The Secretary Of Missile Defense

By Mark Thompson/Washington

No one is as familiar with the frustrations of building missile defenses as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Back in 1975, when Rumsfeld was Gerald Ford's Defense Secretary--he's the only person to have held the job twice--he inherited the Pentagon's first attempt at a missile-defense shield, the $25 billion Safeguard system, designed to protect 150 Minuteman missiles dotting North Dakota.

But cost and technology woes plagued Safeguard. Rumsfeld, a onetime G.O.P. Congressman from Illinois, knew it. Even worse, the Soviets were rendering Safeguard useless by putting multiple warheads atop each of their missiles. After three months as Defense Secretary, under orders from Congress, Rumsfeld shut it down. Safeguard's ghostly remains still litter the prairie just south of the Canadian border.

So, last week, when Rumsfeld, three months into his second tour of duty as Defense chief, launched an offensive to build another missile defense, it was a surprising new chapter. And when President Bush stepped to the microphone at the National Defense University and declared his unswerving commitment to the costly and controversial project, "Rummy," as old friends call him, stood by proudly. He had reason to beam. After all, Bush was reading from Rumsfeld's script. As head of a 1998 panel weighing the ballistic-missile threat faced by the U.S., Rumsfeld had helped build political pressure for just the kind of shield that Bush was proposing. In the quarter-century since he had put Safeguard out of its misery, Rumsfeld had become convinced that national missile defense was not only technologically possible but also essential to America's national security. He had become its chief architect, salesman and even evangelist.

But will Rummy's gambit pay off? Missile-shield backers criticized the Clinton Administration for lacking the political will to construct such a system. Their tone suggested that the project could be accomplished simply by ponying up the money and jawboning U.S. allies into accepting the inevitable. But the reality is that there is no shield at the ready. And because so many of the challenges associated with missile defense are technological--and may require years of trial-and-error development--simply pouring billions into such programs won't ensure success anytime soon.

Building a missile shield is a challenge on a par with building the atom bomb and putting a man on the moon. But those challenges were forged amid World War II and the cold war, when the White House, Congress and the public saw their achievement as high national priorities. There is no such consensus on national missile defense. Democrats are balking. Even the CIA's latest threat analysis says the most likely threats are not incoming missiles but rather such portable weapons of mass destruction as truck and suitcase bombs.

The calendar isn't any kinder to dreams of a missile shield. The Clinton program--a ground-based system--is the nearest to being fielded, and it flunked two of its first three tests. The only other possible national system on the drawing board--an orbiting network of killer satellites--won't be ready until at least 2020. That's why the Pentagon is scurrying to modify two systems now in development. The Navy's ship-based missiles and the Air Force's plane-based lasers were originally designed to take out shorter-range missiles. But the military is grooming them to play major roles in a national missile-defense system aimed at ocean-crossing ICBMs.

So what's Don Rumsfeld to do? Given the constraints imposed by physics, fiscal reality and foreign policy, the man who served as co-chair of Bob Dole's failed 1996 campaign will have to use Bill Clinton's system as his base. Pentagon officials say Bush's system will have to begin with Clinton's ground-based system--a handful of missiles deployed as early as 2004--followed by more research into ship- and plane-based interceptors. Ultimately, missile-defense advocates want the space-based lasers, ready to destroy missiles fired from anywhere at any time, bound for any place.

Significantly, Bush didn't mention space-based missile defense as a possible solution. But Rumsfeld did, alarming those who fear turning outer space into a battlefield. More defensive layers mean fewer missiles can leak through. The downside? A layered system will cost more money, take more time and generate more opposition from allies, foes and arms-control advocates. But adding space to the missile-defense recipe is part of Rumsfeld's brash style, one that has led some Pentagon officials to dub him "the lean, mean, in-fighting machine." Rumsfeld, a former Navy pilot and Princeton wrestling champ, relishes such skirmishes. He took command of the Pentagon with his own boarding party, a quiet team of trusted aides, and has begun cloaking his plans to remake the military behind heavy drapes of secrecy.

