Slate's Bizbox
foreigners: Opinions about events beyond our borders.

How Europe Stopped Complaining and Learned To Love Missile Defense

By Anne Applebaum
Posted Tuesday, May 29, 2001, at 11:30 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker

Like climatic change or the shifting of tectonic plates, the European change of heart on missile defense is hard to detect, hard to predict, hard to describe. But it is coming, I am certain—or at least as certain as a climatologist or a seismologist can ever be.

It isn't happening very fast, of course, and it isn't universal. I have no doubt, for example, that the British Foreign Office will continue fighting against missile defense right up until rockets start falling out of the sky over London: As an organization that loathes change of any kind, its mandarins cannot help but despise something that so profoundly disturbs the status quo. Nor is anyone, anywhere, necessarily convinced about the technology. Does it work, can it ever work, and will the Americans lie to us about how well it works—all of these remain open questions, which I won't pretend to be able to answer either. (Click here, incidentally, if you want to read why the Defense Department thinks it will work, and here to read why Slate's Robert Wright thinks it won't.)

Nevertheless, in the wake of Paul Wolfowitz's grand trek through Europe earlier this month, I do detect the beginnings of a change of heart, at least as far as the politics of missile defense are concerned. The U.S. deputy defense secretary's trip was, as the Washington Post reported, an unusually large and well-coordinated effort. Wolfowitz, or in some cases his aides, met with officials in Moscow, London, Paris, Rome, Warsaw, The Hague, Copenhagen, and Istanbul. They also went to Asia—New Delhi, Beijing, Seoul. Everywhere they went, they started debates, at least among those who care about this sort of thing—defense ministry bureaucrats, the worthier sort of journalist—whose numbers are admittedly limited. (When British opinion pollsters recently asked the British electorate what issues they consider important during the current election campaign, defense figured somewhere near the bottom of the list.) Slowly, those bureaucrats and journalists are warming up to the Bush administration's position.

To be more precise, Europe, at the moment, divides rather neatly into two categories of country: those who have nukes (England, France, Russia) and those who do not (everyone else). The latter group had initially opposed missile defense, largely on the grounds that it would detach America from Europe. If the Americans had it, the argument went, they would hunker down on their continent, batten down the hatches, and let NATO sink on its own: Why would the United States need Polish or Portuguese allies if it could protect itself with technology alone? Most smaller NATO countries have, deep down, always doubted whether the distant United States would really and truly come to their rescue anyway.

As the plan was presented by Wolfowitz et al., however, precisely the opposite appears to be the case. The Bush administration is now describing the program as a group effort: missile defense, that is, not as some sort of American lone cowboy defense strategy, but an international affair to be conceived and executed in concert with the NATO allies. In places like Warsaw this went down extremely well. By becoming part of a missile shield—whether or not the missile shield works—their security would be bound closer than ever to that of America, the only country whose military (rightly or wrongly) inspires anyone with any sense of confidence.

In London and Paris, the issue is trickier. In both places there is a partly denied but nevertheless authentic distress at the idea of British and French nukes being made redundant. Not only do the French and British nuclear programs contribute to their respective countries' national sense of importance, they also give them a satisfying explanation as to why they should remain permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. In their case, to soften the blow, the Bush administration appears to be promising more than mere inclusion. It also appears to be hinting delicately at the possibility of defense contracts for French and British companies. As both countries are currently led by prime ministers who love nothing more than pointing at jobs they have personally created, I suspect this was the right tactic.

If the Bush team is clever, they might also be able to play on Tony Blair's general enthusiasm for international cooperation. If Blair can be persuaded to see missile defense not as the latest incarnation of Reagan's Star Wars but as a shiny new form of multilateral activity, he might even be able to override the Foreign Office's objections. A hint that this might in fact be happening was evident recently in the left-wing Guardian, whose veteran columnist Hugo Young wrote a not-wholly-unfavorable account of the missile-defense program. The right-wing Daily Telegraph already supports it; Blair himself, an avid reader of the conservative press, can't be far behind.

Bringing Russia on board, I concede, will be trickier: If nuclear weapons are devalued, Russia will simply become a very large country with a great number of problems. Nor are the Russians necessarily interested either in American security or in multilateral cooperation, which they have always suspected will end with an outside intervention in Chechnya. Obviously, the Russians can, if they choose, also make a lot of noise about the ABM treaty, which will have to be terminated if missile defense is to go forward. Particularly loud howling could damage the American position elsewhere in Europe and even generate real opposition in the United States.

On this point, however, the Russians are in a much weaker position than most people think. Look at the technicalities: In fact, the ABM treaty has an escape clause that allows either signatory an honorable exit on six months' notice. Look at the morality: The Russians themselves are in violation of the Conventional Forces Europe treaty in Chechnya and have been for some years now. Until now, we've been too polite to make much of a fuss about it—but we could.

