Word: rumsfeld
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...familiar with the frustrations of building missile defenses as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Back in 1975, when Rumsfeld was Gerald Ford's Defense Secretary--he's the only person to have held the job twice--he inherited the Pentagon's first attempt at a missile-defense shield, the $25 billion Safeguard system, designed to protect 150 Minuteman missiles dotting North Dakota...
...cost and technology woes plagued Safeguard. Rumsfeld, a onetime G.O.P. Congressman from Illinois, knew it. Even worse, the Soviets were rendering Safeguard useless by putting multiple warheads atop each of their missiles. After three months as Defense Secretary, under orders from Congress, Rumsfeld shut it down. Safeguard's ghostly remains still litter the prairie just south of the Canadian border...
...last week, when Rumsfeld, three months into his second tour of duty as Defense chief, launched an offensive to build another missile defense, it was a surprising new chapter. And when President Bush stepped to the microphone at the National Defense University and declared his unswerving commitment to the costly and controversial project, "Rummy," as old friends call him, stood by proudly. He had reason to beam. After all, Bush was reading from Rumsfeld's script. As head of a 1998 panel weighing the ballistic-missile threat faced by the U.S., Rumsfeld had helped build political pressure for just...
...surprisingly, China reacted most vehemently to the Bush-Rumsfeld speech, saying the U.S. "has violated the ABM Treaty, will destroy the balance of international security forces and could cause a new arms race." Beijing knows even the initially modest system proposed by Clinton--a fleet of 100 missiles designed to knock out as many as 25 warheads from the heavens--could render obsolete their 20 single-warhead, long-range missiles, which can reach the West Coast of America. Once that system is in place, Beijing's leverage with the U.S.--especially on the touchy topic of Taiwan--could be crippled...
...officials suggest that the only logical way around China's opposition is for Washington and Beijing to agree, at least tacitly, to allow China to have enough nukes to trump whatever missile shield the U.S. deploys. That won't endear Bush and Rumsfeld to G.O.P. conservatives, but Washington insists the shield is not aimed at China anyway. "They may even double the number" of their missiles aimed at the U.S., Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Other government arms experts believe a U.S. missile shield could trigger a tenfold increase in Chinese missiles aimed at the U.S. China...