Statecraft. Margaret Thatcher

* But we haven’t left nuclear weapons behind, and if we did others wouldn’t.

      The arms control treaty that undoubtedly does most harm and makes least sense – and was accordingly regarded by the Clinton administration as ‘the cornerstone of strategic stability’ – is the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty. The ABM Treaty had some rationale when it was signed in 1972, though in retrospect not much. It prevented either the United States or the Soviet Union from deploying a strategic missile defence system capable of defending the entire national territory. It also prohibited the development, testing or deployment of anything other than a limited, fixed land-based system. The original treaty allowed for the deployment of two sites for such a system, though a protocol reduced this to one each in 1974.

      The philosophy behind the treaty was that contained in the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (otherwise and rightly known as MAD). Essentially, the belief was that as long as each superpower was totally vulnerable to nuclear attack it would not be tempted to start a nuclear war. Practice never entirely followed this theory. The Soviets cheated by secretly building an early-warning station at Krasnoyarsk. NATO, through its doctrine of ‘flexible response’ – that is a graduated conventional and nuclear response rather than total nuclear war – also inched away from MAD. Not even the Cold War froze strategy entirely.

      But there was, in any case, a deeper and more pervasive logic at work. The history of warfare, viewed from a technical perspective, is that of an unrelenting competition between offensive and defensive weapons and strategies, with progress in the development of one being countered by corresponding improvements in the other. Thus swords were countered by armour, gunpowder generated new techniques of fortification, tanks were opposed by anti-tank weapons and the bomber – known at the time as ‘the ultimate weapon’ – led to the development of radar systems capable of tracking its flight and the use of anti-aircraft guns and fighter planes to shoot it down. It was, therefore, written into the essential nature of warfare that exclusive reliance on that other ‘ultimate weapon’, the nuclear deterrent, could not last indefinitely: at some point the technology of defensive weapons would catch up. The ABM Treaty could not ultimately prevent that.

      The treaty was also, of course, meant to contribute to arms control, because assured vulnerability should, the theory went, make it less necessary to build ever-increasing numbers of long-range missiles. On this point too it failed. The only time the Soviets slowed down the arms race was once they knew they had lost it.

      The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty is a Cold War relic. It is, therefore, rather surprising that today’s liberals show such misplaced affection for it. In fact, the best international lawyers tell us that the treaty has in any case lapsed, because one party to it, the Soviet Union, has ceased to exist. (Even if one takes a contrary view of the present legal position, it is clear from the treaty itself – Article XV, paragraph 2. – that either side is able to withdraw from it, giving six months’ notice.) Whatever purpose the ABM Treaty had has certainly ended, now that an increasing number of unpredictable powers can threaten us with weapons of mass destruction.

      This consideration also bears upon the frequently heard assertion that discarding the constraints of the ABM Treaty and building missile defence would precipitate a new arms race. I argued in a speech to a conference of experts on missile defence in Washington in December 1998 that such fears were groundless. On the contrary, a failure to deploy a ballistic missile defence system (BMD) would provide an incentive for the leaders of rogue states to acquire missiles and develop weapons of mass destruction. Conversely, the deployment of a global BMD would dampen the desire of the rogues to stock up their arsenals – because the likelihood of their missiles getting through would have greatly diminished. I concluded that seen in this light such a system actually had a ‘stabilising potential’.*

      Two broader objections, though, can and doubtless will be raised against my advocacy of missile defence.

      The first is that I am exaggerating the threats. But I am not. I base my arguments on the work of acknowledged experts. And all the experience of recent attempts to assess these threats is that the experts have consistently been inclined to underrate them. For example, the US administration’s 1995 National Intelligence Estimate, while taking current developments in missile proliferation seriously, concluded that the US would be free of threat for at least another fifteen years. Other evidence was, however, already by then emerging that caused me and my advisers to doubt whether this (relatively) comfortable judgement was soundly based.

      Accordingly, in 1996 I warned in a speech at Fulton, Missouri – the site of Churchill’s famous ‘Iron Curtain’ speech fifty years earlier – that there was a ‘risk that thousands of people may be killed in [a ballistic missile] attack which forethought and wise preparation might have prevented’. The seriousness of the danger was highlighted when in April the following year the Japanese Foreign Minister spoke of reports that North Korea had deployed the Rodong-i missile, with a range of 625 miles, and was therefore able to strike any target in Japan. Other reports highlighted the fact that proliferating rogue states were cooperating with each other – that Rodong missile was believed to have been financed by Libya and Iran. The Iranians were reported to have tested components of a missile capable of striking Israel, and Russia had been selling them nuclear reactors.

      These ominous signs could still be discounted by those who chose to do so. But 1998 was the year in which much harder evidence emerged.

      The authoritative report of the Rumsfeld Commission, appointed by Congress to assess the threat posed by ballistic missiles to the US, woke even the sleepiest doves from their dreams. Donald (now US Defense Secretary) Rumsfeld noted that, apart from Russia and China, countries like North Korea, Iran and Iraq ‘would be able to inflict major destruction on the US within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability, ten years in the case of Iraq’, adding that for much of that time the United States might not know that such a decision had been taken. He concluded that the threat was ‘broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly’ than reported by the intelligence services, whose ability to provide such warnings was in any case ‘eroding’.

      Simultaneously, events were lending further gravity to the report’s conclusions. Although neither country poses any threat to the West, India’s and Pakistan’s nuclear tests in May 1998 took American intelligence by surprise, showing just how little we can expect to know about the new nuclear powers’ capabilities and intentions. Still more seriously, in July Iran test-fired a nine-hundred-mile-range missile and was discovered to be developing a still longer-range missile, apparently based on Russian technology. This constituted a threat to Israel, America’s closest ally in the Middle East. Most serious of all, in August North Korea took the world by surprise by launching a three-stage rocket over Japan. This represented a direct threat to America’s most important ally in the Pacific, to American forces stationed there, and indeed by implication to the American homeland. One of Thatcher’s laws is that the unexpected happens: but I doubt whether we can really still consider a missile attack as unexpected.

      The second objection to my argument is quite the opposite of the first: it is that nothing we do will make any difference. This is turn comes in several variants. That most often heard today, especially since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington and the later fears of biological terrorism, is the suggestion that an aggressor does not need to acquire missiles in order to attack us. He can rely on other means closer to hand – whether passenger aircraft loaded with fuel, or anthrax, or a smuggled-in so-called ‘backpack’ nuclear weapon. In these circumstances, it is argued, missile defence is a waste of time and money.

      But this argument is flawed at several levels. The first is at the level of basic logic. It does not follow that because we have been shown to be vulnerable to one threat we should simply accept vulnerability to another. Second, no one argues that BMD offers a substitute for other measures. We need a layered defence so that we are able to guard against a range of threats. Of these the danger posed by an incoming missile is only one. But, third, it is by no means the least of the dangers we face; indeed, the likelihood that it will be employed against us must have increased as a result of the events of 11 September. Although we must avoid complacency, it is