Word: shields
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Bush is in love with the idea. Installing a missile shield--making it the keystone of a visionary strategic architecture--is his greatest faith-based initiative. The Administration intends to "explain" its plan over and over until it comes true. That worked with tax cuts...
Missile defense is a far tougher sell than tax cuts, with a mountain of technical, political and diplomatic obstacles. The killer missile last week that destroyed a dummy warhead was only the second success in four tries. Defense-shield boosters hailed it as a significant victory, even if it was more important politically than technologically. And the Pentagon knows that, which is why advocates used the afterglow to roll out an array of planned "boost phase," "midcourse" and "terminal phase" experiments from land, sea, air and space bases...
...basic theory is so appealing: to replace cold war reliance on mutual suicide with 21st century security beneath a defensive umbrella. Though Russia and China possess by far the most nukes that could incinerate the U.S., the Administration says its shield isn't so much for protection from them but to defend against the possibility that a nasty regime in North Korea or Iraq or Iran will soon be able to loft a missile at America. A nuke is more likely to come in a suitcase than on a warhead, but the hurry-up argument doesn't deal with that...
...have to believe that premise for the rest to follow. It's very Reaganesque. Where the former President saw a Russian lurking behind every bedpost, Bush sees rogue nations holding America hostage. Where Reagan liked simple story lines, Bush likes executive summaries. A missile shield is a succinct solution to a complex problem. Like Reagan, Bush prides himself on cowboy toughness--on being a man who knows what he believes and charges fearlessly ahead...
Standing in the way is Putin. Russia, like China--with whom Putin last week signed a treaty of "friendship forever" that aligns them politically against missile defense--charges that the U.S. shield will wreck nuclear stability and spark a new arms race. More practically, Russia is the other party to the ABM treaty. The tests the Pentagon has in mind will violate its terms "within months, not years," says a freshly circulated State Department memo. Officials talk of deployment as early as 2004. That schedule turns the screws on Putin to modify the treaty to suit Washington right away...