CONFERENCE
Missile Defence - Threats, Responses and
Projections
University of Bradford - Thursday 18 March
2004
Co-hosted by British American Security Information Council
(BASIC)
and Bradford Department of Peace Studies
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Conference
Missile Defence From Cold War to Hot Peace
Summary of Presentation by Dr Jeremy Stocker, Senior Principal,
Centre for Defence & International Security Studies and Research
Associate, Royal United Services Institute.
When defence against ballistic missiles became a controversial
subject in transatlantic relations during the final years of the
Clinton Administration, one could be forgiven for thinking it was
a new topic of international security. Ballistic Missile Defence
(BMD) had not featured in public debate in Britain or the rest of
Europe for many years. But in face, missile defence has been a persistent
subject of policy deliberation and technical investigation in Britain
for over 60 years, since before the first German V-2 rocket landed
on Chiswick in west London in September 1944.
In the succeeding half-century or more, Britain, like other western
governments, has had to respond to three distinct ballistic missile
threats. The first was the V-2 itself, the world's first ballistic
missile. From the late 1950s onwards, the developing Soviet missile
capability became an increasingly dominant part of the overall strategic
threat to the West. And finally, there is the proliferation problem
caused by the diverse missile inventories of a wide range of Third
World countries, including but not only most of the 'usual suspects'
or so-called 'Rogue States'.
The ballistic missile is itself simply a delivery system, one of
several. Others include cruise missiles, manned aircraft, artillery
shells, hijacked airliners, suicide bombers and the rest. Each has
its own unique characteristics, but all are simply means of delivering
a military payload from point 'A' to point 'B'. To date, we have
provided ourselves with defences, of varying types, against all
the other delivery systems, but not against ballistic missiles.
What, then, makes the ballistic missile so special that we do not
treat it in the same way as all the other potential threats?
The answer is the nuclear dimension. Though the V-2 carried a 'conventional'
high-explosive (HE) warhead, from the 1950s on both sides in the
Cold War employed ballistic missiles almost exclusively for nuclear
delivery. This was because of the high cost and relative inaccuracy
of rockets compared to other deliver systems, especially manned
aircraft (which can, of course, be re-used many times).
Moreover, not only was the threat nuclear, but in view of the technical
difficulties inherent in intercepting a hypersonic target at very
high altitudes, defence against it also had to be nuclear, given
the technologies then available. Exploding one's own nuclear warheads
over one's own territory could make the solution almost as bad as
the problem it addressed.
This meant that defence against ballistic missiles was, in effect,
nuclear defence with all that that implies. In particular, when
a missile threat is numbered in the thousands and is nuclear-tipped
and defence, to be worthwhile, has to be near-perfect. Even a 95%
effective defence, if such a thing were achievable, is of little
use as the consequences of even the surviving 5% was too awful to
contemplate. Another response to the nuclear threat, including its
ballistic element, therefore had to be found.
The response, which was adopted somewhat earlier and more comprehensively
by Britain than the two superpowers, was nuclear deterrence. An
assured retaliatory capability which could wreak devastation in
reply to an attack, under any and all circumstances, was the only
sure way to prevent such an attack in the first place. Though nuclear
deterrence has a complex theology all of its own, that is the essence
of Mutual Assured Destruction or 'MAD'.
Britain therefore gave up on attempts to develop active defences
against ballistic missiles in the early 1960s. Both the Americans
and Soviets persisted, however. A nuclear-tipped BMD system was
deployed around Moscow from 1968 onwards, and after much upgrading
remains there to this day, though now of uncertain operational status.
The United States also briefly deployed a defence in the mid-1970s
but doubts about its operational effectiveness soon led to its de-commissioning.
From the 1960s onwards, missile defence came to be seen as de-stabilising.
Though it was recognised that they were unlikely to defeat a large-scale
nuclear attack, they could undermine the mutual vulnerability that
was at the heart of nuclear deterrence. Defences were extremely
expensive and could provoke another ruinous arms race to match the
existing competition in offensive systems.
A consequence of this thinking about missile defences during the
Cold War was the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty which
severely restricted the development and deployment of active defences.
