Word: shield
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...President insists that it's time to move away from the "balance of terror" concept that kept Cold War enemies from firing nuclear warheads against each other for fear of massive retaliation. Instead, he proposes a missile shield in concert with a dramatic reduction in the U.S. nuclear arsenal. But there?s nothing new or post-Cold War about this at all: President Ronald Reagan essentially proposed the same thing with his "Star Wars" scheme. And while President Bush's emphasis was on land- and sea-based missile defenses, the net effect would be the same - which, of course, makes...
...intermediate-range missile attacks - the focus of National Missile Defense remains protecting U.S. borders from attacks by intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). And for all of President Bush's efforts to present this as a new weapons platform for new times, it's hard to avoid seeing that missile shield as well, retro...
...this is not post-Cold War thinking, as President Bush insists; it's Cold War thinking. A missile shield makes sense as a trump-card if you?re anticipating a large-scale exchange of missiles with a rival nuclear power. But in a post-Cold War world in which, as President Bush insists, the primary threat to the U.S. comes from "rogue states" engaged in regional conflicts with Washington or its allies, it's hard to imagine why an enemy looking to land a weapon of mass destruction on U.S. soil would choose an ICBM as his delivery system...
...military culture, but it's not hard to find jihad-kamikazes in the "rogue" states. Or even in a more sophisticated version, it would make more sense for a "rogue" state to develop a mobile Cruise Missile capability that would fly under the radar of the proposed missile shield and be more accurate than an ICBM, to boot...
...There's no question that a missile shield designed to prevent an ICBM attack would leave us safer than we are now. But the real question is whether the threat of ICBM attack is that great that it warrants diverting so many U.S. resources into developing such a shield, or are their other ways of spending the same - or even a lot less - money that may make us even safer from ICBMs and other more imminent threats. Unfortunately that question is not being discussed in Washington, nor is it likely...