Daunting Hurdles for Missile Shield

Now that President Bush has officially declared his intention to build a large-scale missile defense system and scrap the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, his aides went to work Wednesday on the hard parts: winning the assent of skeptical European allies and a balky Russia. Selling the idea to an uncertain Congress. Finding money in the budget to pay for it. And, not least, developing missile defense systems that actually work.

If they succeed on all those fronts, Bush’s initiative may be remembered as the launch of a wholly new approach to nuclear stability. But even if the effort falls short of its most sweeping goals, his administration plans more modest interim steps that would have significant consequences.

As reported Tuesday in The Times, the administration is interested in developing a limited missile defense system that could be deployed within three years to counter threats from countries such as North Korea.

“The Ballistic Missile Office has developed these options and they are being examined and looked at,” Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld told reporters at the Pentagon.

In a speech at the National Defense University on Tuesday, Bush listed a wide range of possible defensive systems, both near-term and long-term, using weapons based on land, at sea, on aircraft and in space. Without choosing among them, he vowed: “When ready, and working with Congress, we will deploy missile defenses.”

Whether or not he achieves that goal, Bush’s speech signaled the start of a worldwide battle over nuclear security that will likely last for years--”one of the most important . . . debates that Americans will see in our lifetime,” said Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), the Senate Democratic leader.

On Wednesday, foreign governments reacted to the speech with statements ranging from outright condemnation (China) to caution (Russia and Germany) to support (Australia).

Several close U.S. allies in Europe emphasized that they want to be consulted before Bush abrogates the ABM treaty or takes any other decisive action. European officials have complained about the unilateral tone of Bush’s initial foreign policy announcements, which they say have followed only minimal consultations with other governments.

German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, speaking on a sidewalk in front of the State Department after meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, said bluntly that his government opposes any precipitous move to scrap the ABM treaty.

“The ABM treaty worked well,” Fischer said. “. . . We want control mechanisms that worked well in the past, should they be replaced, to be replaced only by better ones or more effective ones. We don’t want there to be a new arms race.”

The ABM treaty, signed in 1972, prohibited the United States and the Soviet Union from building weapons to defend against each others’ intercontinental ballistic missiles. The idea behind the treaty was that a country with defensive weapons might be tempted to launch a nuclear attack; with no defense, strategists argued, the nuclear “balance of terror” was actually more stable.

In his speech, Bush said the treaty is outmoded and called for “a new framework that reflects a clear and clean break from the past.”

Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov, in a relatively mild response, said his government was “ready for consultations.”

“It is extremely important that the U.S. administration does not intend to take unilateral steps but intends to consult with its allies and friends, including Russia,” he said at a news conference in Moscow.

But Ivanov said Russia, like Germany, is “insistent on keeping and strengthening ABM.”

China’s official response came in the form of a written commentary by the official New China News Agency.

“The U.S. missile defense plan has violated the ABM treaty, will destroy the balance of international security forces and could cause a new arms race,” it said. “Therefore, it has been widely condemned by the international community.”

In Congress, Democrats reacted with almost equal skepticism.

“The question is, is it the best possible use of our defense dollars?” Daschle asked, flanked by other Democratic senators at a news conference called to respond to the speech. “We need to see this debate in the larger context of the whole array of threats to our national security. While no priority is greater than protecting our nation from all threats, we have a responsibility to combat those threats the Pentagon tells us are most likely and most immediate. Attack by ballistic missile ranks very low among them.”

The State Department announced that the administration is sending three teams of senior officials around the world to explain the initiative. State Department spokesman Philip Reeker made a point of repeating Bush’s promise that “these will be real consultations. We’re not presenting our friends and allies with unilateral decisions already made.”

Administration officials and outside experts have warned that deploying missile defense systems over other governments’ objections could lead to a serious fraying of U.S. ties with Europe--and could drive Russia and China, which see themselves as potential targets of such a system, into a closer anti-American alliance.

Bush “can do it,” said Ivo Daalder, a former National Security Council official in the Clinton administration. “The question is, at what cost?”

On the other side, some conservatives were complaining that Bush seemed too willing to allow allied countries to slow the plan down.

Bush is “courting losing the opportunity to get this done in his first term,” said Henry Cooper, who headed the missile defense program in the administration of Bush’s father.

Diplomatic costs aren’t the only problem. Financial costs are also an issue.

Pentagon officials have come to realize they face a painful dilemma in their desire to fund huge increases for conventional forces as well as for missile defense.

They are considering asking for a $20-billion increase in the $310-billion military budget for the 2002 fiscal year. But their hopes for additional money could be squeezed by Bush’s budget deal with Congress, announced Wednesday.

And the missile defense plan is going to require a huge increase in the missile defense budget, now about $4.5 billion a year.

The initiative, as described by Bush, pursues many targets at once. It speeds development of a ship-based system that would knock down missiles just after blastoff. It is also expected to put more money into research on sea-based and land-based systems that will knock down missiles in the mid-course and terminal phases of their trajectory.

And it will pour money into new research on space weapons and antimissile lasers carried on aircraft.

But even the near-term costs of these systems is large. The Aegis warships that the Pentagon wants to use to strike down missiles in their ascent phase cost about $1 billion each.

Opposition to the missile defense campaign has so far been muted in Congress; opponents don’t want to appear to be obstructing a technology that promises to protect the nation from intercontinental missiles. Two years ago, an amendment that called for fielding an antimissile system “as soon as is technologically possible” passed the Senate by a lopsided 97-3 vote.

But the fight in Congress is likely to become much tougher as the missile shield approaches reality--and the costs mount.

Democrats have the 41 votes they would need in the Senate to mount a filibuster to block funding for the system, for example. Opponents might also seek to impede a crash program by passing legislation to require additional testing.

However, Bush appears likely to win congressional support for his plan to deploy a limited missile defense system aimed at “rogue states” such as North Korea. Democrats are divided over that idea, which President Clinton adopted--with seemingly mild enthusiasm--at the end of his administration.

The initial system that the administration is discussing would be far more modest than the kind of global system that missile defense advocates would like to see in the years ahead.

The first phase may be built around a handful of interceptor missiles in the ground in Alaska. Army officials have said they could provide such a system by the end of Bush’s first term.

The Navy has said it could add to this a system of 50 interceptor missiles carried aboard two cruisers and equipped with the Aegis radar system for tracking missiles. This system may include a sophisticated radar, carried on a ship or an oil derrick, that could be moved around the world according to need.

More than a decade out, however, missile defense advocates would like to see a far larger system. This might involve many hundreds of interceptors based at sea and on land, and space-based weapons similar to the kind first proposed by President Reagan in 1983.

The initial system is likely to cost tens of billions of dollars and the larger one many hundreds of billions, analysts say. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Clinton’s administration’s limited system of 100 ground-based interceptors would have cost about $60 billion.

Bush administration officials have signaled that they want to erect an initial system without worrying too much if it isn’t 100% effective in intercepting all the warheads thrown at it.

Rumsfeld has argued that new technologies always take a while to perfect and, in the meantime, something is better than nothing.

But the administration could find itself vulnerable in this argument. Opponents in Congress could argue that it is unwise to field a system without adequate testing.