Revisiting WARNO

"Whither Deterrence?" That’s an interesting question to ask at a time when undeterrable missiles, thousands of them, have been raining down on Israel from Lebanon. Of course, the question of deterrence -- or not -- has, shall we say, implications for Americans, too. Surely it would be better for any country if incoming missiles could be intercepted. And if I can be allowed a personal point, I will note that more than five years ago I wrote -- here in TCS no less -- that the civilized nations of the world needed to get together, as an international alliance, to thwart this threat.

Saul Singer, editorial page editor for The Jerusalem Post, asks that question -- "Whither Deterrence?" -- in a recent opinion piece. Singer laments that Israeli complacency allowed Hezbollah to build up that huge missile arsenal; the Israelis wrongly thought that their even larger retaliatory arsenal would keep Sheik Nasrallah in check. Today, he sighs, "There is a widespread sense that it was a mistake to rely so completely on deterrence. In reality, we had become the hostages of a terrorist army and its masters in Tehran. We thought we were deterring them, but they were deterring us from doing anything about their growing arsenal." To put it bluntly, Hezbollah can’t be deterred, because they don’t fear the deterring attack; Shia, stoked up with religious and nationalistic fervor, don’t fear death. So now, with negotiations seemingly useless, Israel must go north into Lebanon to destroy the missiles. Maybe they will succeed in this mission, and maybe they will fail. But we know for sure that they can’t stop the missiles once they’re launched.

A similar threat-situation is emerging in North Korea. Everyone agrees that the NoKors are continuing to build up their nuke stockpile, even as they seek better missiles. So what’s the US doing about this gathering danger? Not a whole lot. Of course, as things stand now, we don’t have any good options.

• First, there’s the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on North Korea -- which is not a possibility. For one reason, the Chinese, Russians, and South Koreans wouldn’t stand for it. For another reason, as the Israelis are discovering in Lebanon, it’s hard, bordering on impossible, to knock out a well-entrenched missile system from the air.

• Second, there’s deterrence -- also not much of a possibility. Nobody knows what makes Kim Jong Il tick, but if he is not swayed by the starvation death of a couple million of his people over the last decade, the certainty of his being deterred by our counterforce is, well, dangerously uncertain. Indeed, we might even ask what would happen if Pyongyang fired, say, a single missile against the US. Would the countries surrounding North Korea -- China, Russia, even South Korea -- think it was OK if we responded fully to such a "pinprick" NorKo attack? The South Koreans might say to Uncle Sam, "Look, you lost a ship, or a base, because of that North Korean missile attack. But if this crisis escalates into full-blown war, then the North Koreans might take out their aggressions on the South, starting with Seoul, which is just 30 miles south of the DMZ. So all-out fighting could mean the death of millions, even tens of millions of Koreans. And we don’t want that. So c’mon, Americans, learn how to take a punch. And practice, at most, ‘proportionate response.’" The American commander-in-chief might not agree to such a request, of course. But it’s also possible that he, or she, might feel there’s no other choice but to limit the American response to a North Korean provocation. In which case, the whole idea of deterring North Korea would be lost.
  

• Third, there’s national missile defense (NMD). Oh wait, that’s not really an option, because NMD doesn’t really exist. Yes, the Pentagon has its Missile Defense Agency that’s doing good work -- lately in conjunction with Japan -- but let’s not kid ourselves: After a brief NMD surge at the beginning of the Bush administration, the idea of actually defending the homeland has been crowded out by other priorities, notably Iraq. As Brian Kennedy of The Claremont Institute explains, "Only the most rudimentary land-based system is being built and deployed in Alaska and California -- and it lacks the full complement of radars and satellites to ensure its success." So if Kim & Co. keep up their technical progress, the US might soon find itself confronting the same basic threat from North Korea that Israel is confronting from Hezbollah in Lebanon -- only much worse, because the North Koreans have nukes.
  
  And speaking of nukes, how about those Iranians? We know about them, and the threat they pose.

Meanwhile, other countries are becoming more deadly, too. Pakistan, for instance, seems bent on becoming a major WMD power, if not a major economic power. And now Taiwan, which is a major economic power, wants to be a major military power, too. It should be noted, immediately, that Taiwan is an ally of the US, but it should also be noted that alliances aren’t always permanent. And it should further be noted that if countries we like are standing up their missile programs, it’s a lot less likely that countries we don’t like will be standing theirs down.

Not surprisingly, all this missile-defense ferment, worldwide, is provoking Americans to think more about the NMD issue. While some plucky groups, such as the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance, have been thumping the tub for a long time, with little audience, the Bigfoot pundits are now starting to weigh in more heavily on the issues of missile defense, deterrence, and non-deterrence.

Last week The Wall Street Journal’s Dan Henninger speculated that we were now living, like it or not, in "Katyusha World," referring to the legendary Soviet-era missile. In this world, he continued, "To the specter of North Korea and Iran delivering WMD by long-range missiles, now add Katyusha-like strikes from very small rockets and missiles."

