Toronto Star April 22, 2000, Saturday, Edition 1U.S. STILL PRESSES STAR WARS PLANS
Bill Schiller
OTTAWA - During its long evolution, it has cost tens of billions of U.S. dollars, inspired the Pentagon to mislead, lie and even rig tests, and upset America's friends and foes alike.
Worse, to date, it doesn't even work.
Still, the U.S. National Missile Defence (NMD) program - the latest in a series of efforts aimed at mounting a protective shield around America - is set to win Bill Clinton's approval soon, probably within months. Contractors will then get the go-ahead to plant 20 to 30 anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs) in Alaska by 2003.
Another 70 will follow by 2006.
A positive test result in June is expected to be enough to give Clinton the green light, despite a well-documented history of repeated failure.
Russia, China, North Korea and even western Europeans have warned the move is risky and could trigger a new global arms race.
Canada, meanwhile, is poised to be drawn in.
The U.S. has made clear - though not yet formally asked - that it wants Ottawa onside. U.S. defence officials want to manage the missiles under the command and control of NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canada defence arrangement.
''They're looking for our support. I think they've made that quite obvious," Defence Minister Art Eggleton said here this week, insisting no decisions have yet been made.
He would not say what form Canada's support might take, saying any discussion would be ''premature."
But some say Canada's involvement is a foregone conclusion; that the debate is over before it has begun.
NORAD's continued existence hangs in the balance and Ottawa's privileged access to U.S. intelligence, and economic favour, could be at risk if Canada doesn't go along.
''Canada could say that the United States is perfectly capable of doing this without Canada," says John Pike, a respected defence analyst with the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. ''Canada could say, 'Times are tough. Canadian forces are short staffed as it is.' And that's a perfectly plausible answer."
Plausible, but not likely, he adds.
''Of course, they won't say that," he says. ''Why? Well, because Canada always does exactly what it's told to."
Pike doesn't agree with Washington's modus operandi.Nor does he have any faith in the NMD system.
''I have no reason to believe that the system would ever work well enough for an American president to bet the country on it," he says.
But he's also a realist.
''Are we going to have something in the ground with people reporting to work every day before the end of the decade? Probably, yes. But is this something that can be relied on? I don't think so."
For North Americans who thought that Ronald Reagan's Star Wars was long gone, and the prospect of a nuclear meltdown a bad and impossible dream, talk of ABMs and rocket science might surprise.
But North Korea did fire a two-stage missile over Japan in 1998, surprising everyone. And last year, both Indian and Pakistan tested intermediate range ballistic missiles within a week of each other.
None of these is regarded as a serious threat to U.S. security, however, and the Russians have continued to dismantle their arsenal under Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties.
What, then, has driven the Clinton administration to the brink, ready to deploy ballistic missile interceptors and risk the world's wrath?
The usual things, says Pulitzer Prize-winning author Frances Fitzgerald, whose new book Way Out There In The Blue: Reagan, Star Wars And The End Of The Cold War, chronicles the Reagan vision which, she says, ''has given us the National Missile Defence system of today."
Discussion and debate about defence and foreign policy in America is almost never about reality, she says.
''It's about domestic politics, mythology and history," she notes. ''Reagan knew that, and that's why he called up the spectres of American mythology, and that's what has given us the ABM system - if you can call it a system," she says. ''It hasn't passed the tests yet."
Former U.S. President Reagan's vision of a laser-based constellation of satellites and space stations mounting an impenetrable and invisible shield against missile-wielding madmen, was preposterous, even laughable, by the evening of March 23, 1983, the day he gave his speech, Fitzgerald's book explains.
But Reagan had tapped into the mother lode of American myth, into the heart of America's civil religion: the belief that Americans are an exceptional people, who live in a promised land and are, in essence, God's own people of destiny.
Fitzgerald says proponents of the NMD view it as the first, practical step in pursuit of the Star Wars model.
When the Democrats moved into the White House in 1993, Clinton's defence secretary Len Aspin was determined to derail Reagan's Star Wars legacy. But in 1994, Republicans swept both houses and House Leader Newt Gingrich's ''Contract with America" put it back on the agenda.
By last March, Congress passed the NMD into law.
Today, in an election year, the Democrats must make good on it - or hand George W. Bush a hot election issue, something Al Gore is loath to do.
As a consequence, Canada is being held hostage by U.S. domestic politics.
