NMD:  Allies Regroup After Successful Bid to Delay NMD Deployment

BACKGROUND PAPER FOR TORONTO MEETING ON NMD,
22 SEPTEMBER, 2000 

By Tom McDonald and Dan Plesch

When NATO defence ministers meet in Birmingham, UK, in October, they may well discuss U.S. plans for a National Missile Defense (NMD) system, despite President Bill Clinton’s recent decision to postpone any deployment until the next administration.  The issue remains controversial, and few in Europe or the United States expect it to disappear off the transatlantic agenda anytime soon.

Allied responses – widely sceptical – to NMD have so far been expressed at national level – in bilateral meetings between allied and U.S. officials, or in public speeches by allied leaders.  However, there are signs that the 15 member states of the European Union may move to develop a common position.

Speaking at a May 8 news conference in Washington with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said the EU countries should try to come up with a common position on NMD. “Obviously, this national decision of the United States will have a strong impact on the security interests of all Europeans, and we are working very hard to coordinate, not only within the discussion across the Atlantic with the United States to bring our concerns into the discussion, but also together with the Europeans in the framework of NATO. … [W]e are looking forward to unifying a position.  But interests are not homogenous within Europe, so we will need some time for discussion.”

Any position likely to emerge from the European Union would no doubt be unwelcome in Washington – as nearly all European governments have, at a minimum, pledged support for upholding the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty and urged U.S. leaders to take a more cautious approach to NMD.

Javier Solana, the new EU foreign and security policy chief, was quoted by Reuters May 11 as saying that if NMD is deployed, the European Union “would like to see it done in such a manner that it does not strain the transatlantic link. And we would like to see it done in such a manner that the basic agreements, like the [Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty], are not disturbed to the effect that we have a crisis with Russia.”

While the U.S. administration argues that NMD is needed to counter the threat of missile attack from so-called rogue states, many European governments do not agree with this view. From Europe’s perspective, the risk to the United States from strategic missiles simply is not as pressing, nor even as well developed, as Washington assumes. For example, the sight of North and South Koreans marching together under one flag at the Sydney Olympics seems to underline the progress that has been made in reducing the risks of conflict from that part of the world.

Europeans also are committed to forging closer diplomatic and trade links with Iran, another putative rogue. They fear that NMD could accentuate, rather than mitigate, this problem – on which they feel they have been making progress. Overall, European governments, as well as Canada, are wedded to a policy of engaging those states now bucking international norms, and they see patient diplomacy as a more likely solution to the proliferation problem than missile defences. In fact, Canada already has opened diplomatic relations with North Korea in an attempt to move Pyongyang toward better behaviour on the world stage.

Further, U.S. deployment of even a partial missile shield could make Washington’s current threat perception a self-fulfilling prophecy, some European analysts worry, with an increasing number of countries seeking to develop longer-range or strategic missiles, which they would target against unprotected U.S. allies and overseas interests. In other words, the U.S. rush to NMD could actually undercut European security in short-term, by accelerating the appearance of a missile threat against Europe.

Another concern raised in some European quarters is that the United States may feel emboldened to act internationally more often, and more stridently, if it manages to create a missile shield that works – in fact that is one of the arguments in favour of NMD used by Clinton administration officials. However, the logical consequence would be that Washington’s European partners would become more attractive as targets for those who oppose those U.S. actions. 

According to Charles Grant, director of the London-based Centre for European Reform, European officials worry that if Europe has no NMD-equivalent system, then, “rogue states might try to blackmail Europe rather than the United States.” As two of the five radar facilities used to track incoming missiles for the NMD system are in Europe – one in Britain at Fylingdales in Yorkshire, and one in Greenland at the United States base in Thule – this is a legitimate concern.