Writing in the same newspaper, military expert Robert Kaplan, reminded us that it’s not just Hezbollah that can’t be deterred. Reviewing Insurgents, Terrorists, and Militias, by Richard Shultz and Andrea Dew, Kaplan noted the culture-chasm between traditional militaries and their likely future foes: "The problem ... is that the Pentagon -- the product of a rational, science-based Western culture -- relies on objective quantification for its analysis." Objective quantification, that is, about the success or failure of deterrence. "But what happens," Kaplan asks, "if there is nothing to quantify?" That is, if the enemy is more interested in martyrdom than quantification?

These are scary thoughts, undercutting, the strategy of deterrence that we inherited from the Cold War. And if the American people were properly alerted to the threat, they would demand action on National Missile Defense. That’s the view of Fred Barnes, writing in The Weekly Standard, who espied a distinct political opportunity, for whichever party could embrace it:

"The widely held view in the defense community is that the deployment of anti-missile assets by the United States is not keeping pace with the growing missile threat. The war in Iraq, for one thing, has forced serious cuts in funding for missile defense. Planned deployments were delayed and the number of actual antimissile units was reduced. This year, House Republicans have sought to cut spending further." [Emphasis in original.]

Which is to say, it’s possible that pro-NMD Democrats could get the jump on the Republicans. Democrats could ask, for example, if George W. Bush’s "forward strategy for freedom" has made America safer against the increasing prospect of a missile attack. It’s worth recalling that back in 1960, Democrat John F. Kennedy campaigned for the presidency decrying the "missile gap" -- that is, campaigning to the hawkish right of Republican Richard Nixon. And JFK, of course, won that election. But, as Barnes says of the Howard Dean-ized Democrats these days, "given their record, don’t hold your breath."

Still there has been some progress on NMD. The Journal editorial page recalled a breakthrough moment in 2001, when the US pulled out of the ridiculously restrictive Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty:

"When Mr. Bush informed Vladimir Putin that the U.S. intended to exercise its legal right to withdraw from the ABM pact, the world didn’t end. The Russians moved on to bigger issues, and much of the rest of the world decided that they’d like to join the missile-defense club. Six nations now participate with the United States in developing new missile-defense technology and nearly a dozen others use some of what’s already been developed."

And the reason for this NMD enthusiasm, of course, is as clear as the flight path of a Hezbollah missile descending onto Israeli civilians. If the peace-loving nations of the world can’t deter such barbaric attacks, those good-guy countries will have to learn how to defend against them.

And so, at last, if I might be permitted the personal again: In May of 2001, more than three months before 9-11, right here in TCS, I suggested the creation of a NATO-like consortium to deal with looming missile threats. I suggested calling it the World Anti-Rogue Nations Organization. WARNO had a nice evocative sound to it, I thought. WARNO was not only a good military idea, I argued, but it was a good political idea, too, addressing the concern, even then, that Bush was some sort of errant cowboy:

"But Bush could go further, beyond alleged unilateralism, beyond reported bilateralism, all the way to enunciated multilateralism. The most obvious and also most lustrous multilateral precedent, in which America sought to create a new peacekeeping structure around the world, is the Truman Administration. In the wake of World War II, Truman put forth the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe, the Point Four Program to distribute foreign aid to the Third World, the Mutual Security Administration to send out military aid, and, of course, the capstone of post-war peacekeeping, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

A half-century later, the Cold War is over, but new forms of missile war -- and maybe attack by weapons of mass destruction -- loom on the horizon. So perhaps the time has come for Bush to propose some equally ambitious security structure, such as, say, a World Anti-Rogue Nations Organization. Is the planet ready for WARNO? Is Bush ready to lead such a multilateral organization, knowing full well that isolationists on the right as well as the left will oppose him?"

Admittedly, such an organization, explicitly aimed at missile defense, might not have prevented 9-11, but the idea of cooperation among allies is enduringly important. After all, despite all their political differences, the stable nation-states of the world are united by this much: They desire to see the skylines of their national capitals remain intact. So they could agree, at least, on WARNO.

And a couple of weeks later, in June 2001, I brought up the idea again, in the pages of Newsday, quoting Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, to the effect that the world could use a "multilateral entity [that] could deal with the many dangers that nation-states face -- from missiles to hackers to terrorists-under a broad internationalist umbrella."

Finally, the day after 9-11, I quoted the same Rob Andrews back here in TCS: "We should form an international alliance that would, as President Bush said, ‘hunt down and punish’ the terrorists. It has to be international because we need common ground with other organized states -- the Israelis, the Russians, the French, plus maybe less conventional allies, such as the Saudis -- to make this work."

Now, five years have gone by, and the overall threat to the world is greater than ever, as the missile + WMD threat has grown greater than ever.

It’s never too late to do the right thing, of course, but maybe now the Israelis wish that all the civilized countries of the world had banded together, years ago, to establish a robust system of missile defense. As for other countries, not yet in the line of missile-fire, we’ve all been warned: It’s time for WARNO.