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]]]]]]]]]]]]]]] Tower and the MADmen [[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[[
(2/21/89)
From The Wall Street Journal, 31 January 1989, p. A18:1
[Kindly uploaded by Freeman 10602PANC]
The conventional ``spin'' on confirmation testimony last week
by Secretary of Defense-designate John Tower has been to declare
the death of SDI. But what we see instead is the death of MAD --
mutual assured destruction, the goofy but enormously influential
theory that the way to prevent nuclear war is to leave every
nation defenseless against nuclear missiles.
Mr. Tower's stop-the-presses line was that, ``I don't believe
that we can devise an umbrella that can protect the entire
American population from nuclear incineration.'' But this is a
dog-bites-man story. Mr. Tower and his critics were merely
beheading a strawman, the so-called perfect defense ``Astrodome''
of political myth. Ronald Reagan's initial SDI proposal was
first of all a moral proposition -- a perfect defense would be
good, not bad. The details of how close we can come can be
thrashed out by technicians. And Mr. Reagan has made his moral
point; in the real world a political coalition is building in
favor of deploying anti-nuclear defenses. The proposals on the
table are for limited defenses, of course, but if any kind of
defense is ever deployed, the MADmen have lost.
Their theology has long held that to be perfectly safe
Americans must also be perfectly vulnerable. Defense isn't
tolerable. They know this isn't a popular notion, which is why
they go to such lengths to disguise their attacks on SDI in
jargon about technical impossibility, ``nuclear winter,'' throw
weights, dummy warheads, and ``cost-effectiveness at the
margin.'' But the clear no-defense thread of their argument has
expressed itself in arms-control treaties that limit mostly
defense. And even, as we saw in the GWEN issue in the Dukakis
presidential campaign, in preventing facilities that would allow
us to communicate with surviving forces after a nuclear attack.
The MADmen certainly understand that if a limited defense is
all right, then why not a bigger one as technology permits? And
if a limited defense is all right, then the debate isn't about
defense any more but about engineering. Not about whether to
build defenses but about how much and when. MAD goes the way of
sun-worship and other primitive superstitions.
Mr. Tower, by the way, also seems to understand this very
well. As he put it elsewhere in his testimony, ``I happen to
believe that SDI is a very high-priority item.'' SDI is, he
added, ``an integral part of the total deterrence capability,
transitioning gradually from a totally offensive deterrent
strategy to a more defensive deterrent.'' In plainer English,
Mr. Tower thinks a U.S. president should have more choices, in
the event of a nuclear attack, than simply counting casualties
and blowing up the world. He wants more than a MAD world.
Which brings us back to the coalition for some kind of limited
deployment, also known as ALPS or LPS. As Mr. Tower put it, ``I
think there's an element of desirability in terms, for example,
of an accidental-launch protection system.''
But he's actually coming late to this party. Georgia Democrat
Sam Nunn opened the debate a year ago when he urged the U.S. to
``seriously explore the development of a limited system for
protecting against accidental and unauthorized launches.'' The
idea has since received public encouragement from, among others,
the independent Defense Science Board, a bipartisan group of
scientists on the White House Science Council, House Armed
Services Chairman Les Aspin, and a slew of un-MAD Democrats and
Republicans.
Mr. Tower isn't even the first of George Bush's advisers to
climb on board. Vice President Dan Quayle and National Security
Council Adviser Brent Scowcroft are both on record supporting a
ground-based ALPS. With Democrat R. James Woolsey, Mr. Scowcroft
wrote recently that an ALPS ``could afford some protection of a
major portion of the U.S. against a small accidental attack''
from the Soviets, or ``against a future third-country threat such
as chemically armed ... missiles.'' It all looks to us as if
nuclear defense is a long way from dead.
We recognize that some of those now supporting ALPS may have
another agenda. They hope support for a ground-based defense
will first kill research into space defenses, just as defenses
died in the early 1970s with Richard Nixon's arms-control
agreements. Then when it comes down to actually paying money for
an ALPS, they can kill a ground-based system, too.
But technology has moved a long way in 15 years. By some
estimates, an ALPS with 100 or 200 interceptors with current
technology would cost less than $15 billion. Our judgment has
always been that deploying a limited defense will build support
for a broader one, while also gaining both valuable experience
and protection against a lunatic or accidental attack.
Ronald Reagan's SDI vision changed the terms of the West's
strategic debate. MAD is no longer gospel. President Bush, with
the help of Messrs. Scowcroft, Quayle and Tower, can consolidate
that victory and put the high priests of MAD back in the
cloisters for good.
[The following is not part of the original article.]
George C. Marshall Institute, ``SDI: Making America Secure'',
National Review, 1 April 1988, p. 36.
Keith B. Payne and Colin S. Gray. ``What to Read on Strategic
Defense'', Policy Review, No. 47 (Winter 1989), pp. 86-90.
Russell Seitz, ``The Melting of `Nuclear Winter' '', Wall Street
Journal, 5 November 1986.
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