Missile Defense in Europe: Against Whom?

• Author: Oguz, Safak
• Position: ARTICLE - Essay

Introduction

The Cold War featured an intense offensive and defensive strategic arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that included nuclear weapons, Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) and missile defense systems. The theory that defensive armament would result in an offensive arms race to penetrate existing missile defense systems prompted both sides to sign the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM Treaty). That treaty allowed only two missile defense systems to protect limited areas, later reduced to only one system through the additional Protocol to the Treaty in 1974. However, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union stopped their efforts to develop missile defense systems. The Strategic Defensive Initiative (SDI), known as Star Wars and introduced by President Reagan in 1983 became one of the largest military projects in U.S. history; however, it was canceled after intense debate over feasibility and cost.

The U.S. dream of a missile shield to protect the North American continent from any range of the ballistic missile, especially Russian and Chinese ICBMs equipped with nuclear warheads, never disappeared. America intensified its efforts on the National Missile Defense (NMD) project after President George W. Bush announced in 2002 that the U.S. would withdraw from the ABM Treaty, with the deployment of advanced interceptors in Alaska and California to protect the U.S. continent against intermediate- and long-range missiles becoming a cornerstone of the project. The U.S. also announced that it would deploy ten Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) in Poland and a fixed radar system in the Czech Republic, as part of the NMD.

U.S. authorities stressed that the system is designed to protect North America, U.S. troops abroad, and their allies against the missile threat from Iran. The Bush Administration heavily invested in the NMD project globally despite vigorous criticism inside the U.S. (including officials in the administration and Democrat politicians, over cost-effectiveness, feasibility, and reliability of the project), and opposition outside the country, especially from Russia and China.

The Obama Administration opted for important revisions and announced a layered phased missile defense system in Europe to protect NATO territory, population, and forces, including the U.S. and Canada, and named the project European Phased Adaptive Approach (EPAA). At the 2010 NATO summit in Lisbon, the Alliance welcomed EPAA as a valuable national contribution to the NATO missile defense architecture. Thus, the European part of the U.S. NMD project became a NATO asset to protect the Alliance against the Iranian missile threat, without naming Iran in the official papers. Burden sharing with Alliance members on the project also enabled the U.S. to invest more in NMD.

Russia vehemently opposed the American BMD efforts and especially the U.S. plans to deploy missile defense components in Europe (interceptors in Poland and a radar system in the Czech Republic). The American announcement of EPAA opened a new phase in U.S.-Russia competition over U.S. containment efforts. Russia insistently argued that the American NMD project and especially NATO EPAA are designed to target Russia's strategic missile capabilities and undermine the strategic balance, as opposed to the Western allegation that the two projects are against the Iranian ballistic missile threat. Russia declared EPAA a serious threat to its national security and intensified efforts to urge the U.S. and the Alliance to cancel EPAA.

Revision of the EPAA, especially canceling the fourth phase, in which advanced interceptors capable of intercepting ICBMs would have been deployed in Europe by 2020, still did not appease Russia. Russian countermeasures intensified since the declaration of the EPAA, including increasing strategic missiles, deploying nuclear weapons at the border with NATO-aligned countries and accelerating missile defense projects, all of which will result in a strategic arms race similar to the one during the Cold War.

Evolution of the EPAA

Missile defense studies in the U.S. after the Cold War were intensified during the Clinton Administration in 1997. However, the decision to establish the NMD was mainly based on findings of the Rumsfeld report in 1998, which argued that the U.S. underestimated the ballistic missile threat, and reports by the intelligence community, especially the National Intelligence Council (NIC) report prepared at the request of Congress in 1998, which estimated that during the next 15 years the U.S. will most likely face ICBM threats from Russia, China, and North Korea, probably from Iran, and possibly from Iraq. The report stated that "analysts differ on the likely timing of Iran's first test of an ICBM and assessments range from likely beiore 2010 and very likely beiore 2015." (1)

The 1999 National Missile Defense Act prompted the government to deploy an effective NMD system to protect U.S. territory against limited ballistic missile attacks. (2) The decision of President George W Bush in 2010 to scrap the 1972 ABM Treaty, from which states can withdraw only under extraordinary conditions, was shaped largely by those reports. In announcing the NMD project, Bush stated that "the U.S. will take every necessary measure to protect its citizens against what is perhaps the gravest danger of all: the catastrophic harm that may result from hostile states or terrorist groups armed with weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them" (3) without articulating any threat from Russia or China. The Gulf War and especially the September 11 attacks played an important role in defining the new security environment and new adversaries for the U.S.

The period between 2001 and 2010 experienced important developments regarding nuclear weapons and ballistic missile threat from North Korea and Iran as well as technological advances and political decisions for the U.S. missile defense system. North Korea conducted 15 ballistic missile tests during this period in addition to two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009, while North Koreas attempt to launch a satellite in 2009 was regarded as an important step in Pyongyang's acquiring ICBM capability. On the other hand, in addition to the revelation of its secret nuclear activities, Iran launched a rocket into space while expanding its missile capabilities to around the 2,000 km range. Thus, the U.S. intelligence estimates that Iran likely would acquire ICBMs before 2010 did not materialize, but these developments showed that Iran and North Korea achieved advanced capabilities in long-range missile technologies in addition to their nuclear capabilities.

On the U.S. side, from their first GMD interceptor deployment in 2004 to the revision by President Obama in 2010, the U.S. deployed 30 interceptors in U.S. territory (26 in Alaska and 4 in California) along with deployment of 18 AEGIS ships and several mobile and fixed radar systems around the globe. Thus the backbone of defending the U.S. continent from long-range missile systems was mainly established during the Bush Administration, while efforts for deployment of regional assets, including agreements with the Czech Republic and Poland to deploy BMD assets, were accelerated despite Russia's strong reaction.

President Obama declared on September 17, 2009 that the U.S. would reconfigure the Bush Administration missile defense program, guided by two principal factors: an updated intelligence assessment of Iran's missile programs, and specific and proven advances in U.S. missile defense technology, particularly for land- and sea-based interceptors and the sensors that support them. (4) The intelligence community now judged that the threat from Iran's short- and medium-range ballistic missiles was developing more rapidly than previously projected, while defense against the potential Iranian ICBM was not as urgent as previously estimated. (5)

Thus, the European Missile Defense Program designed by the Bush Administration, which aimed to deploy fixed interceptors in Poland and fixed radar in the Czech Republic, was replaced with a phased adaptive approach. The revision was based on the findings of the 2010 BMD Review which validated the mature role of missile defense in the U.S. national security posture, aligned the U.S. missile defense program with nearby regional missile threats, and provided the basis for allied participation and cooperation. (6)

At the Lisbon summit in 2010, the Alliance declared that "the scope of NATO's current Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defense (ALTBMD) program's command, control, and communications capabilities will be expanded beyond the protection of NATO deployed forces to also protect NATO European populations, territory and forces" and the leaders stated "the EPAA is welcomed as a valuable national contribution to the NATO missile defense architecture, as are other...