Successful failure

Predictably, the advocates of an anti-missile defense system say the failed test last Friday was really a success, since the $100-million miss was due merely to a breakdown in a low-tech system while the actual high-tech killer systems probably would have worked.

The failure, however, makes this a good opportunity to reconsider the consequences of racing ahead with a system that may not ever work and, if it did, would stir uneasiness in China and Russia as putative adversaries and European countries as being left out of supposed protection. More important, if the ABM worked or seemed likely to work, it would destroy the current standoff known as Mutually Assured Destruction. The standoff, easily ridiculed as MAD, its acronym, nonetheless has averted nuclear war between the major nuclear powers for half a century by making evident to all that a first strike by any country would trigger all-out attack against that country’s entire population.

The Chinese in particular fear a U.S. nuclear defense system because if it worked it would give the United States the power to launch a nuclear strike without fear of nuclear retaliation. Advocates of the ABM seem reluctant to mention this basis for Chinese objections, possibly because it suggests that U.S. strategists may be seeking this strategic advantage.

Last Friday’s test and others in the series are intended to show that a defensive missile can destroy an incoming warhead with a direct hit while distinguishing it from decoys intended to confuse the defense system, a distinction many experts say cannot reliably be made. Congressional Republicans increasingly are pressing for an air and sea-based defense system, deployed close to hostile nations, that would strike enemy missiles in the initial booster stage, before any decoys could be launched. But any form of anti-missile defense would violate the ABM treaty. The United States signed the treaty in 1972 to remove the incentive for the Soviet Union to keep building more and better offensive missiles to overwhelm such defenses. The same applies to China, which would respond by expanding its offensive weaponry.

President Clinton and presidential candidate Gore have reason to be pleased with an excuse to delay a decision to move forward with the development of the proposed $60-billion system of intercepting incoming warheads. Republicans, too, should take advantage of an opportunity to slow up with their even more ambitious, costly and confrontational booster-stage proposal. Pollsters who say a supposed “nuclear shield” is politically popular could use the time to ask the American public how it feels about spending a fortune on a false sense of security and aggravated nuclear tensions.