able to counteract more sophisticated
missile forces.
Again, if Wright really believes that rogue-state dictators are
rational, surely the fact that any launch against the U.S would,
say, have only a 5 percent chance of getting through would crucially
affect their calculations in a crisis, making them less bold and
less likely to actually make a launch.
Wright asks, In what circumstances would we be unwilling to intervene
against a nuclear-armed dictator when we didn't have a missile defense,
but be willing to intervene with a 95 percent effective defense?
This is a hypothetical that is difficult to answer, but suffice
it to say that the difference between total vulnerability to a nuclear
strike and near-total invulnerability is rather large, and would
surely enter into the calculations of U.S. policymakers.
After asking what would constitute such circumstances, Wright says,
"I'm skeptical that there are many." But even if there are just
a few, or even one — say, a nuclear Saddam sweeping through
Kuwait and into Saudi Arabia — having a missile defense would
be extremely important.
As it is, Wright is perfectly happy to do nothing to develop defensive
technology in the face of dictators acquiring weapons that will
vastly increase their power and constrain U.S. action. This is a
counsel of despair, and is — in its essential attitude, in
its passivity and willingness to have the hands of the U.S. potentially
tied in a crisis — isolationist.
Wright concludes that "the scariest single thing about missile defense"
is that "it could give some American political leaders the illusion
of insulation from world problems." This is truly cracked. Again,
does Wright fear that our counter-terrorist activities insulate
us from world problems in a similar way?
It is fine for Wright to oppose missile defense, but it is rather
galling that he has the audacity to claim that logic prompts him
to do it.
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