President Bush had barely finished outlining his ideas on national missile defense yesterday when the critics started ranting. The 1980s' nuclear freezenik Gary Milhollin resurfaced on CNN, declaring, "There's no reason to think this technology will ever succeed." Sen. Joe Biden (D., Del.) snapped, "If he is embarking on a new 'Star Wars,' that would be a disastrous policy."

In fact, Mr. Bush was cautious; he did not commit himself to any particular technology, saying merely that America needed a "new framework" for nuclear weapons, to be worked out in consultation with allies, to move beyond the Ant-Ballistic Missile Treaty signed with the former Soviet Union in 1972. A three-decade-old deal with a defunct country may seem like an irrelevancy, but the fierce reaction to Mr. Bush's speech is a reminder that negotiated arms control treaties, as opposed to technological advances, are still central to the thinking of the worldwide foreign policy establishment.

Larger Strategy

Mr. Bush will have to fight hard for missile defense. He should fight smart as well. If he wants to assure himself of success, he needs a larger strategy that embraces not just national security, but also national destiny. Instead of looking at the missile defense issue through the old prism of arms control, he should present a new vision of space power, both military and commercial. And for inspiration, he might well look back to the work of Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, America's grandest strategist, and the nation's first prominent "defense intellectual."

In 1890, then-Capt. Mahan, a career naval officer of no previous distinction, published "The Influence of Sea Power on World History, 1660-1783." He argued that "sea power" is the key to national dynamism, as demonstrated by the success of the Royal Navy, which made Great Britain an 18th-century superpower. President Benjamin Harrison took no notice, but a mid-level bureaucrat in his administration, Theodore Roosevelt, saw that Mahan's work had implications for the America of his day.

Reviewing the book in the Atlantic Monthly, Roosevelt, himself the author of a well-regarded history of the 1812 naval war, praised Mahan's historical scholarship. In doing so, he added a bold policy prescription of his own. "Our ships," Roosevelt declared, "should be the best of their kind. . . but in addition, there should be plenty of them." Here was vision, and a plan for America to take its proper place on the world stage.

To be sure, President Harrison and his Republican Party needed something new. Toward the end of the 19th century, the GOP had lost sight of its energetic Lincolnian legacy of abolition and national unity, becoming instead the complacent party of railroads, robber barons, and anti-Romanism. Yet at the same time, America was "a nation announcing itself," as Walt Whitman wrote. But it lacked a leader to make such a bold statement to the world; Harrison, the grandson of a previous president who was elected with a minority of the popular vote, was bereft of the "vision thing." Not surprisingly, he failed in his bid for re-election in 1892.

In the years that followed, Mahan and Roosevelt became allies in what they called the "large" policy for the nation. In 1897, when TR was appointed assistant secretary of the Navy under the next Republican president, William McKinley, the two men set about putting that policy into practice. The result was an era of expansionism -- from the annexation of Hawaii, to victory in the Spanish-American War, to the Panama Canal, to the dispatch of the Great White Fleet around the world. The American Century had begun.

And, yes, good policy proved to be good politics. McKinley became the first Republican president to win a second term in 24 years, and a renewed era of Republican dominance had begun as well.

So here's the question for Mr. Bush: Is he a Harrison, the last of a pale-pastel line of leaders, or a McKinley, the first of a new generation of bold-color pacesetters? Will he attempt merely to woo the voters in 2004, or will he galvanize Americans for the rest of the century? Will he become the articulator of a new vision, as Mahan and Roosevelt were in their day?

More than a century ago, these two strategists called for an outward expansion of U.S. power, across the blue expanse of the globe. Today, they would undoubtedly argue for an upward expansion of American power into the inky emptiness of space.

Yet here's an irony for the present day. The Russians will no doubt denounce the American missile-defense plan -- even as an American, Dennis Tito, sits aboard the International Space Station, having rocketed into orbit aboard the Russian Soyuz spacecraft. And why did Mr. Tito buy a ticket to ride from the Russians? Because NASA wouldn't sell him one.

Such bureaucratic short-sightedness is the opposite of a neo-Mahanian vision. A grand strategist for today would see the logical progression of sea power to air power to space power, and insist that the government do everything it could to help, not squelch, the nascent space-tourism industry. That was the thinking of another Mahan-minded president, John F. Kennedy, who frequently referred to space as "this new ocean" and dreamed of the day when the U.S. would become "the world's leading space-faring nation."

High Frontier

So aside from pushing missile defense, aside from trust-busting his own space agency, what else could Mr. Bush do to push America toward the High Frontier? He might start by funding the X-33 space plane, recently cancelled by the same NASA. The X-33, a next-generation space shuttle, is not only a natural vehicle for future Dennis Titos; it could also the beginning of a U.S. Space Force. Just as the navy, thanks to the enduring influence of Mahan, today controls the SLOC -- sea-lanes of communication -- so a space force could control "SPLOC" -- space-lanes of communication.

Such space-reach would guarantee the safety of our satellites, even as it guarantees the vulnerability of enemy satellites. And that will be the key to victory in the orbiting info-wars of the next century. Beyond that, Mr. Bush could remind Americans that space can be a peaceful pursuit as well, that Old Glory and the flags of other democratic nations should go outward toward permanent presence on the moon, Mars, and beyond.

This is the lift of a driving dream. This is the mission of the millennium. This is the way to keep his plan for missile defense from being bogged down in a swamp of "consultations" that could easily swallow all the years of his presidency. If Mr. Bush could learn from Mahan the importance of historical context, he could write a vast narrative of American power that would make his critics look puny, and that would show missile defense to be a small but necessary step on the stairway to national greatness.