Another Maginot Line: NATO’s Missile Defense

What to do with a defense instrument that does not work in practice, agitates neighboring regional powers, and costs a lot of money in times of economic crisis? Leave it aside, or adopt it as a new mission? Adopt it as a new mission. That is what NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen proposes in the context of the NATO Strategic Concept Review that is currently running full-speed and that is supposed to be finalized at the end of November at the Lisbon Summit. Initially, NATO’s Star Wars was linked to the withdrawal of the U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. As the nuclear umbrella is perceived as a symbol of transatlantic solidarity, the opponents of the withdrawal required an alternative burden-sharing instrument: missile defense. Replacing offensive by defensive weapons system might even be easier to sell to a skeptical European public. At the moment, it is far from clear whether the withdrawal of American nukes will take place. Missile defense has better chances to be accepted.

There are, however, two objections to a NATO missile shield: the technology is not ready, and Russia does not like missile defense at its borders. Each country that is able to build offensive ballistic missiles can easily produce countermeasures like decoys or false warheads, which makes it nearly impossible for the exo-atmospheric defensive interceptor to hit the target. That was the major reason why the Obama administration changed the plans of his predecessor. Unfortunately, also Obama’s less ambitious defense systems – SM-3 missiles on Aegis ships or on European territory - experience identical problems as they are also exo-atmospheric.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency claims that the tests with the Aegis SM-3 missiles have been successful. Everything depends of course on how "success" is defined. Remember how the Patriots – which are endo-atmospheric and therefore less sophisticated - destroyed Saddam's Scuds in 1991? Only three out of more than fifty Patriots effectively destroyed their target. Formally, the Pentagon had defined “success” as “a Patriot and a Scud that passed in the sky”. Similar misleading practices disguise the real performances of the SM-3 missiles, the backbone of the missile shield in Europe. According to recent scientific analysis by George Lewis (Cornell University) and Ted Postol (MIT), published in the magazine Arms Control Today, nine out of ten so-called successful intercepts with SM-3 missiles were not successful. The interceptors hit the offensive missile, but failed to destroy the warhead. Some of the warheads continued its way through the atmosphere in the direction of the target.

Even if these capabilities perform not as they should, Russian strategists have to assume that they work. As also President Obama talks about a phased approach, implying extending the system in the future, the Russian fears will not calm down. The Russian atomic arsenal is both quantitatively and qualitatively small in comparison with the US. One estimate by American experts indicates that in case the Russian arsenal is not on alert, Russia will only have six survivable nuclear weapons left after an American first-strike. If U.S. nuclear primacy is complemented by a missile defense shield, than we should not be surprised that some Russian planners are panicking. In short, the proposed NATO’s missile shield does not improve geo-strategic stability. Further bilateral nuclear arms reductions may be hampered as well.

This reasoning applies even more to China, which has less than 10% of Russia’s number of nuclear weapons.

American taxpayers have spent $ 150 billion for a system that still has to show that it works in real-time. NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen would now like to see that the European NATO member states for the first time contribute as well. Are we Europeans going to fill the $ 600 million budget deficit of NATO as well as sponsoring Star Wars? In times of economic and financial crisis, especially in Europe, money can be spent much wiser than on a imagined missile shield. There is no need for another Maginot Line.

Missile defense advocates come up with the argument that nuclear deterrence does not always work. (Interestingly, not long ago, the same officials said exactly the opposite). The end result is two handicapped instruments: nuclear deterrence whose credibility is further undermined by missile defense, and missile defense that does not work.

Tom Sauer is Assistant Professor in International Politics at the Universiteit Antwerpen (Belgium), and author of the forthcoming book Nuclear Elimination. The Role of Missile Defense.