The Debate On Missile Defense Goes Back Decades

Hidden Agendas and Missile Defenses -- Arms Control Wonk

Back in 1970, I had the good fortune of taking a graduate seminar taught by Mort Halperin, who was then working on his book, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, with the help of a very bright research assistant, Arnie Kanter. A second edition of this fine book was published in 2006.

A key chapter, which also appeared as an article in the October 1972 issue of World Politics (“The Decision to Deploy the ABM: Bureaucratic and Domestic Politics in the Johnson Administration”) dealt with President Johnson’s decision to deploy a “light” ABM defense against a minimal Chinese ballistic missile threat.

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My Comment: I have been following this issue closely since the early 1980s, and the three things that I have always noticed are:

(1) Much of missile defense is theoretical, and what systems do work (to a certain point) was obtained through great expense and experimentation. (The Aegis system comes to mind)

(2) Future systems will require even more money and major developments (not yet developed) in engineering and software.

(3) Missile defense always had a greater impact in the political battlefield .... not the military battlefield.

Having said that, the next generation in missile defense (that I know of) is truly revolutionary .... but the expense to research, develop, and manufacture such systems will break our bank for a threat that may (or may not) come.

It is the financial limitations of the U.S. treasury that will stop future the growth of missile defense, not politics or diplomacy .... and that in itself is unprecedented for American policy on National Defense when the best defense was always prioritized and developed.