ONE OF THE MORE SURPRISING casualties of the post-September 11 political landscape in America is the intractable opposition to missile defense. Before the terrorist attacks, the prospects for moving forward on missile defense looked bleak. Democrats on the Senate Armed Services committee, led by chairman Carl Levin of Michigan, had moved to strip $1.3 billion from President Bush’s $8.3 billion budget request for missile defense research and testing. In a sop to the Russians, they also added a provision restricting spending on any testing that might violate the sacrosanct ABM treaty. On September 10, Delaware Democrat Joe Biden–chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee and perhaps the most articulate and formidable congressional opponent of missile defense–gave an ill-fated speech attacking Bush’s missile defense plans. Since September 11, of course, the debate has changed considerably. To be sure, one still reads the occasional editorial-page screed saying that the attacks proved once and for all the folly of missile defense. But in the two places where it matters most–Congress and the minds of the American people–support for missile defense has, if anything, increased. Levin and other Democrats, seeking to avoid both a brutal floor fight they would probably lose and a showdown with a president who has 90 percent approval ratings, recently relented on the $1.3 billion spending cut and decided to hold off on the ABM provision for now. But friends of missile defense should remain vigilant, for congressional Democrats have not relinquished their opposition. One Democratic aide told the New York Times that the idea is merely “to kick the can down the road a bit.” As Levin said on the Fox News Channel almost two weeks ago, “We have not given up our position by any means, but we deferred the debate on it to a point where we could hold it in an atmosphere where we think . . . we can win the debate–we could not have won that debate in this atmosphere.” That last point is telling, for the “atmosphere” in which Democrats cannot hope to win the missile defense debate has two obstacles. The first is Bush’s current popularity. But the bigger obstacle is that America has now awakened from the complacency that led it to ignore the dangerous and sundry new threats of the post-Cold War era. It is unlikely that the country will return to that sense of Edenic indifference anytime soon. So rather than continue to fight old battles over the technical feasibility of missile defense, or the diplomatic challenges it creates, or the likelihood of the ballistic missile threat, smart Democrats will most likely change tactics. One avenue they will pursue is to present the false choice of missile defense vs. antiterrorism measures–i.e., that every penny spent on ballistic missile defense is one less penny spent on counterterrorism. Polls taken since the attacks suggest that the American people aren’t buying this. A Strategy One poll taken on September 12 asked respondents if the government should spend whatever money is required for research and development of a missile defense system. Fifty-nine percent said yes, with only 25 percent saying no. A Fabrizio, McLaughlin & Associates poll taken a week later found similar support, with 76 percent of respondents favoring missile defense deployment. On the additional question, “Which do you agree with more about national missile defense?”–“Should be top priority; U.S. is unprotected from missile attack from terrorists or outlaw states like Iraq or North Korea” or “Wouldn’t have stopped most recent terrorist attacks on U.S.; could start new arms race with Russia”–respondents favored “should be top priority,” 62 percent to 26 percent. The Russians have also started to come around on the issue. Some proponents of missile defense have worried that the Bush administration, in its at-any-cost effort to maintain the antiterrorism “coalition,” will make concessions to the Russians on the ABM treaty in exchange for their help. But Bush made his most forceful argument yet for missile defense during last night’s press conference, saying “the case is more strong today than it was on September 10” and that the ABM treaty is “outmoded, outdated, (and) reflects a different time.” And Vladimir Putin is beginning to recognize that Bush will not allow the ABM treaty to remain a permanent obstacle to deploying missile defenses, which may explain why the Russians are now focusing on other possible tradeoffs, like delaying NATO expansion and getting us to turn a blind eye toward their actions in Chechnya. One danger that missile defense proponents must continue to avoid is the temptation of the “Fortress America” mindset–that a limited national missile defense can assist an overall American effort to retreat from the world and focus only on homeland security. In fact, the new war on terrorism will necessitate the most robust missile defense possible–one that not only will contribute to “homeland defense,” but also will protect our deployed troops and allies abroad, so that we will be as free as possible to act when rooting out terrorist networks and the regimes that support them. Thus the administration should not only continue to move forward on the Alaska site that will be the basis of a land-based missile defense, but also should aggressively develop sea-based and space-based defenses as part of a layered system. Which brings up one final possible snag: Will missile defense remain primarily a matter for the Pentagon and the State Department, or will it also come under the purview of new Homeland Defense chief Tom Ridge? Among the reasons President Bush was persuaded to pass on Ridge for defense secretary was the Pennsylvania governor’s awful congressional voting record on missile defense in the 1980s. If nothing else, when political battles arise over how to divide spending between the supposedly competing priorities of counterterrorism and missile defense, it will not be surprising to see Ridge weigh in (at least privately) on the side of antiterrorism. The point is that we must rid ourselves of the notion that national security is a matter of tough choices between competing priorities. After September 11, it should be clear that we cannot choose between threats–we must defend ourselves against all of them. As Mark Helprin wrote in the Wall Street Journal this past April, “The cardinal issue of national security is not China, is not Russia, is not weapons of mass destruction, or missile defense, the revolution in military affairs, terrorism, training, or readiness. It is, rather, that the general consensus in regard to defense since Pearl Harbor–that doing too much is more prudent than doing too little–has been destroyed.” With luck, the consensus in favor of “doing too much” for defense has now returned for good. If it has, then the Bush administration and its supporters in Congress must spend whatever amount necessary to meet the entire spectrum of very real threats to our national security–including the growing threat of ballistic missiles in the hands of those who hate America. Lee Bockhorn is associate editor at The Weekly Standard.