Nor do the Russians have much reason to be totally intransigent, especially if they see something in it for them. I would guess, in fact, that the lead article in Monday's New York Times, summarized by Slate's "Today's Papers," did not appear by accident. The article revealed, among other things, the Bush administration's intention to purchase 300 Russian surface-to-air missiles, part of a package designed to persuade Moscow to give up the ABM treaty quietly. Although loudly talked down by Russian officials, I doubt that such an idea would have been made public if administration officials did not already have hopes that it would ultimately be accepted. It is clearly a bribe—as even the New York Times does not fail to notice, there is no firm evidence that Russian surface-to-air missiles actually work—but then, the Russian elite is not known for its objections to bribery. Equally, President Putin has a vested interest in convincing the Russians that Russia remains a powerful and important nation: They voted for him, after all, because he implicitly promised that it would be so. What could be better, from Putin's personal point of view, than an important Russian arms sale to the United States?

If Russia plays along, then any objections remaining in the rest of Europe will drop away too. Not everyone will like it, not everyone will see the point, but they'll go along—leaving only what appears, to my eye, to be the completely insurmountable task of convincing the Chinese. China's leadership, which is far less susceptible to outside bribery, and far less interested in its "voters," has already threatened to start mass production of nuclear weapons if missile defense goes ahead. This could be very dangerous—unless, of course, it is the real point of the whole exercise. Reagan's Star Wars program came to nothing, but it did bankrupt the Soviet Union. Will we someday praise Bush's missile-defense program for bankrupting the People's Republic of China?

Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
Anne Applebaum is a Washington Post and Slate columnist. Her most recent book is Gulag: A History.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Reader comments From The Fray:


 [Note from the Fray Editor: The article produced some excellent discussions, and the posts below represent highly recommended threads.]


Russia was using its own money and resources in an arms race race with the U.S. The Communist Chinese are using our resources to combat us. We are paying for their nuclear and armed forces buildup. We are yet again, far more dangerously, building an enemy as we did in Iran and Iraq and many times before. Will this be our worst mistake?

I travel extensively and am in China regularly, even poor Chinese people can be seen cycling along with cellular phones clipped to their belts. A number of major American companies are in China, the next greatest consumer market, putting in these services and cabling for free. Of course it's not free, we, the American public, are paying for it, along with a host of other things.

Our trade deficit with China is now 70 billion out of 200+ billion spent there every year? Russia, at any time, would have been ecstatic with this result. China is quietly going around the world using our greatest weapon against us; Economic Warfare.

--Steve

(To reply, click here.)


[The proposed] cooperation on NMD and a mutual settlement of the 1972 ABM treaty with Russia… is nothing less than a bid for a renewal of the cooperative US-Russian relationship that began with the collapse of the USSR at a time when the Putin government has made clear that it will reassert Russian interests even to the point of forming a new axis with China designed to offset US global power…

So, is the overture to Moscow on NMD cooperation merely a way to neutralize Russian opposition to the shield (which, not incidentally, may never be built, a fact the Russians know as well as anyone). Not likely. What is happening is that the Bush administration has decided that it must respond to the possibility of a Russia-China combination by wooing the Russians again. Putin is more than willing to be wooed; the issue is, what will he want? You can bet he'll want a lot more than a few bribes to produce hard currency or the dubious benefit of being shielded at some unknown point in time from "rogue attacks."

--Publius

(To reply, or to read this post in full, click here.)


If one side of a nuclear stand-off has a missile defense system, then essentially all of their warheads are first-strike weapons that do not entail retaliation, since the return strike could be destroyed by the defense system. This is bad. Unless, of course, everybody had the defense system (in equal amounts), in which case it once again makes no sense to be the first to launch. Your opponent knocks out enough of your missiles to be able to launch a second strike that can get through your defenses.

However, as soon as there is a system which could reliably knock out all missiles launched (no matter how many), then all we have to do is look for suspicious pointy packages that rattle a Geiger counter

--Mangar

(To reply, click here.)


How critical is the opposition of allies if we feel that this is in U.S. interests otherwise? What kind of allies will not support our decision to field defenses we feel vital to our National interest? It becomes a matter of leadership. They have had the protection of our Nuclear umbrella during the cold war and will have at least some protection from this as well.

[Then, the] idea that no one will ever launch under any circumstances for whatever reason (MAD foremost): the problems with this theory are many. We came close a couple times during the cold war (most notably during the Cuban Missile Crisis). Do you really believe MAD will work with everyone all the time?

If not we have to find a way to eliminate the stockpiles of nuclear weapons over time. I would argue that disarmament and non proliferation will only work if we reduce the perceived value of such weapons. The best way to do this is build a credible defense. To this end we need to develop defenses to all methods of delivery (includes both postman and missile scenarios). This shield needs to eventually be both reliable and the protection thereof available to all Nations.

If we do not eliminate Nuclear weapons over time basic risk management says that someday they will be used.

--Michael Murray

(To reply, click here.)

 (5/30)


Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Imagine if...
Hiatt | What if McCain had waged his campaign based on respect?
Editorial: Meddlesome PalinKing: The Danger of Palin Power