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Bush's Anti-Logic Shield, Part 2

By Robert Wright
Posted Monday, June 18, 2001, at 9:30 PM ET
Illustration by Mark Alan Stamaty

President Bush reports that European leaders are warming up to his missile-defense plan now that he has gone over and explained to them "the logic behind the rationale." Now, whatever you do, don't try to examine the phrase "the logic behind the rationale" logically. I tried, and the results weren't pretty. Instead, let's focus on, as it were, the logic behind the rationale—the case Bush made to European leaders as he summed it up for reporters afterward.

The Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty—a keystone of the policy of deterrence—was "a product of the Cold War era," Bush explained. Back then "the United States and Russia were bitter enemies and the whole concept of peace was based upon the capacity of each of us—each country—to blow each other up." But now we face new, post-Cold-War threats. "The new threats are threats based upon uncertainty. The threat is that somebody who hates freedom or hates America or hates our allies or hates Europe will try to blow us up."

Wait a second. That's a new threat? But wasn't one great fear during the Cold War that Soviet leaders hated freedom and hated America and hated our allies and would try to blow us up? Isn't that why we put lots of thought into developing a system that would keep them from acting on their hatred—the system of deterrence by assured retaliation, the system that Bush now considers outmoded?

I don't want to sound pedantic, or to unduly complicate presidential thought processes, but if Bush wants to argue that differences between the Cold War and the current era warrant a shift in policy, then he should point to some ways in which the two eras are different. And having enemies who are bent on our destruction is not a difference.

It's true, as Bush notes, that today our enemies are no longer Russians. Then again, the logic of deterrence didn't rest on any distinctive Russian cultural traits—good ballet, plentiful vodka—but rather on a generic human trait: not wanting to die. This is a trait that over the ages has been shared by people as culturally diverse as Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Jong-il, Saddam Hussein, and Genghis Khan.

Like countless other sentient beings, I've made this criticism of the basic argument behind missile defense before. Why do I keep repeating it? Because President Bush keeps repeating the basic argument. Because he is so maddeningly oblivious to the actual criticisms of missile defense that people are making. Because he never bothers to explore the logic behind his rationales.

More pedantry: Lest readers impute liberal bias to this column, let me briefly critique the logic of someone who is not, to my knowledge, a conservative Republican—namely, the editor of this journal, Michael Kinsley. He recently squared off with Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer on missile defense. I will wisely refrain from taking sides in this debate between two esteemed and influential colleagues (except to note that Mike is right and Charles is wrong), but I would like to scrutinize one sentence in Kinsley's column.

Krauthammer had addressed a question commonly asked by people like me: What is the point of having a missile shield if America's enemies can just float a bomb up the Hudson River in a barge or put one in a suitcase and drive it across the Rio Grande? Krauthammer made the familiar response: Just because you can't address all threats doesn't mean you shouldn't address any threats.

Kinsley replied that, granted, "the fact that your house may burn down is no reason not to lock your door against burglars." But "locking the door really is close to pointless when there's a wide-open window right next to it. The suitcase bomb problem is more like the second situation: The existence of an alternative means that even a successful missile defense would just shift the risk, not reduce it."

Kinsley is being too generous to Krauthammer's argument. Comparing a ballistic missile attack to a burglar's entering your home through your door suggests that, in the absence of missile defense, a ballistic missile would be the most natural way for Saddam Hussein to get a nuke into the United States. But in reality (as I've noted before) the suitcase bomb is the preferred means of entry even in the absence of missile defense. Launching a nuke-tipped missile would get Hussein killed, since everyone would know where the missile came from, whereas anonymously sneaking a bomb into the United States wouldn't get Hussein killed.

So, missile defense doesn't "shift the risk," but rather addresses a phantom risk while leaving the real risk unaddressed. Missile defense isn't like locking the door and leaving the window open. It's like locking the window and leaving the door open. In fact, it's like locking a third-floor window that has a greased ledge and is directly above a pool of alligators and then leaving the door open. Or, to put an even finer point on it: Missile defense is like paying someone $100 billion to lock a third-floor window that has a greased ledge and is directly above a pool of alligators and then leaving the door open. We're still waiting to hear the rationale behind this logic.

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Robert Wright, a visiting fellow at Princeton University's Center for Human Values and a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, runs the Web site meaningoflife.tv and is the author of The Moral Animal and Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny.
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Reader Comments From The Fray:


[Notes from the Fray Editor: There was a good thread on the suitcase bomb question here. Jack Baltimore's provocative post on the funding of missile defense produced a lot of discussion here. And the ever-reliable Tom R has some interesting points and resources here.]


Terrorism is morally reprehensible, but it isn't necessarily crazy. It's simply a tool of the weak or desperate, in the absence of any better option. Someone who believes deeply in his cause, religious or national, may sacrifice himself for it--he won't sacrifice the cause itself. Consider this: how many leaders of terrorist organizations, however fanatically they talk, have chosen themselves to be the suicide bombers? None, you say? Well, how about choosing their entire country?

This is so much more the case with the leaders of nation-states. Individual Presidents of the U.S. have sent many thousands of men out to die in military operations. Does that make Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt the equivalent of suicidal maniacs? I think not.

Simply enough, nobody, but nobody, is going to launch a deliberate, suicidal nuclear attack against the U.S. out of the blue one day. There are far more likely and more alarming scenarios for nuclear attack, such as a false signal in Russia's ailing early warning systems. But the best ways to deal with this and other problems don't involve building a pricy new version of the Maginot line, so they're not quite so sexy, are they?

--Josh Pollack

(To reply, click here.)


 I believe that NMD has its place, although not for the reasons given by the administration. The real reason is not as protection against a "rogue" nation or terrorist organization. I think that the arguments against this happening are compelling. The real reason for developing NMD is to defend against the missiles of an emerging superpower in the decades to come. I believe that the U.S. cannot come out and make such a statement, thus the cover story.

The history of the development of the atom bomb is instructive. In late 1939 and well into 1940, no less a genius than Niels Bohr thought an atom bomb was impossible to build. Of course, many other scientists thought likewise. It was only the persistence of a few visionaries, like Szilard and Lawrence in the U.S. and others in England, which forced the U.S. into doing the research to come up with the bomb. Meanwhile, Heisenberg was busy working on the bomb for the Nazis. The Japanese were also working on their own bomb. Imagine a Nazi regime with nuclear weapons! We came within a whisker of that happening, by mere chance, and only by the intelligence, valor and tenacity of a very few scientists and administrators. Similarly, those who say NMD cannot be done don't really know that. A committed effort may result in the breakthroughs necessary.

We don't know who the next "Nazi" regime will be or when it will appear. We don't know how long this unipolar world will exist. However, it would indeed be an unforgivable tragedy for our children or grandchildren if we sacrifice our security because of a lack of foresight or failure of will.

--Cato the Censor

(To reply, click here.)

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