Obama urged to boost priority of BMD development

WASHINGTON, Jan. 21 (UPI) -- Newly inaugurated U.S. President Barack Obama has confirmed the wisdom of the allied approach to missile defense. The existing missile defense program involves allied participation in Asia, Europe and the Middle East, and this should continue. Key among the various cooperative efforts are the agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland, both NATO allies, to field a missile defense radar and 10 Ground-based Midcourse Defense interceptors on their territories to counter longer-range missiles.

If Obama wants to send a signal that the United States intends to use missile defense cooperation to reinforce its alliance relationships, he should make it clear that the United States will move to implement these agreements.

What Obama should not do is adopt the position of French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who urged a moratorium on the fielding of missile defenses in Europe. Sarkozy's statement serves to undermine the solidarity of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization in favor of the program that was adopted by NATO leaders at their summit in Bucharest, Romania, in the spring.

Obama also needs to recognize that ballistic missile defense has been the least developed component of the forces necessary to protect and defend the United States and its allies around the world.

Appropriately, Obama has stated he seeks a variety of forces to defend the United States and its allies against attacks with weapons of mass destruction in his paper "Barack Obama and Joe Biden on Defense Issues," published Nov. 12, 2008, at barackobama.com.

Clearly, counter-terrorism, air, cruise missile and civil defenses have a role to play.

The president also must recognize, however, that the BMD force has started from a weakened position because -- unique among the various defense forces -- the development, testing and deployment of ballistic missile defenses were sharply curtailed by treaty during a roughly 30-year period from 1972 to 2002.

This treaty was the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviet Union. As a result, until recently U.S. BMD forces were losing ground to the development of ballistic missile delivery systems by potential enemies.

While the United States has started to gain ground against foreign ballistic missile capabilities since President George W. Bush withdrew the United States from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the U.S. BMD program still lags behind the projected threat.

Obama, therefore, must recognize that the momentum needed to catch up with the projected growth in ballistic missile capabilities and threats has to be sustained.

If the United States or its allies were attacked with ballistic missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction warheads, the world would be forever transformed. The American people would be rather unforgiving of a president who failed to demonstrate that he had done his utmost to field a defense against such an attack, and a successful attack on an ally almost certainly would undermine the credibility of U.S. security commitments and the overall alliance system led by the United States.

The requirements of today's world demand a strategy to protect and defend the United States and its allies. The Cold War strategy of retaliation-based deterrence is insufficient. Ballistic missile defenses are therefore an essential component of a protect-and-defend strategy for the 21st century.

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(Baker Spring is F.M. Kirby research fellow in national security policy in the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies, a division of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for International Studies; Peter Brookes is senior fellow for national security affairs in the Davis Institute; and James Jay Carafano, Ph.D., is assistant director of the Davis Institute and senior research fellow for national security and homeland security in the Allison Center at the Heritage Foundation.)

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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of important issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)