Rummy and his posse have set up more than a dozen panels to quietly review the Pentagon from top to bottom. The uniformed military, not surprisingly, is unhappy with the secrecy. "He's breeding an atmosphere of distrust by not including the military in his deliberations," an admiral gripes privately. "He's playing things too close to the vest, and that's leading to errors." Case in point, says the officer, is last week's China flip-flop: Rummy's Pentagon had announced an end to U.S. military contacts with the Chinese armed forces--and then reversed itself in a matter of hours, promising to review contacts on a case-by-case basis. The White House quickly said a Pentagon aide had misspoken, despite Rumsfeld's reputation for running a disciplined operation.

Rumsfeld rejects such bellyaching. "Not everybody's involved in everything that goes on," he said last week. His famous, copyrighted "Rumsfeld's Rules," some 150 maxims for surviving in Washington are a mix of Peter Drucker and Yogi Berra, puts it succinctly: "If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much."

Rumsfeld's return to power is all the more remarkable because he and the first President Bush were participants in a 25-year rivalry. When Ford was hunting for a Vice President, it was Rumsfeld who pushed Bush the elder all the way to Beijing--and out of the running. Rumsfeld wanted the Veep job, but Nelson Rockefeller got it. When Rockefeller was cut from the G.O.P. ticket in 1976, Rumsfeld, again seeking the spot, maneuvered Bush over to the CIA. Bob Dole got to be running mate. Rumsfeld made a brief and furtive run for the No. 2 spot in 1980 under Reagan and considered the nomination eight years later--losing both times to Bush. Rumsfeld put aside his ambitions for political power and chose to make millions running pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle & Co.; General Instrument Corp., a television-and-cable-technology company; and Gilead Sciences Inc., a drug firm. His return to Washington was engineered by Dick Cheney, a protege Rumsfeld had helped make chief of staff in Ford's White House.

While Rumsfeld's shop faces the challenge of building the shield, it is the nation's diplomats spreading out over the world who face the equally arduous task of selling it overseas. This week deputies at the State and Defense departments and the National Security Council will jet to foreign capitals to peddle Rumsfeld's shield. It won't be easy. Washington's allies and its foes have grown accustomed to dealing with a world larded with nuclear weapons. During the cold war, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 ensured that the U.S. and the Soviet Union would remain naked to the other's atomic wrath. While the logic of such mutual assured destruction was ghoulish, it did have one thing going for it: it worked.

Still, there are some signs that Bush may carry the day. British officials in Tony Blair's government have made receptive noises about missile defense. Indeed, the bipolar world is gone, the threat of rational superpowers replaced by rogue states or terrorists. The Bush team plainly views the ABM Treaty as a relic. Secretary of State Colin Powell has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "it may be necessary, ultimately, to walk out of the ABM Treaty and abrogate our responsibilities." Bush says he is willing to reduce the U.S.'s 7,200 nuclear weapons quickly and unilaterally to entice both allies and such potential foes as China and Russia into embracing a more defensive strategic balance.

Rumsfeld's rhetoric, designed to be calming, has some nations concerned. "This isn't the old Star Wars idea of a shield that will keep everything off of everyone in the world," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee during confirmation hearings in January. "It is something that in the beginning stages is designed to deal with handfuls of these things and persuade people that they're not going to be able to blackmail and intimidate the U.S. and its allies." That phrase--"in the beginning stages"--vexes China and Russia. Both fear that a U.S. missile shield, once built, will continue to expand until it is robust enough to thwart attacks from anyone.

Not surprisingly, China reacted most vehemently to the Bush-Rumsfeld speech, saying the U.S. "has violated the ABM Treaty, will destroy the balance of international security forces and could cause a new arms race." Beijing knows even the initially modest system proposed by Clinton--a fleet of 100 missiles designed to knock out as many as 25 warheads from the heavens--could render obsolete their 20 single-warhead, long-range missiles, which can reach the West Coast of America. Once that system is in place, Beijing's leverage with the U.S.--especially on the touchy topic of Taiwan--could be crippled.

