Administration Reiterates Commitment Not to Trade Away Missile Defense

The Obama administration has gone to great lengths to ensure that New START will not limit U.S. missile defense systems. The initial guidance issued by President Obama made clear that “the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms” was the objective of the negotiations. Michael McFaul, Special Assistant for Russian and Eurasian Affairs, repeated that "We're not going to reassure or give or trade...anything with the Russians regarding NATO expansion or missile defense." Even when the Russians made noise about missile defense in January, administration officials didn’t back down.

This opposition to negotiated constraints on U.S. missile defense systems was strengthened Monday with the publication of the first-ever Ballistic Missile Defense Review Report. This roadmap document, which comprehensively assessed missile defense policies, strategies, plans, and programs, states clearly that the United States will not be appeasing Russia or China anytime soon. The report says:

The Administration also seeks to engage Russia and China on missile defense. With Russia, it is pursuing a broad agenda focused on shared early warning of missile launches, possible technical cooperation, and even operational cooperation. With China, the Administration seeks further dialogue on strategic issues of interest to both nations, including missile defense. As it pursues these discussions, the Administration will continue to reject any negotiated restraints on U.S. ballistic missile defenses.

[snip]

Both Russia and China have repeatedly expressed concerns that U.S. missile defenses adversely affect their own strategic capabilities and interests. The United States will continue to engage them on this issue to help them better understand the stabilizing benefits of missile defense—particularly China, which claims to have successfully demonstrated its own ground-based midcourse interception on January 11, 2010. As the United States has stated in the past, the homeland missile defense capabilities are focused on regional actors such as Iran and North Korea. While the GMD system would be employed to defend the United States against limited missile launches from any source, it does not have the capacity to cope with large scale Russian or Chinese missile attacks, and is not intended to affect the strategic balance with those countries.

I know, I know: we could spend hours criticizing the theoretical coherence of “the stabilizing benefits” of missile defense or the dripping condescension of the United States trying “to help [Russia and China] better understand” why missile defense is about Freedom, Inc. I’ve taken those ideas to task before (here and here, for starters). So have people who actually know what the hell they’re talking about.

Instead, I just want NOH readers to remember the passages above during the months ahead when opponents of President Obama’s arms control agenda charge that the administration wants to give away missile defense in order to appease Russia and/or China. I honestly don’t think the Obama administration’s commitment to doing the exact opposite could be much stronger—for better or worse.

UPDATE 4PM: At Monday's QDR briefing, USD-P Michele Flournoy fielded a question on U.S. cooperation with Russia/China on missile defense. She said:

With regard to Russia, we, after the European phased adaptive approach decision was made, we did brief them on the change of plans and what the program would look like. We invited them to begin a dialogue with us about shared early warning. Russia has a number of radar systems, other ISR systems that would be very helpful in a more cooperative approach to the defense of that region. And so we've invited them to have that discussion. We're hopeful that they'll take us up on that invitation.

With regard to China, it's been more an invitation to have more strategic dialogue. That covers not only missile defenses but nuclear forces, sort of how we see the security environment and our response to it. It's really trying to inject greater transparency into our discussions about what each country is doing with regard to the development of its military capabilities.