The question of making Europe a target looms large in the eyes of Washington’s NATO allies. The concern is that U.S. development of even a partial missile shield could break down ties across the Atlantic, by providing the United States with a form of strategic protection not available to the allies. This concern about so-called decoupling is worrisome to many allies, according to NATO officials, diplomats and experts.  In a December 6 interview with French television network TV 5, French Defence Minister Alain Richard stressed that the NMD program “creates an imbalance in the situation between the two poles of the Atlantic alliance, destabilizing our strategic system. French reticence is widely shared by the other European countries.”

Sverre Lodgaard, director of the Norwegian Institute for International Affairs in Oslo, speaking at a conference co-hosted Sept. 18 by BASIC and the Carnegie’s Non-Proliferation Project, said the development and deployment of a U.S. NMD system would “cause a split in NATO’s world view.”

Although recently U.S. officials have pledged to discuss ways to broaden an NMD network to include allies – one Pentagon official told BASIC, “the notion of differentiated security is unacceptable –  European allies remain unconvinced.  Alessandro Politi, speaking at the BASIC-Carnegie conference, said “We simply don’t believe it could protect all of NATO.”

Even Britain, traditionally the closest U.S. ally, is not keen to see the NMD system go forward anytime soon. British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government has been informally debating for months whether to agree to the U.S. proposal to upgrade the Fylingdales radar facility to make it capable of playing an NMD role, and the issue remains controversial. Blair is not expected to make a decision about Fylingdales until after the next president makes his own choice about NMD deployment, as officially Washington will not ask to use the facility until after a formal decision.

Air Marshal Sir Timothy Garden, a former British bomber pilot now at the Centre for Defence Studies at Kings College in London, told the BASIC-Carnegie conference that the UK government “hopes the problem will go away.”

That, unfortunately for the Blair government, is unlikely to happen. In fact, parliamentary opposition to Fylingdales’ use for NMD already has surfaced. Several Early Day Motions have emerged from the British House of Commons, concerned about the potential for new arms races, as well as many parliamentary questions from both houses. On Aug. 2, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee released a report entitled, “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, which said: “We recommend that the Government articulate the very strong concerns that have been expressed about NMD within the UK. We are not convinced that the US plans to deploy NMD represent an appropriate response to the proliferation problems faced by the international community. We recommend that the government encourage the USA to seek other ways of reducing the threats it perceives.”

Ann Clwyd, a Labour Party MP, added: “NMD has the potential to undo a great deal of carefully constructed arms control agreements, and there must be more public and parliamentary debate within the [United Kingdom] if we are to have a constructive impact on the United States.”

Further, British government officials and outside experts say the UK technology community – including officials at DERA, which has been doing a technology study on the issue – is widely sceptical that the US NMD system now being planned would work.

Norway and Denmark, on NATO’s northern flank, are struggling to stay on good terms with both Washington and Moscow over the NMD issue, according to national officials and experts. “The Danish and Norwegian governments have been trying to avoid debate on the topic, preferring to restate that they support the ABM treaty and would not want to see an NMD deployment that abrogated that treaty,” according to Jorgen Dragsdahl, a Danish defence journalist.

While Copenhagen is constitutionally responsible for Greenland’s defence and foreign policy, the Danish government is loathe to make any decision contradictory to public sentiment in Greenland, especially as negotiations on Greenland’s independence are slated to begin in the fall. In a November 18, 1999 statement, the home-rule government said that Greenland “can’t support plans for an upgrade of the Thule radar” if it meant violating the ABM treaty. “It would be dangerous for Greenland to permit an upgrade of the Thule radar,” Johan Lund Olsen, an influential member of the leftist Inuit party, said in a debate in the Greenland local parliament February 29, “Enemies of the United States would try to destroy [the Thule radar]. This means that Greenland will be bombed,” he said.

Norway, the only NATO country to share a border with Russia, is particularly conscious of Russia’s huge and decaying nuclear arsenal, and thus wary of any action that might sour Russian arms control cooperation, according to Norwegian officials. While the Norwegian government has said little publicly, Lodgaard said Norwegian officials are privately “negative” about the NMD plan, with grave concerns about its implications on “big power relations” and NATO cohesion – not to mention relations with Russia, a worry that is shared by German leaders in particular.

