Why Missile Defense is Here to Stay

Posted: 01 July 2008

by A. Wess Mitchell

After four years of diplomatic toil, plans to build a “third site” to the global U.S. anti-ballistic missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic seem to be collapsing like a house of cards. On all fronts, the system is besieged: The Poles want more money, the Czechs lack the parliamentary heft, and Congressional Democrats look set to turn off the funding.

And then there’s Barack. Critics of missile defense are confident that the Democratic Senator, who is known to have greater reservations about MD technology than pro-shield Republican John McCain, will deliver the final coup de grace to the program if elected.

But prevailing wisdom about Obama is wrong. Once in office, the next President, regardless of party, will need the third site, not so much to shoot down Iranian missiles (the system has to be built first), but to strengthen America’s diplomatic hand in negotiations with Iran. Far from dropping offline, the shield’s political stock is likely to grow steadily higher in the years ahead, as U.S. leaders from both parties and their counterparts in NATO grope for a credible post-deterrence response to unstable nuclear-armed regimes.

Missile defense could alter the psychology behind negotiations with Iran to America’s advantage in three ways. First, it provides Washington with a credible fall-back option should talks fail. Professional negotiators call this a BATNA – Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement. As any ambassador, fishmonger or car salesman can tell you, having a strong BATNA (and making sure your opponent knows it) is necessary for establishing your ability to “walk” if things don’t go your way – a vital prerequisite to effective diplomacy. The problem with America’s other BATNAs (bombing Iran or levying sanctions) is that they lack credibility in the eyes of the Iranians – the first because the U.S. military is over-extended and the second because of European apathy about enforcing sanctions. By adding a “last redoubt,” missile defense gives America a stronger BATNA than it would otherwise have.

Second, keeping the shield helps the next Administration enter negotiations from a position of strength – a commodity that’s in short supply in the wake of military setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan and with Russia and China backstopping Tehran in the Security Council. An abrupt retreat on the third site would fuel the perception – already strong in Iran – that the new President is up against the wall. “GREAT SATAN HAS NO HOPE OF SHIELD,” Iranian newspaper headlines would read. Imagine U.S. diplomats trudging into negotiations a few months later to face a newly-emboldened Tehran – not an auspicious starting point for the West’s last chance to stop the Persian nuclear program.

Finally, the shield drives down the benefits of Iran having a nuclear weapon to begin with. Why invest vast sums of money, risk international isolation, war, sanctions and internal unrest for a weapon that, once developed, can be shot down? This logic applies even if the current technology is imperfect. The very knowledge that Washington is concocting an antidote forces Tehran to reexamine the costs and benefits of a program, the whole point of which was to have a free hand in the region and a tool for blackmailing the West. The shield erodes both, lessening the potential payoff of the investment.

In short, a Democratic President would be foolish to chunk the shield and is unlikely to do so. While keeping MD may not dramatically increase the odds that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur, taking it off the table increases the odds that it won’t. McCain knows this. And so does Obama. Both candidates – and leaders across NATO – also know that if negotiations fail, missile defense is all the West has got. Mutually-assured destruction won’t work against a thug with a single bomb the way it worked against a politburo with ten thousand. The attempt to create a new, non-nuclear deterrent – pre-emptive war – lies discredited in the sands of Iraq.

That leaves one option: defense. MD opponents can’t have it both ways: they cannot demand a diplomatic solution to the impasse with Iran while removing one of the strongest cards in our diplomatic deck; they cannot decry the unwisdom of preemptive war while undermining the one option we have for replacing it. Anti-shield politicians should resist the temptation to piggyback on anti-shield sentiment for short-term political points. Saying “no” to a wildly-popular first-term Democratic President who enjoys the backing of NATO will not be as easy as it was with his reviled predecessor. Critics should step back and see the program in a pragmatic rather than ideological light as a practical tool of statecraft for helping the West cope with a rapidly-arming tyrant we currently have no means of deterring or defending against. It’s certainly worth a try.

A. Wess Mitchell is director of research at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA).

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Center for European Policy Analysis.