But what is disturbing in Fitzgerald's book, among other things, is the extent to which the Pentagon has been prepared to mislead politicians and even rig tests to ensure success. This has even included fixing rockets with bombs that could be detonated by remote control even when they passed wide of a test target.
Similarly, too, in the immediate aftermath of the Gulf War, the U.S. Army claimed a 96 per cent successful ''kill rate" for its Scud-chasing Patriot missiles. But independent experts showed there was no evidence that even one Scud was knocked out of the sky.
Later still, U.S. government auditors concluded that the very best that the army could claim was coming ''close" on 9 per cent of attempts.
In 1997, Paul G. Kaminski, an undersecretary of defence, told Congress that the Pentagon's efforts since the 1980s to create a ''hit-to-kill" system, - that is, to destroy an incoming missile with an outgoing one - failed 70 per cent of the time.
But there are some in Canada who maintain a robust faith in the technology of the NMD - and appreciate the fact that the system is being designed to provide a limited missile defence umbrella for all of North America. One of them is Canada's Lt.-Gen Bob Morton (ret.), former Deputy Commander-in-Chief of NORAD.
''The notion that it just ain't technically possible, I totally reject," he told members of the Canadian Institute of Strategic Studies during a day-long conference this week.
Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy has voiced his wariness about Canada going down the NMD road hand-in-hand with the United States. Given Axworthy's worldwide promotion of Canada as a peacemaker, that's not surprising.
Next week at the U.N., Axworthy will put forward a proposal calling for curbs on the spread of nuclear technology and the establishment of a global early- warning system.
But Morton says peacemakers understand that there can be no peace without backup force.
''In the real world, peacemakers have never been dreamers who have thought the maintenance of peace relies on human goodness or the good faith of dictators," he says. ''Peacemakers are those who would discourage, deter or defeat would-be aggressors. Tyrants understand this. It amazes me that we keep forgetting it."
Morton stressed that ''nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles are here to stay. And that's a guarantee."
If Canada were to stand alone in that world, without the firm partnership of the Americans, Canada's future would be far less secure, he observed.
''Canadians must bear in mind that military power to destroy this country still exists in the hands of others."
Should Canada not sign on to NMD, ''Canada would not have either the information about what is going on over and in its own territory, or the capability to obtain it."
Some worry that NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defence Command, founded in 1958 for continental defence, might cease to exist if Canada does not agree to support the NMD.
But how important is NORAD and how important is Canada's role in it?
In the 1950s, according to Joseph T. Jockel, chair of Canadian Studies at St. Lawrence University, NORAD and Canada's role were crucial.
But over the years, the importance of Canada to the United States has declined sharply, mainly due to the shift in weaponry from bombers to ballistic missiles.
Advances in technology have diminished Canada's importance to continental defence.
Today, the number of NORAD aircraft standing on alert in Canada for air defence purposes, for example, is four, Jockel told his Strategic Studies audience: two jets on each coast, he said. And the radar network is ''a shell" he added: ''a peripheral system."
''Further, no system to detect or track ballistic missiles has ever been located in Canada or operated by the Canadian forces," he said.
Put bluntly, the United States does not need NORAD, Jockel said.
Canada, however, does, if only because its participation demonstrates a commitment to partnership, thereby ensuring Canadian access to Washington's intelligence and decision-making processes.
Equally blunt, Jockel notes that without Canadian participation in the NMD, NORAD will dissolve.
''And Canada just won't matter as much in Washington anymore," he said.
But if Canada is today so unnecessary to U.S. defence, why then is there mounting pressure for Ottawa to support the National Missile Defence initiative?
''We would be deluding ourselves if we thought the U.S. needs us for our money, our technology or our personnel," says Peter Saracino, a Canadian at the Centre for Non-proliferation Studies in California.
Canada's endorsement of NMD would mean international credibility for the United States.
''If Canada, a member of NATO and the G7 signs up to it, then it becomes harder for Britain, Germany and anybody else to say no."
The end of another war, the Cold War, was supposed to be a harbinger of peace and stability. But the breakup of the Soviet Union and the decline of Russia introduced the era of the sole superpower, the United States. And that changed things.
''Now, in the absence of any worthy adversary, the United States has much less need to engage in reality testing," observes defence analyst Pike.
''Consequently, it can do things that are convenient for domestic reasons pretty much without reference to what the rest of the world thinks or does.
''That's the whole point of being a superpower: You can do anything you want to."
Copyright 2000 Toronto Star Newspapers, Ltd.
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