Espen Barth Eide, Foreign Ministry state secretary, told BASIC earlier this year that the government questions the wisdom of introducing the NMD program now – concerned it might jeopardize existing arms control agreements and cool the climate for further progress.

The potential impact of the U.S. NMD plan on the ABM treaty, and the entire international arms control regime, is yet another a key concern for European officials, especially those from non-nuclear weapon states. Most European governments regard the ABM treaty as a cornerstone of international disarmament efforts. There is widespread fear among America’s allies that NMD could bring down the whole fragile structure of multinational arms control and non-proliferation accords – a position that has been put forth strongly, and often, by Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy.

Hubert de la Fortelle, French representative to the April 24-May 19 U.N. conference to review the multinational nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), told conferees in his opening speech: “France attaches the utmost importance to maintaining strategic stability, of which the ABM treaty is an essential element. It is anxious to avoid any challenges to the treaty liable to bring about a breakdown of strategic equilibrium and to restart the arms race.”

London, too, has been attempting diplomatically to voice its concerns about the potential for negative spillover from an NMD deployment decision. For example, Tony Blair told the Washington Post April 16 that he understands America’s NMD interest is “well intentioned, and reasonable.” At the same time, he said, Europe is “very anxious to see the ABM treaty maintained. … [T]here are obviously concerns that European countries and Russia have for what are the consequences of [NMD] for the whole issue of nuclear disarmament, nuclear deterrence and the prevention of nuclear conflict.”          

There is widespread concern that NMD will not “enhance deterrence,” as Pentagon officials argue, but instead will spur proliferation, as the small nuclear powers feel threatened and therefore obliged to keep up. Beijing, in particular, might feel compelled to drastically step up its nuclear program to prevent its nuclear deterrent from becoming obsolete. Any Chinese increase would, in turn, cause great concern in India, and any resulting Indian increase would have the same affect on Pakistan.

“China, which was already working harder than we realized on both nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles for them, would of course be encouraged to intensify those efforts, and it has the resources to do so,” Chirac was quoted by the New York Times. “India would be encouraged to do the same thing, and it, too, has the resources.” Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh similarly told the NPT conference that the United States NMD system “could run counter to efforts to halt proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

Furthermore, the more effective any NMD system is, the more difficult it will be to make further reductions in the numbers of nuclear warheads around the world.  Many European non-nuclear weapon states are keenly supportive of nuclear disarmament, and see NMD as an obstacle to that goal. The answer, rather than missile defences, is to get rid of nuclear weapons themselves, said Lodgaard.

Finally, the seeming lack of United States attention to European views in the NMD debate also is troubling to many in Europe. There is a feeling among many allied governments, according to one NATO official, that the United States has not given Europeans enough time, or enough information, to consider the ramifications of NMD.  And while U.S. officials have pointed to myriad meetings and discussions, several allied officials have told BASIC that these discussions have been less consultation than presentations of already fixed US plans.

For example, some allies, led by Canada, have argued that the United States should allow NATO to consider NMD more formally as part of the Alliance’s ongoing review of its wider role in future multinational arms control and non-proliferation efforts. That review is unlikely to finish until December’s ministerial meetings at the earliest.

In summary, then, it was with no little relief that Europeans welcomed Clinton's Sept. 1 decision to postpone deployment of a limited National Missile Defence system. This was, after all, what most foreign ministries had been hoping for. NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson and EU representatives in the United States were among many who praised the president's sagacity. UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and his defence counterpart, Geoff Hoon, issued a joint reaction welcoming “the measured response” by Clinton, especially in taking into account the views of allies and other interested parties.

