The Threat Is Worse Than You Think

Brookes: “Tehran could have an ICBM by 2015…Of course, intelligence estimates can be wrong; an Iranian ICBM could be here sooner than 2015” (emphasis his).

Brookes misrepresents the Air Force report’s actual judgment, which stated “With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could develop and test an ICBM capable of reaching the United States by 2015.” Receiving foreign assistance increases the odds of detection by Western intelligence. If detected, the United States and its allies could disrupt the foreign assistance and thereby delay Iran’s ICBM development. Foreign assistance was a big caveat for Brookes to omit.

More importantly, the Air Force judgment only refers to missile development and does not address nuclear warhead development. In other words, the report does not say that Iran could have a nuclear-tipped ICBM by 2015; it says that Iran could have an ICBM by 2015. That’s a big difference considering that enriching nuclear fuel to weapons grade and miniaturizing warheads to fit atop missiles is not easy. Iran can certainly walk, chew gum, and talk on its cell phone at the same time - i.e. simultaneously develop missiles, nuclear fuel, and warheads – but I believe Brookes minimizes the technical challenges and differing intelligence estimates by concluding that “we'll be facing an Iranian nuclear-capable ICBM threat soon.”

Regardless, this is Brookes’s column so I’ll stipulate that the most alarmist assessments of Iranian capability are accurate (and ignore the recurring pattern of conservative threat-hyping on this issue).

Your Plan Won’t Work

Brookes: “The land-based SM-3s…will almost certainly face funding and engineering-development challenges… the Russians (and Chinese) may try to get us to stand down on the new, ‘juiced’ land-based SM-3, arguing that they're a counterspace weapon in the arms-control talks many think the Obama administration is interested in opening on the weaponization of space. In other words, some experts think there's a chance there'll never be a land-based SM-3 system.”

I agree with Brookes that any missile defense system is going to face budgetary and technical challenges. That’s because missile defense is mind-boggingly expensive and historically hasn’t worked. In this case, however, SM-3 technology enjoys bipartisan congressional support – the FY 2010 authorizers just added $23 million for 196 additional interceptors – and possesses a pretty solid test record.

I don’t see how Russian and Chinese opposition to a land-based SM-3 system will get the United States to “stand down” if the Obama administration believes the system is necessary. Team Obama could just follow the Bush administration’s lead and build the system regardless of whether or not it pisses off Russia and/or China.

All of this is rather beside the point, however, because the Bush system Brookes supports was as far, if not further, away from fruition as the SM-3 system. As MDA boss Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly said September 24:

“Current restrictions I have require us to go through testing that will take us to 2013 before we…certify that the [Bush] Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system will work in a European scenario. So 2013 would be the earliest we can see programmatically where we could begin [construction], and that [construction] actually takes you to 2018…We do need the approval of the countries, and there is an extensive amount of implementing agreements also required before you can begin that. So we saw the 2017-2018 time frame as optimistic based on the approvals necessary in order to begin.”

Czech approval efforts weren’t going so well and public majorities in both Poland and the Czech Republic consistently opposed the plan, so it’s not as if the Bush scheme was on the precipice of protecting against Iranian ICBMs before Obama killed it. Nonetheless, Brookes somehow concludes that “the Biden proposal…lags the Bush plan's deployment time frame.” The Bush system hadn’t even been tested yet for chrissakes, insistent repetition by this guy notwithstanding.

Again, however, this is Brookes’s column so I’ll stipulate that the land-based SM-3 system won’t be built (and ignore Vladimir Putin calling Obama’s revised plan “correct and brave” and Dmitri Medvedev hinting that Russia would support it).

Fantasy World

Having stipulated that the Iranian threat is more severe than scientific experts and the intelligence community have concluded and that the land-based SM-3 system isn’t going to be built, Brookes feels safe accusing the Obama administration of living in a “fantasy world” for daring to nix the Bush administration’s Euro missile defense scheme.

Let’s agree to call this Volcano Insurance Foreign Policy. By applying improbable stipulations to several key variables, you arrive at a conclusion that is the same as your ideologically-preferred policy outcome. Let’s also agree that this style of analysis should not be accepted at face value.

Brookes’s column is an egregious example of VIFP not only because of these stipulations, however, but also because even after narrowing the scenario with improbabilities, Brookes still doesn’t present his readers with all of the policy options. Either the United States builds a ground-based midcourse system in Europe, as Bush proposed, or “we'll be facing an Iranian nuclear-capable ICBM threat soon -- perhaps sooner than we thought -- without an effective defense”?

Wrong. The United States possesses at least three options to prevent such a development: quid pro quo diplomacy, coercive diplomacy (read: sanctions), and preemptive military action. Not that there is any reason to be sanguine about the efficacy (or necessity or morality) of the last two alternatives, but they are nevertheless actions the United States could take to protect itself and its allies.

The “either George W. Bush missile defense or fantasy world” dichotomy is a false one Brookes employs to try and sell the American public Volcano Insurance. I’m as concerned about the potential Iranian threat as he is. But I’m not buying and I suggest you don’t either.

Iran Watch, Security Matters, Nukes on a Blog, Missile Defense, Russia, China, Right Wing Rant, Obama Administration, Defense Spending (all tags)

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