Robert Farley writes:
For the last two years, we have justified putting a missile defense system in Eastern Europe explicitly around the threat of Iranian ballistic missiles. In addition to the extraordinary financial costs, this project has resulted in increased Russian hostility to the United States and to Russia's neighbors. And are we now to believe that this expensive and unpopular system is justified by the need to protect Poland from Iranian ballistic missiles armed with conventional warheads?
First off, I'd hardly concede the premise. Even if the NIE is correct, the report states only that the Iranians have put their nuke program " on hold." The threat could be reconstituted in short order, and missile defense, once halted, cannot. In addition, there's nothing like a clear cut case of cause and effect here. The Russians are hostile for any number of reasons, but vis-Ã -vis missile defense, surely the Russians don't believe it would offer a threat to their deterrent capability in the short- or even the medium-term. It would be decades before a missile defense system had the capacity to hit hundreds of targets at the same time, discerning real warheads from dummies, etc. And finally, liberals fundamentally misunderstand the effect of deploying a missile defense system--it would decrease the likelihood of conflict, not increase it. Missile defense would provide decision makers with one more option in a world where options are the scarcest commodity. Imagine the U.S. intelligence community, or more likely their Israeli counterpart, is able to determine with some degree of certainty that the Iranians are mere months away from an operational nuclear capability. Right now, they'd have two options: bomb or do nothing, aka diplomacy. But if those leaders could have some confidence in their ability to shoot down an Iranian missile, wouldn't this strengthen the argument for doing nothing--the argument Farley would most certainly be making. As it is, the American people would likely demand military action, but missile defense would give liberals a fall-back position--'it doesn't matter if they build a nuclear missile, we can shoot it down.' I'm not sure how persuasive that argument would be in practice, but it's a lot more persuasive than 'let's kill missile defense and if the Iranians build a nuclear missile, we'll just do nothing about it.' Noonan Responds:
The Russians are hostile for any number of reasons, but vis-Ã -vis missile defense, surely the Russians don't believe it would offer a threat to their deterrent capability in the short- or even the medium-term.
I agree with the rest, but this bit...not so much. Look at it from a nuclear strategy perspective. If a nuclear war were to break out, however unlikely, and we had a massive exchange over the pole, the United States might be capable of knocking out..what? Ten Russian missiles? Logic would dictate that we go after the Satans, the mod 5 ones with ten RVs per sortie, which--if we hit them in their boost phase--gives us the opportunity to knock 100 Russian warheads out of their targeting equation. That's significant. The prospect of the United States gaining such an advantage is sure to antagonize the Russians. And it explains why the Russians are reasserting their bomber capabilities.