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WORD COUNT 638                                                                                                                                                            JANUARY 28, 2009

STAR WARS TO BE SCRUTINIZED AT LAST – by Victoria Samson

In the short amount of time that President Barack Obama has been in office, he has already shifted away from earlier presidents’ more controversial policies. Guantanamo is to be closed, there will be more transparency and openness in government documents and the “gag rule” (preventing federal money from going to international groups abroad that provide information of or access to abortions) may very likely be revoked. It is entirely possible that the George W. Bush administration’s infatuation with missile defense may end up on the list of changes as well.

The newly-updated White House website spells out many of the Obama administration’s positions on key foreign policy and defense issues. While his administration “will support missile defense,” it will do so by developing it “in a way that is pragmatic and cost-effective.” Finally, the Obama administration will make sure that missile defense “does not divert resources from other national security priorities until we are positive the technology will protect the American public.”

That provides a lot of leeway for future action by this administration, but a few things jump out:

“Pragmatic and cost-effective” are not ways in which one would describe how missile defense has been developed thus far. Since Ronald Reagan’s initial Star Wars speech in 1983, well over $120 billion has been spent. In return, even the program’s most ardent supporters would have to admit that what has been fielded to date is, at best, a rudimentary version of what is envisioned overall for the program.

“Cost-effective” can be interpreted in ways other than adding up the fiscal cost of missile defense; there is also the diplomatic cost of the program. Putting a system in Europe to defend against a non-existent Iranian long-range ballistic missile threat, which would cripple relations with Russia in the near-term, would be (from a cost-benefit analysis) a very costly decision.

Despite the years of testing, the Missile Defense Agency still has not proven that its systems can work reliably in real-world circumstances. Furthermore, the interceptor that the United States wants to field in Europe doesn’t exist right now, is not planned to be tested until the middle of next year at the earliest and is based on a model that has successfully intercepted its target eight times out of 14 attempts. The Obama administration is wise to double-check on the system’s effectiveness before betting U.S. national security on a wobbly defensive system.

This is because there are much more pressing national security priorities than the threat of a long-range ballistic missile attack against the United States, and the $10 billion-plus which is being spent annually on missile defense systems could be reallocated and be used in a more efficient manner.

For example, one could argue we would be better off spending our money on developing the capability to defend against “the threat of a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon and the spread of nuclear weapons to dangerous regimes,” which the White House website calls “[t]he gravest danger to the American people.”

As it stands currently, missile defense gets roughly twice the amount of funding that programs which strive to prevent spread of nuclear materials and weapons receive. It is hoped that this too will be corrected by the Obama administration, but the sheer amount of missile defense spending (plus the associated political capital and jobs created by that money) may end up largely protecting it from serious cuts.

The Pentagon’s budget request for the next fiscal year will be released to Congress in February. At that point, we should have some indication of whether missile defense will be permitted to continue rolling along under the power of inertia, or if sanity will prevail and it will be downgraded to a lesser national security expenditure, allowing for resources to be focused on a real threat to the United States.

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Victoria Samson is a senior analyst for the Center for Defense in Washington, D.C., that focuses on military and security issues. For more information, visit www.cdi.org. – A photo of Victoria Samson is available CLICK HERE

 

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