Though this was a bilateral agreement between the United States
and the Soviet Union, Britain actually benefitted more from it than
either of the two superpowers. Missile defences could undermine
the credibility of the UK's own small nuclear deterrent. Indeed,
even before Polaris entered service, it was assessed as potentially
ineffective in the face of the Moscow BMD system. The result was
the complex and expensive Chevaline Polaris Improvement Programme,
to date the world's only system of full defence penetration decoys
and other countermeasures. The ABM Treaty ensured that Soviet defences
were of a scale that could be overcome by such a programme.
Given the long history of a wide consensus against active missile
defences, the question today is therefore what has changed and,
perhaps as importantly, what has not.
The end of Cold War bipolarity took with it the strategic relevance
of MAD. There is therefore less scope for missile defence to undermine
the 'strategic stability' that was the outcome of MAD. Europeans
are much less inclined than are many Americans to believe that so-called
Rogue States are any less deterrable that were Stalin's Russia or
Mao's China. Nonetheless, the applicability of threats of nuclear
retaliation is clearly much reduced, especially in the face of non-nuclear
(but possibly still chemical- and biological-armed) threats.
Defence technologies (such as 'hit-to-kill' kinetic energy interception)
are also maturing to the point where non-nuclear defence is becoming
feasible. Missile defence is no longer synonymous with nuclear defence.
Ballistic threats are also, though more widespread and diverse,
less numerous and much less sophisticated than was the Soviet strategic
arsenal. Missile defences currently in development in the United
States and elsewhere employ the latest technologies. The missile
threats they are designed to counter are, in general, several decades
behind technologically. Medium- and long-range missiles currently
in development by North Korea, Iran and others are similar to those
deployed by the superpowers in the 1960s. Missile defence is therefore
a much more technologically feasible enterprise than hitherto.
Moreover, the predominantly non-nuclear nature of current ballistic
threats greatly reduces the efficiency demands of a 'worthwhile'
defence, placing BMD much more in line with the effectiveness required
of other 'conventional' defence systems.
Active missile defence does remain a technological challenge,
however. It is also expensive. Sharply reduced post-Cold War defence
budgets mean that BMD will only funded where and when the ballistic
threat is perceived to be sufficiently acute to warrant a higher
priority than many other competing defence needs.
The end of the ABM Treaty in 2002 was as seminal an event as its
signing three decades earlier. None of the widely forecast and dire
consequences predicted arose. There was no end to 'strategic stability'
(whatever that is in today's world), and none were there a renewed
arms race or a breakdown in relations with either Moscow or Beijing.
The world is learning to live with a renewed American determination
to deploy a range of missile defences against what it perceives
to be substantive threats to its security. That process of adaptation
is in itself reducing or eliminating the drawbacks of such deployments.
Some forms of missile defence are also being procured by Russia,
Japan, Taiwan, Israel, Kuwait, Germany, the Netherlands, France,
and Italy. Others, such as Spain and Denmark, are actively considering
doing so. Britain, despite its limited participation in US defences
(principally but not only the upgrade to the Fylingdales early warning
radar) is not amongst these. The UK continues to stress the other
counter-proliferation tools (arms control, export controls, deterrence,
counter-force operations and passive defence). It is, however, keeping
both ballistic threat and defence technology developments under
review.
The future prospects for missile defence are therefore mixed. Britain
faces three distinct, though related questions: The theatre or tactical
defence of deployed forces, the national (or NATO) defence of the
UK itself, and participation in the defence of North America. Only
when the severity of the threat warrants it will any British government
commit to active defences, though future US deployments in Europe
may force earlier decisions than might otherwise be the case.
The Iraqi threat has been eliminated. Diplomacy, in the wake of
the Iraq War, seems to be eliminating the Libyan problem. The signals
from Iran are mixed, though it retains a large missile development
programme. Syria's capability is likely to remain locally-focused.
Europeans will never share Americans' obsession with North Korea,
and no-one even wants to think about missile defence in relation
to Russia or China. But Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, both with relatively
long-range missile capabilities, are inherently unstable. Political
developments in either country could give added impetus to missile
defence.
Most of all, attitudes towards missile defence of all types need
to reflect today's strategic and technological realities and not
the well-worn norms dervided from the very different circumstances
of the Cold War.
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