U.S. officials suggest that the only logical way around China's opposition is for Washington and Beijing to agree, at least tacitly, to allow China to have enough nukes to trump whatever missile shield the U.S. deploys. That won't endear Bush and Rumsfeld to G.O.P. conservatives, but Washington insists the shield is not aimed at China anyway. "They may even double the number" of their missiles aimed at the U.S., Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Other government arms experts believe a U.S. missile shield could trigger a tenfold increase in Chinese missiles aimed at the U.S. China's push for more weapons would act only as a spur to India, which might feel compelled to increase its arsenal to keep pace with its historical nemesis. And that could then push Pakistan, India's avowed foe, to build more nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Moscow's reaction was surprisingly mild. "It is hard not to agree with the President of the United States that the world is changing rapidly and new threats are appearing," President Vladimir Putin said. "We must counter these threats with well-thought actions." The calm demeanor is in keeping with his attempt to project Russia, impoverished as it is, as America's strategic peer. Russian officials also acknowledge they won't mind if the U.S. pumps hundreds of billions of dollars into a scheme they think will never work.

The Bush Administration coddled the European allies in the days leading up to last week's speech, sharing its content and having Bush phone leaders with sneak previews. The allies appreciated the vagueness of the speech because it hinted that they may be able to influence the shield's final shape. The key to Europe's opposition is the lack of an ABM Treaty successor. If the ABM pact collapses, it must be replaced "only by better ones or more effective ones," German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said after Bush's speech. "We don't want there to be a new arms race." Playing their traditional roles, the British gave the strongest support to the Bush plan, and the French were the most opposed. "The Americans seem to think that if they just pound us over the head with their position enough times, we'll finally see the light," a French Defense Ministry official said.

Overseas concerns may influence just what layers Bush decides to deploy. The land-based plan is the selfish option. Even when expanded to two sites--Alaska and North Dakota, under current plans--the shield would protect only the U.S. and Canada. That would be particularly grating to nations like Britain and Denmark. After all, Washington wants them to permit the U.S. to make modifications to radar on their territory that is required to protect the U.S.--but not them--from missile attack.

The Navy's system has different complications. A missile-killing warship would have to be close to the enemy-rocket launch, sitting in international waters just off the coast of North Korea, for example. But if the rocket blasted off too far inland--from deep inside China, Iran, Iraq or Russia, for example--the Navy interceptor would be unable to catch it. That shortcoming pleases Moscow and Beijing, which would be beyond the ship-based system's reach.

There are cracks in the Administration's support for missile defense. Contrary to public perception, the U.S. military is not gung-ho on the idea. Budget plans now floating inside the Pentagon call for boosting missile-defense spending about $1 billion, or 20%, a year to more than $5 billion annually. But that's not nearly enough to build Bush's system, which could top $200 billion. Military leaders fear their planes, tanks and ships would have greater utility against future threats than a missile shield. And Powell, reflecting his military background and his new post, is cooler to missile defense than the hawkish Rumsfeld.

For his part, Rummy seems assured that he has the President's ear. At a recent weekend retreat to Camp David in the Maryland mountains, when the President and his entourage were headed off for a movie in the grounds' comfortable, couch-lined theater, Rumsfeld skipped the flick and thereby a chance to buddy up to the President. He shocked younger Bush aides by returning to his small cabin to catch up on some paperwork. Only the truly confident Washington player would have made such a choice.

--With reporting by Jay Branegan, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and Michael Duffy/Washington, Matthew Forney/Beijing, Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow and Thomas Sancton/Paris

With reporting by Jay Branegan, Massimo Calabresi, James Carney and Michael Duffy/Washington, Matthew Forney/Beijing, Paul Quinn-Judge/Moscow and Thomas Sancton/Paris