dangerous hawks of space

The Dangerous Hawks Of Space

By Cernig

Two long-term neoconservative hawks who belong to the Bolton

"diplomacy has failed" school of nonproliferation thinking and have

been influential in Republican policymaking on nuclear matters since

Reagan's halcyon Star Wars days have penned an op-ed for the Wall

Street Journal extolling the virtues of missile defense.

J.D. Crouch III and Robert Joseph, both former Bush administration

officials intimately involved with nuclear weapons and

nonproliferation policy until the Bolton school fell out of favor,

spend several paragraphs extolling Bush's courage on matters such as

invading Iraq, pushing for the Surge and expanding the surveillance

state then write:

Mr. Bush has faced so many tough choices over the last seven years

that his decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile

Treaty has been at least partially forgotten. Yet this decision,

announced in December 2001, was no less consequential. It also

defied the critics who argued that it would lead to a new arms

race, increase nuclear proliferation and ruin cooperation with

Russia on nuclear arms control and terrorism.

None of these things have happened as a result of the ABM Treaty

withdrawal. But the decision will enable us to counter a

still-growing 21st century threat.

They hope no-one notices that all of these things happened as a result

of the ABM treaty withdrawal. Russia has begun development and

production of new missiles designed to circumvent future US missile

defenses, withdrawn from key treaties including one which limits

conventional forces in Europe and stated clearly that it does not

regard Iran, for one, as a nuclear threat to the world. Putin and

former Soviet leader Gorbachev are in accord that the withdrawal from

the ABM treaty was a major contributory influence on Russias positions

and that U.S. withdrawal from that treaty was a major mistake that

signalled the Bush adminsitration's status as a loose cannon.

But, undeterred, they now want the U.S. to withdraw unilaterally from

another crucial treaty - the one on space-based weaponry.

Finally, we must look again at space as a place to deploy

interceptors.

There is no question that space provides the highest leverage

against the missile threat: Targets are more visible, more

accessible and more vulnerable when attacked from space. While

there are concerns about "weaponizing space," these pale in

comparison to the increasing vulnerability of U.S. space-based

satellites by weapons from the ground traversing space. The recent

Chinese anti-satellite test was a wake-up call.

Space-based interceptors, like those proposed by former President

George H. W. Bush in 1991, have the potential to strengthen missile

defense, and to provide protection for key intelligence and

communications assets in space that are now vulnerable from

ground-based attack.

Yet again, Crouch and Joseph want to ignore facts to get to further

their agenda. As Dr. Jeffrey Lewis wrote of the Chines ASAT test at

the time:

If China has conducted an ASAT test, this is extremely bad. I had

been hoping that the Bush Administration would push for a ban on

anti-satellite testing, either in the form of a code of conduct or

some rules of road. The Bush folks, however, have been fond of

saying that wasn't necessary, because "there is no arms race in

space."

The Bush folks in question here include Crouch and Joseph - but now

they want to use the arms race in space they say isn't happening to

further their argument for more of an arms race in space, instead of

pursuing an international treaty ban on ASAT weaponry. Huh?

So who are these people exactly? Well, J.D. Crouch III is the man who

in a 1999 letter to the Washington Times, blamed the Columbine High

School massacre on "30 years of liberal social policy that has put our

children in day care, taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of

the house, and banished Dad as an authority figure from the family

altogether". Robert Joseph is the one who insisted on the inclusion of

the famous 16 words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address

regarding Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons development and efforts to

buy uranium from Niger. Both they and their think-tank (which is

lavishly funded by arms manufacturers and hawkish rightwing

foundations) have been intimately involved in every hawkish attempt to

walk away from international arms control accords and foster a policy

of war instead of diplomacy since the Reagan administration. They

simply aren't credible advocates for their cause.

Which doesn't stop Murdoch's WSJ from giving them room to do so, in

furtherance of a policy of lying to the public and lawmakers so as to

militarise space - a policy which has also been proposed by the likes

of the neoconservative Heritage Institute. It's most obvious current

symptom is the way in which the Bush administration has hyped and spun

the threat from nations like Iran to further the missile shield

program. The arguments against it are no different now that when it

was first proposed in the wake of Rumsfield's 1998 Commission to

Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (which said

that nations like Iran would have missile-mounted nukes within five

years - an eventuality which still hasn't come about):

Melvin Goodman, a noted expert on proliferation issues at the

National War College, said: "Should the system work or, more

likely, should the international community perceive that the United

States can make it work, a series of national security problems

will ensue. Ties between Russia and China will improve; the angry

reaction of our European allies will weaken our leadership of NATO;

we will weaken our counterproliferation and disarmament policies;

and we will lose our limited leverage on the nuclear policies of

India and Pakistan. Thus, any U.S. decision to pursue [national

missile defense] will have negative consequences for most aspects

of U.S. national security" (see "Pro and Con: 'The Case For

National Missile Defense' and 'The Case Against National Missile

Defense,'" Safe Foundation).