Missile Defense: The Time Is Now - Stop talking and start building.(new missile defense system needs to be planned)

Genuflect first, ask questions later. Or so goes the reasoning at the State Department, the part of government most likely to keep missile defense-finally on the cusp of reality-from ever happening. A February 2 "secret" memorandum from assistant secretary of state Avis T. Bohlen- a Clinton holdover-to Secretary Colin Powell nicely captures the institutional mindset at State. Bohlen recommends doing nothing precipitous on missile defense-in fact recommends doing nothing at all, at least not until the completion of another, endless round of consultations, discussions, and general reassurances and temperature- takings with almost any foreign power willing to consult and discuss.

"We should not withdraw from the [Anti-Ballistic Missile] treaty," Bohlen warns Powell, "until we know what will replace it as part of a strategic stability framework." That could take a long time. "We should look for ways to make NMD [national missile defense] and its evolution appear less threatening to the Russians and, if possible, the Chinese." "The allies want real consultations before decisions are made, not briefings on what we have decided." "Early discussions with the Russians could be a valuable input to the Administration's policy deliberations." What Bohlen recommends, in short, is a policy of logorrhea. And early indications are that Powell is eager to gab. He wanted to continue the Clinton administration's talks with the North Koreans (the president himself put the brakes on that idea), and reportedly wanted to continue the Clinton administration's "experts level" talks with the Russians on missile defense. (Powell now denies this.) Well, what are diplomats for, if not talking?

But this is the now-or-never moment for missile defense. The Bush administration may be at the apex of its power, and the allies- convinced, for now, that the administration is serious about missile defense-are at their most cooperative. If the administration doesn't immediately begin building a ground-based system-as a first step toward a larger, more capable defense-and announce our imminent withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the status quo will quickly settle back in again. The schedule for fielding a system would be delayed beyond 2005, pushing it ever further into the mists of the future, and heightening its political vulnerability to the charge that it will never be a reality (despite all the billions spent on it). Meanwhile, the ABM Treaty will remain an archaic and irrational, but unmovable, obstacle to missile defense. More talk-more diplomatic business-as-usual-could keep the U.S. from ever defending itself against ballistic-missile attack.

Talk has never served missile defense well. In 1993, the Clinton administration slashed funding for the project, denying that the U.S. faced a missile threat at all. When the Rumsfeld Commission in 1998 exposed that position as wishful thinking, the administration resorted to the next best way to kill missile defense-consulting with the Russians. From early 1999 to the bitter end, the administration talked to the Russians about modifying the ABM Treaty to allow for a limited defense system. The talks never actually rose to the level of full- blown "negotiations" because the Russians insisted they would only "discuss" the treaty, not negotiate changes.

So, this process was born in appeasement and sustained by niggling legal hairsplitting. The Clinton administration proposed a missile system with Russian sensitivities (such as they are) in mind. The U.S. would ignore the threat coming from Iran or Iraq because defenses stationed in the American Northeast-with radars located in England and Greenland-might seem capable of defending against Russian missiles as well. Instead, then, the U.S. would focus in the other direction, on the threat from the Far East. One antimissile site would be built in Alaska as a first step that would assuage Russian fears and allow the U.S. eventually to convince Putin & Co. to accept a more advanced system.

The Clinton administration initially tried-in a burst of obfuscation of the sort usually reserved for its jousting with Kenneth Starr-to maintain that the Alaska site wouldn't violate the ABM Treaty, even though Article I of the treaty states that a signatory is "not to deploy ABM systems for a defense of the territory of its country." Eventually, the administration dropped this argument. It instead asked the Russians for a special protocol to the treaty that would permit the Alaska site. In effect, national missile defense would still be banned, except for this particular national missile defense. The strategy was to get the Russians to go along with the smaller changes to the treaty first, then to tackle the really hard question of whether anything like the ABM Treaty should exist at all. This, of course, gave Russia an incentive never to agree to the initial changes, which is exactly what it did, stiffing the U.S. and keeping the treaty-signed in 1972-intact.

How to get out of this trap? Simply begin work on the Alaska system right away. Though the Clinton administration's rationale for the Alaska plan was suspect, the system makes sense as a starting point. It would have two parts: the X-band radar on Shemya (an Alaskan island), and 100 interceptors in the center of the state. The radar will be necessary to any comprehensive defense of the U.S., whether this defense eventually depends on sea-, land-, air-, or space-based components (or, best, some combination of all in a "layered" system). And the radar is the element of the Alaska project that will take the longest to build-work on the forbidding Shemya is possible only three or four months out of the year; hence the urgency in getting started this summer. Meanwhile, the 100 interceptors would have advantages as well. Alaska is closer to North Korea than to parts of the United States, so the system there would protect against threats from the Far East. But it also could provide some coverage for the East Coast, thanks to its location near the top of the world. (Since there is less longitude at the top, the distances the interceptors would have to cover are much shorter-a look ...