Proponents of Missile Shield Split on Bush Plan

As the Bush administration confronts world leaders over its controversial plan to build a national missile defense shield, it faces an equally daunting challenge at home: selling its blueprint to its own Republican allies.

Although GOP leaders almost without exception firmly support the goal of missile defense, they are deeply split concerning the means.

Some Republican lawmakers believe President Bush should build on the ground-based system that the Clinton administration began to develop. Others, regarding that approach as inadequate, urge him to work toward systems based at sea and in space.

With the administration signaling that it does not intend to significantly increase defense spending right away, the issue is shaping up as “a real tussle” within the new national security team, said Gary Schmitt, executive director of the Project for a New American Century, a conservative advocacy group in Washington.

“It’s clear that, at current budget levels, there won’t be enough money to fund [multiple] programs,” Schmitt said. “It’s not a pretty picture.”

The issue is coming into focus at home just as the Bush administration has begun trying to overcome foreign doubts about its plans.

At a weekend conference in Munich, Germany, a succession of European leaders warned Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that a U.S. missile shield could set off a dangerous arms buildup by countries determined to have enough firepower to penetrate American defenses.

Rumsfeld, dismissing this idea as a relic of the Cold War, said the administration was determined to proceed with plans for the system. And for strategic and political reasons, it believes it must move as soon as possible.

Bush’s national security advisors argue that the U.S. has been unprotected too long from rogue nations and accidental missile launches. They also want to put a new program in place early enough that the Democrats would have difficulty dismantling it if they gained control of the House or the Senate in the 2002 or 2004 elections.

The program developed under former President Clinton calls for basing 100 interceptor missiles at a site in Alaska. It was devised to stay within the rules of the 1972 Antiballistic Missile Treaty with the former Soviet Union, which barred the two countries from developing missile shields that entirely protected either nation.

Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security advisor, said Sunday that the United States must not be hamstrung by the ABM treaty.

“The world has changed,” she said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “We look forward to conversations and discussions at all levels with the Russian government about how we move forward to a new restructured relationship that is . . . more capable of dealing with the threats we face today, rather than the ones we faced 25 to 30 years ago.”

Last year, Clinton halted his missile defense program after two missiles failed to strike their targets in tests. If the new administration decides to continue this approach, defense officials said, it could begin construction next year and deploy the first 20 missiles by 2006.

Officials of the Pentagon’s Ballistic Missile Defense Organization said that this approach has the advantage of being far closer to becoming reality than any other. Many Republican lawmakers find their views convincing.

“I think we should go forward with the system that has been developed and tested,” said Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi. “The technology is ready and it should be deployed.”

He said the Pentagon could add other components later but warned that jumping to a new system now would mean leaving the country unprotected for a substantially longer period.

Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona said he wanted to start with the ground-based system, then add other components to create a “layered” approach. And Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Ted Stevens of Alaska, where the ground-based system would be located, called it “the only national missile defense system we have right now.”

Yet the Clinton plan also came under heavy fire from influential Republicans and defense experts, including several who will have a seat at the table as Bush officials figure out how to proceed.

Bush himself strongly criticized the Clinton approach during the recent presidential campaign, saying he wanted a larger and more ambitious system.

Steven A. Cambone, Rumsfeld’s chief of staff and executive director of a blue-ribbon commission headed by Rumsfeld on the missile threat, said at a Washington conference last year that he believed the Clinton system should not be pursued.

And Robert Joseph, a senior National Security Council official with responsibility for missile defense, wrote in a recent paper that the architecture of the Clinton system “has become so contrived that it will have only a minimal capability against near-term threats.”

Some missile defense advocates believe that the system developed under Clinton would not be able to knock down all the warheads that eventually could be launched at the United States. And some contend that it would be harder than advocates have claimed to build the system in Alaska’s harsh climate.

“You’d really be building it from scratch, and it would take longer, it would cost more and you’ll have less to show for it,” said Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank in Washington that counts Rumsfeld among its financial contributors.

Many missile defense advocates see more promise in systems that grow out of the Navy’s Aegis anti-missile system, which is designed to use surface ships to protect the fleet from cruise missiles launched 1,000 miles or less from their target. Key components of the system would be completed by about 2006.

Many missile defense advocates believe that the Aegis system could be upgraded with a faster rocket and more powerful radar to defend against long-range attack by ballistic missiles. They believe the system could be devised to knock down enemy missiles in the first few minutes of ascent--the so-called boost phase--before the enemy warhead released decoys that could confuse interceptor missiles.

Since the Aegis system relies on ships, it could be moved from place to place and could be used to protect allies, as Bush has said he wants to do.

Some Pentagon officials have predicted that such a system could not be deployed until 2012, because they think it would require far more advanced missile and radar capabilities than the current Aegis system.

But advocates said that an upgraded system could be finished years earlier than that. Some have argued, for example, that the Pentagon could have a robust system with ground and sea components by 2006 if it moves ahead as fast as it could.

Later, this system might be complemented by spaced-based lasers. The Pentagon is spending $240 million on a demonstration project to put such a laser in space by 2012.

Yet it will be tough for the Bush administration to fully fund multiple approaches, given its decision to hold the line on defense spending. Even if Bush officials were to cancel a current Pentagon spending program--which may not be likely--the savings might be channeled to other uses, including pay hikes or improved health care for troops, spare parts or new weaponry.

The bitter truth, from the standpoint of the missile defense advocates, is that the Clinton administration devised its system to stay within the rules of the 1972 ABM treaty. That goal led the Clinton team to the limited, ground-based technology that missile defense hawks believe offers the least protection.

Bush officials have said privately that they recognize they face a difficult trade-off between the system they can get running quickest and the one that ultimately will have the greatest capability.

“They understand it,” a Republican analyst said, “and they’re torn.”