Washblog

"Alaska is home to multiple military installations,"  Rep. Don Young said, "and because of that, would be on the front lines should North Korea send anything our way."

His real worry though isn't about an attack; it's the loss of funds to support the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system at the remote outpost in Fort Greely.

We've become accustomed to fear driven national defense policies since the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. So we need to question our government's reaction about the degree to which North Korea poses a threat. As Albert Einstein famously said, "blind respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth."

First of all, fiscal fear has been camouflaged as a matter of national security since long before 911. Every member of Congress has rigorously fought the closure of military bases in their states. They've resisted reductions in weapons spending when corporations like Boeing and Lockheed are major employers of their constituents. It's standard operating procedure for legislators who fear the electoral bomb of a local economy collapse from the loss of defense dollars.

It's the same story at Fort Greely. Just a few weeks ago, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a warning shot across the fiscal brow of Fort Greely's missile defense acquisition future. Speaking at the seventh Annual Missile Defense Conference, he implied that continued missile production for the GMD system is unacceptable because, according to recent Government Accounting Office report, "none of the six critical technologies are mature."

This isn't a new finding. Last year, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Philip Coyle ridiculed the entire missile defense program as "a theology in the United States, not a technology." Testifying before Congress, Coyle, who is now a specialist with the Center for Defense Information, pointedly complained that "U.S. missile defenses are being deployed without well-established operational criteria."

It seems budget cuts for Fort Greely are inevitable and well justified. So let's dispense with Alaska's addiction to federal funds. It's not another bridge, but maybe it's another missile scare from nowhere.

Instead we need to remember that America and the entire world survived much greater dangers during the four decades of the Cold War. The USSR was a heavily armed adversary with thousands of missiles and nuclear warheads capable of reaching into the heartland of America. Yet even though we weren't protected by a missile defense system, the Soviets never launched an attack.  

The fact is that during the arms race with the Soviet Union our primary defense was the ability to strike back with our own nuclear weapons. These were the deterrent to a Soviet first strike that effectively negated the need for missile defense. Indeed, the balance of power between America and the USSR relied on the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty which essentially halted the developed of missile defense technology.

To believe that our nuclear arsenal is not a deterrent against North Korea is absolute nonsense. If they launched a missile against America they can expect we'd respond with greater power and accuracy, and possibly with the reluctant approval of the rest of the world. They, and Iran as well, have more to fear than we do.

It's more likely Kim Jong Il's regime envisions that having nuclear capability will serve as a deterrent against the nation that invaded Iraq without provocation. But more notably we should be wondering what it's like to be a bitter enemy of the one nation that's crossed the threshold between testing and using a nuclear weapon.

The common reading of our national history includes the justification for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was supposedly necessary to save the lives of thousands of American soldiers preparing to land on the shores of Japan. But trustfully clinging to this narrative mistakenly places us on the moral high ground. What follows is a natural projection that our enemies would be less capable of exhibiting restraint than we were in deciding to use nuclear weapons.

The arms race that followed those events promoted fear, not security. Yet we never ask if Russian fears were more justified not only because we vaporized two Japanese cities, but because of their history of being invaded by westerners. These are valid questions worth exploring, but first we have to lose the blind allegiance to our moral self righteousness.

It's time to examine this history with an open mind. If we fail to acknowledge our role in creating a world threatened by nuclear disaster, why would other nations trust our intentions as peaceful? Einstein understood this when in 1950 he wrote that "we will never achieve real peace as long as every step is taken with a possible future conflict in view. ... The first goal must be to do away with mutual fear and distrust."

Missile defense is preparing for conflict that is not inevitable regardless of the political posturing of our leadership. To end the threat of nuclear attack we must first end the proliferation of nuclear weapons around the globe. It includes reducing and eventually eliminating our arsenal. It is the only way to signal to the world that we possess intelligent leadership and genuine goodwill.