The impact of missile defence in Asia - Volume 10, Issue 6 - July 2004

 

 

Over the last four years, the Bush administration has made three important decisions that will, over time, revolutionise the global nuclear regime. Firstly, in contrast to the Cold War emphasis on maintaining large nuclear forces for deterrence, the administration settled for a much smaller nuclear arsenal, complemented by non-proliferation, counter-proliferation and strategic defence initiatives as co-equal components of a new US national strategy. Secondly, the earlier doctrinal and programmatic distinctions between National Missile Defense – intended to secure the US homeland – and Theater Missile Defense – intended to protect forward-deployed US forces – were abolished in favour of an integrated approach to strategic defence. Finally, the administration, concluding that a successful shift to a new nuclear regime would require international collaboration, offered missile defence cooperation both to traditional allies, like the United Kingdom, Japan and Australia, as well as to new friends, like India.

The decision to supplant the old deterrence-by-punishment approach with a new emphasis on strategic defences derived from the perception that the new threats to American security emerged from two different directions simultaneously: command-and-control infirmities in established or emerging nuclear states that could lead to accidental launches or mistaken authorised launches against the US homeland or American facilities overseas; and nuclear coercion by rogue regimes, terrorists, or emerging small nuclear powers. The strategic defence programme developed in response to these threats has taken the form of a layered system that is intended to have the capability to intercept ballistic missiles in all phases of flight – boost, midcourse and terminal – and act against short-, medium-, intermediate- and long-range threats. This programme has been structured in a series of two-year ’blocks’ that build iteratively upon each other. The Block 2004 objective, for example, consists of fielding an initial capability to defend against a small number of re-entry vehicles (probably not more than four) targeting the United States. The first step towards this goal occurred on 22 July 2004, when the first Ground Based Interceptor was emplaced at the Missile Defense Complex at Fort Greely, Alaska. A total of about 15 interceptors are expected to be in place by the end of 2005. The Block 2006 objective consists of increasing the depth and breadth of this initial capability by adding more interceptors, additional deployable radars and integrating these systems to maximise their performance. The Block 2008 objective, building on these mid-course intercept capabilities already deployed, focuses on protecting US forces deployed overseas and coalition partners abroad, and seeks to add an initial technological capability, probably via the airborne laser, to defeat missile threats in the boost phase.

 

As these defences mature, the critical challenge facing the Bush administration and its successors will be getting the offence-defence mix right, if the new nuclear regime is to be stable over time. Specifically, that means that the new American BMD systems must be robust enough to defeat legitimate threats, but not so strong as to threaten the retaliatory capabilities of various national deterrents. Satisfying this condition will require a cooperative transition to the new global regime, because so long as offence-dominance prevails in the nuclear realm – meaning that offensive missiles have cost- and mission-advantages over their defensive counterparts – all capable state adversaries will be able to defeat US strategic defences in principle. If at some point in the future defence dominance were to obtain in the nuclear realm, the imperative of cooperative transitions would become less pressing. Until that point, however, effective and creative US diplomacy, as well as some measure of acquisition restraint, will be required to convince the established nuclear powers, particularly Russia and China, that the future American BMD capabilities are intended solely to deal with the problem of accidental or unauthorised launches and nuclear coercion by rogues, terrorists or unfriendly emerging nuclear powers, rather than to undermine their national deterrents.

As long as US strategic defences consist of limited mid-course and terminal defence systems, reassuring traditional state competitors like Russia and China will not be difficult. But once the defensive ‘system of systems’ expands to include airborne or space-based lasers, as is scheduled after 2008, this task will become more complicated, as these boost-phase intercept systems can sanitise large areas of the globe and intercept offensive missiles more easily when they are relatively slow and before they deploy decoys. While boost-phase intercept capability is therefore ideal when dealing with rogue missile threats, it can also serve to undermine many of the features that make the Russian and Chinese missile deterrents relatively invulnerable today.

There are other dilemmas as well. The decision to develop BMD, which in its most recent iteration goes back to the Reagan administration, did not originate solely as a result of new threats to the American homeland, but rather, as a solution to certain problems confronting US defence policy in general. The United States’ national military strategy is focused on preserving its capacity to engage in power projection operations worldwide. The fear that continuing missile proliferation with both conventional and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) payloads could threaten – both operationally and psychologically – America’s ability to successfully undertake global power projection has been another critical driver in the shift toward strategic defences. This issue has two different, but related, dimensions. At the simplest level, effective power projection requires that forward-based and forward-deployed American forces engaged in expeditionary operations be protected from missile attack. But there is another, perhaps more challenging, aspect of the power projection problem: protecting US allies whose cooperation makes possible successful forward operations. This is particularly important because, as American forces have become more formidable conventionally, defeating US power projection can be carried out more efficaciously not by confronting it directly but by threatening those allies who constitute the ‘soft underbelly’ of all such efforts. There may be other reasons to protect friends and allies as well: assisting them to defeat WMD coercion by local adversaries; strengthening bilateral relations with the United States; and, developing new partnerships to raise the ‘coalitions of the willing’ necessary to deal with emerging threats to peace and security.

