Time for a Little Panic

One can perhaps forgive President Clinton his waverings and wobblings regarding North Korea’s nuclear bomb, his abjectly retracted pledge that “North Korea cannot be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb,” his year of negotiations that yielded nothing but American concessions and North Korean nuclear advances.

One can forgive Clinton this irresolution because it arises out of an understandable fear — the fear of war. War is what North Korea promises if we do anything serious to stop its nuclear program. And war is a serious thing. One might argue that the world’s only superpower ought not be intimidated by the threats of a third-rate power. Still, one can sympathize with the President’s dilemma: Risk G.I. lives today in order to avert a nuclear threat tomorrow?

Yet even if one can understand the President’s inability to block the spread of nuclear weapons, it is harder to understand his leaving us defenseless should they ever be fired our way. If we cannot deny outlaw states the Bomb, why are we not defending ourselves against it?

This failure to build defenses is all the more glaring because Clinton has made nonproliferation one of his great national-security battle cries. But if nonproliferation fails as the North Koreas and the Irans of the world develop nukes and the missiles to carry them, what then? Then our only defense is defenses: interceptors to knock down ballistic missiles before they can reach our soldiers or our cities. Yet the Clinton policy on defenses is delay and derail.

The Administration slashed five-year funding for missile defenses by more than 50%. It abandoned Bush’s plans to deploy a limited ballistic-missile defense for the American homeland. Instead, we were told, we would concentrate on defenses against theater (shorter-range) missiles for our allies and our troops abroad. Now it turns out that the Administration is slowly crippling theater-missile defense too. It is agreeing to severe limitations on TMDS that would effectively abort highly promising Navy and Air Force programs and stunt the growth of the remaining Army program.

Why are we preventing ourselves from building defenses so crucial to America’s future security?

Because of a piece of parchment. John Maynard Keynes once said that practical men are the unconscious slaves of a defunct economist. Clinton’s arms controllers are the conscious slaves of an obsolete treaty. Twenty-two years ago, we signed a treaty with the Soviet Union to drastically limit missile defenses. The idea was to prevent an offensive-defensive arms race and eliminate the temptation to launch a surprise attack (because an undefended attacker would be open to nuclear retaliation).

But the Soviet Union is gone. The arms race between us is over. The U.S. and Russia are not even aiming missiles at each other. They are aimed at sea, so that even an accidental launch would destroy only fish. The coming threat emanates from elsewhere, from small, determined outlaw states such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. And before that threat we are helpless.

Most Americans are not aware — and would find it hard to believe — that there is nothing we could do were a nuclear weapon launched at New York City or San Francisco. Why? We have the technology to shoot down an enemy missile. But we do not allow ourselves to develop it because of a theological attachment to a treaty made with a nonexistent state for now nonexistent purposes.

Yet the Administration is not only keeping the treaty alive, it is, absurdly, expanding it. First, it is ready to invite 10 successor states of the Soviet Union to join the treaty, which would make future amendments almost impossible (because amendments would then need 11 O.K.s instead of just two, America’s and Russia’s). Which suits the arms-control theologians just fine: no post-Clinton Administration could ever alter the treaty. Moreover, the Administration is now negotiating with Russia an interpretation of the abm treaty that would severely restrict our theater-missile systems — a category of defenses the ABM treaty was supposed to permit!

In the early 1980s, the U.S. experienced a nuclear hysteria — a morbid, near panicked fear of nuclear apocalypse. It was fanned by sensational books, mindless media and intellectuals who should have known better. In retrospect, the only thing that had really changed in the nuclear world at the time was that Ronald Reagan had got his finger on the button. That was enough to send the chattering classes into a nuclear frenzy.

A decade later, North Korea’s newest God-King, Kim Jong Il — reputed playboy, terrorist and flake — may be getting his finger on the button. Yesterday Saddam almost did. Tomorrow it will be some ayatullah. Yet this time the chattering classes appear rather calm about the danger. Fate of the Earth concerns have, it seems, been retired to a ranch in Santa Barbara.

Yet now is the time for a little panic — and a lot of realism. Soon nonproliferation is going to fail. Outlaw states are going to aim weapons of mass destruction at our soldiers, our allies and ultimately our cities. At that point there will be a serious panic. And the cry will go up: Who left us defenseless?