Clinton's speech was full of salient comments on the relevant problem issue areas and contained mostly conciliatory language. But there were also clear attempts to please as many different constituencies as possible, and some interesting inconsistencies as a result. The upshot is that allies will have to continue thinking about how to deal with US ballistic missile defence initiatives in the future, whatever the result of the presidential elections in November.

At the start of his statement, Clinton made clear the angle he wanted to take on his chosen subject – “the defence of our nation.” This was presumably an attempt to set out a traditional line of support on the military. He then said that there was “no immediate threat to our security or our existence,” a statement which sets him apart from many military and non-military minds in the US. Later on in the statement, he went back on this assertion by saying that a limited NMD “could protect all 50 states from the near-term missile threats we face, those emanating from North Korea and the Middle East.” So the issue of threat assessment was fudged. (This of course depends on your interpretation of language, but I would imagine most people roughly equate “near-term” with “immediate.”)

Some language heartening to Europeans appeared in paragraph 10, in which Clinton acknowledged the importance of a comprehensive approach to missile and weapon proliferation – “None of these elements of our national security strategy can be pursued in isolation.” This was emphasised in paragraph 36 – “An effective NMD could play an important part of our national security strategy, but it could not be the sum total of the threats we face. It can never be the sum total of that strategy for dealing with nuclear and missile threats; and again in paragraph 37 – “it would be folly to base the defence of our nation solely on a strategy of waiting until missiles are in the air, and then trying to shoot them down.”  To reinforce that message, he hammered it home in paragraph 39, saying that all the elements of security strategy must reinforce one another, including “the profoundly important dimension of arms control.” All this language seemed designed to allay external fears of US unilateralism and reinforce American commitment to arms control.

However, in the hard-hitting paragraph 51, he maintained that “no nation can ever have a veto over American security,” and stressed that this must remain the case even if deployment leads to nuclear build-ups in China, India and Pakistan. He admitted that Chinese arsenal increases as a result of NMD deployment would have an “inevitable” impact on Pakistan and India, but said American security must come first, narrowly defined not to include non-proliferation initiatives, or so it would seem.

Paragraphs 20-24 tackled the subject of deterrence, which “remains imperative.” The example of Saddam Hussein was invoked to prove deterrence's viability in a post-Cold War world, thereby undermining arguments about Iraq being a rogue state, to some degree. Paragraph 21 questioned the ability of deterrence to protect the US against “all those” (deliberately vague terminology) who might wish the US harm in the future. The people for whom deterrence might not work were explained in paragraphs 22 and 23. A “hostile” (NB: not “rogue” or “of concern.”) state might collapse or miscalculate and think it could dissuade the US from “defending our vital interests, or from coming to the aid of our allies, or others who are defenceless and clearly in need.”  The picture painted here sounds like the recent conflicts in East Timor and Kosovo, and gives some pointers to the direction of strategic thinking behind NMD.

Paragraphs 27-31 chronicled the Pentagon's performance, changing from an invocation of national pride to only lukewarm support for NMD along the way. The support for DoD leadership in paragraph 27 gave way to serious questions on the subject of countermeasures, and the distinctly faint praise in paragraph 30 that, “There is a reasonable chance that all these challenges can be met in time.” This phrase, above all, seems to embody the fudged nature of the decision to delay deployment, and to recognize the need for the US Administration to keep several different constituencies’ interests alive.

Having decided that 2006 or 2007 was a reasonable new estimate, should the next president authorise deployment, Clinton then spent seven paragraphs on Russia and its anxieties (unlike China, which is only given one). European allies in future will be keen to see further US willingness to brief the Chinese, as well as the continued necessity of negotiating with Russia over the ABM Treaty.

So, while European foreign ministers were relieved by Clinton’s statement, their staff have only gained a momentary respite. The issue of ballistic missile defences will continue to create challenges for arms control and transatlantic security.  European allies will have to create stronger long-term strategies if they are to head off their major ally’s most dangerous initiative of late.    

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