This coming from the Commander, United States Strategic Command, who knows a thing or two about nuclear deterrence.
A U.S. missile defense system that is too robust could actually backfire and become destabilizing, prompting countries like China to expand their nuclear arsenals, a U.S. general said on Tuesday. Air Force General Kevin Chilton, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, did not question the current system, which was revised by President Barack Obama and the Pentagon in September. But he explained that careful calculations would be needed when boosting U.S. defenses in the future to guard against threats from countries like North Korea. "We have to be cautious with missile defense. Missile defense can be destabilizing depending on how you array it," Chilton told a defense gathering in Washington. He outlined a scenario that he said "I don't think any of us want to see" in which hundreds of interceptors were deployed along the Western side of the United States. "That kind of makes you feel more secure, doesn't it? But what would it make the Chinese think about their deterrent?" Chilton asked.
It's a fair point. Chinese nuclear forces are pragmatically arrayed in a defensive posture -- they have the numbers and the technology to knock out our major cities, but aren't accurate enough for a counterforce strike on our strategic bases and assets (in particular our geographically dispersed missile fields). So the US-China strategic posture is deterrence in its simplest, most pristine state. We should be careful not to upset that balance. On the other hand, either Reuters or the Pentagon might be a bit confused as to which coast is actually threatened by North Korea and which is threatened by Iran:
...the Pentagon has assured that the 30 ground-based interceptor missiles to be deployed in Alaska and California by the end of 2010 will provide the United States with full protection against an Iranian ICBM.
So could our west coast interceptors defend against the same threats as the canceled Poland-based missiles? An intercept of an Iranian ICBM from the West Coast is technically possible, but not optimal. There's a reason we wanted these things in Poland. Justifying pulling missile defense from Europe because your Pacific interceptor force could technically -and we're talking long shot here- knock out an Iranian ICBM doesn't add up. That doesn't provide the redundancy needed for aggressive boost/mid-course/terminal missile defense -- nor does it address what our Eastern European allies really wanted -- a bolstered defensive agreement with the United States in order to keep the Russian bear off their doorstep. The same applies for the canceled ground-interceptors in Poland, in their potential (again, long shot) to somehow contribute to missile defense redundancy on our West Coast. The idea that pulling European missile defense had something to do with the strategic balance of power in the Pacific is ludicrous. Chilton is correct in his assessment that we need to treat our deterrence equation with China carefully -- however let's not kid ourselves into think that placating Beijing had anything do with placating Russia. Those are two completely different issues and need to be treated as such.