Irrespective of the reasons involved, extending missile defence protection to friends and allies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and India has the potential to stress existing security dilemmas within the Asia–Pacific region.  The transfer of missile defence systems per se to these countries would not cause these dilemmas, but it could, under circumstances that vary in each case, exacerbate them. Thus, the transfer of BMD systems to Japan could magnify the threat posed by North Korea and secondarily China; a South Korean acquisition could increase the North Korean missile threat beyond that already posed by its conventional forces; capabilities transferred to Taiwan would antagonise Beijing; and commitments made to India could irritate Beijing and, of course, Islamabad. The transfer of BMD capabilities to countries in Asia, therefore, embodies difficult dilemmas for the United States. Washington must be mindful of the complications that its BMD transfers might cause, yet equally it must be responsive to the growing expansion of the ballistic missile threat facing its friends and allies if it is to secure their cooperation vis-à-vis both its immediate power projection objectives and its larger geopolitical interests in Asia. Even more importantly, it has to appreciate that eschewing BMD transfers would create problems of its own. A decision to deny missile defence protection to key Asian partners could: weaken alliance ties; undermine US security guarantees in some cases; lead countries to adopt strategies emphasising extended conventional counterforce operations against imminent threats; and, in extreme cases, lead some countries either to acquire WMD and ballistic missile programmes of their own or change their current nuclear posture (where relevant) in more dangerous or destabilising directions.

 

Even as the United States struggles with these dilemmas, the responses of the various countries affected by American decisions – Russia, North Korea, China and Pakistan – vary substantially. The Russian response to BMD’s appearance in Asia has been comparatively muted. In part, this is because its nuclear forces are still relatively robust and, hence, in no danger of being neutered by any current US regional or global defence systems. Nor could any conceivable US power projection operations in Asia today threaten Moscow. Russian concerns about BMD in Asia, therefore, are driven more by anxieties about the stability of the future global nuclear order than by fears about the denaturing of their strategic nuclear systems. These matters will remain the subject of continued discussion with Moscow; the Bush administration appears determined to sustain Russian cooperation.

North Korea views US missile defence activities as a further example of the continuing threat posed by Washington and its Asian allies to Pyongyang. In general, these concerns arouse little sympathy in Washington. Pyongyang’s perceptions matter only insofar as they become yet another justification for the regime to avoid terminating its long-standing proliferation activities, but this is a problem that transcends the specific question of BMD in Asia.

China’s shrill opposition to BMD in Asia and beyond represents a far more complicated response than it appears at first sight. Beijing’s strategic nuclear forces, although modest, are less vulnerable to US military action than is popularly imagined. This will increasingly be the case as new generation solid-fuelled, mobile ballistic missiles are inducted into the People’s Liberation Army inventory. Consequently, Chinese opposition to American strategic defence programmes have little to do with the operational aspects of preserving deterrence stability – although it is usually packaged as such. Chinese security managers currently are convinced that the offence-dominant global nuclear regime is highly robust from a technological point of view. They also operate an aggressive programme to ensure the continued penetrativity of all Chinese ballistic missiles. As added insurance, China has a substantial cruise missile programme, as well as a significant BMD effort of its own. For these reasons, Beijing’s hostility to US strategic defence activities has less to do with operational worries about a weakening deterrent. Instead, it is almost entirely political in nature and revolves in the first instance around Chinese concerns that continued US investments in BMD will cement American hegemony globally and increase Washington’s freedom of action, thereby confronting Beijing with a longer race to run in its geopolitical competition with the United States. Further, Chinese policymakers are fearful that American BMD transfers to Taiwan would embolden the separatists’ quest for independence and increase the success accruing to any future US–Taiwanese efforts at coercing China into accepting the island’s permanent separation from the mainland. Finally, strategic managers in Beijing harbour the vague but palpable fear that BMD shared with American friends and allies in Asia could serve as the ’technological glue’ for the future containment of China.

Pakistan’s concerns about possible US missile defence transfers to India have more merit in theory than in practice. The military regime in Islamabad understands better than most that the missile defence systems that India may eventually acquire from the United States and elsewhere will have only a marginal impact on the effectiveness of its own nuclear deterrent. Despite this fact, Pakistani officials continue to oppose all US missile defence cooperation with India because of, firstly, their fear that Indian political-military behaviour might become more pugnacious under a BMD umbrella and secondly – and more importantly – that US–Indian missile defence cooperation might serve to further transform that bilateral relationship. Islamabad’s first concern is misplaced, because Pakistani coercion carried out through terrorism and low-intensity war against India currently represents the real threat to stability in South Asia, whereas the second fear, though reasonable, cannot be a good enough reason for the United States to abort its deepening relationship with India, if that is seen to advance its other geopolitical interests in Asia. On balance, then, ballistic missile defences – despite all the dilemmas they embody – in the armoury of status quo powers may be a good thing in the Asia–Pacific region.