The United States has invoked the spectre of a devastating chemical weapons attack by international terrorist Osama bin Laden to help justify a massive expansion of its military forces, including the deployment of the National Missile Defence (NMD) system, nicknamed Son of Star Wars.
The threat posed by the spread of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons of mass destruction to “rogue” states and terrorists is identified by a Pentagon report as the biggest challenge to American and global security since the end of the Cold War.
This assessment, strongly supported by George W Bush’s defence secretary nominee Donald Rumsfeld, vice-president-elect Dick Cheney and by Republican hawks in Congress, now looks certain to be the spring-board for a big defence build-up under the Bush administration.
“At least 25 countries now possess — or are in the process of acquiring and developing — capabilities to inflict mass casualties and destruction,” said William Cohen, the current US Defence Secretary and former Republican senator, in a foreword to the report, which was released last week. “Our unrivalled supremacy in the conventional military arena is prompting adversaries to seek unconventional, asymmetric means to strike what they perceive as our Achilles heel,” said Cohen.
He singled out North Korea, Iran, Iraq and Libya as countries whose missile-building programmes and attempts to acquire nuclear, chemical or biological weapons posed the most pressing threats to US and international security. “Also looming on the horizon is the prospect that terror weapons will increasingly find their way into the hands of individuals and groups of fanatical terrorists or self-proclaimed apocalyptic prophets. The followers of Bin Laden have already trained with toxic chemicals,” Cohen claimed.
A separate inquiry led by former senator Howard Baker has meanwhile warned that Russia’s large nuclear, chemical and biological weapons stockpiles are dangerously insecure and vulnerable to theft and smuggling by terrorist groups. During his election campaign, Bush pledged to boost Pentagon spending by $45-billion over the next 10 years and spend up to $70-billion on space and submarine-based defence missiles.
But Cohen’s comments, the Pentagon report and assessments made by a commission on space weapons convened by Bill Clinton and Baker’s panel all make clear that a big push is now under way in Republican-controlled Washington to gain much bigger spending increases. The money is intended to fund anti-proliferation efforts, missile defences and new generations of “big ticket” delivery platforms such as “stealth” destroyers and submarines.
Rumsfeld warned Congress last week that after a decade of static or declining post-Soviet military spending, a big effort was required to counter what he characterised as growing threats to the US and its allies, and in particular to space satellites, from “rogue” states and terrorist groups. Rumsfeld said his first action as defence secretary would be to launch a comprehensive review of defence policy to assess budgetary needs and priorities. The US currently spends about $300-billion a year on defence (compared for example with China’s estimated $60-billion).
The new administration’s fast-evolving defence plans will pose political problems for Bush who, while pledging to increase military spending, has also promised to deliver large-scale tax cuts. Democrats in Congress are already publicly asking where the money will be found at a time of economic slowdown.
But given the mounting pressure from Republican hawks and from within his own Cabinet, Bush is considered unlikely to back away from his vow to deploy an expanded version of NMD as soon as technical problems have been resolved. The repeated failure of NMD test firings last year persuaded Bill Clinton to leave a decision to his successor. The NMD element of the US’s counter-proliferation offensive is also certain to cause problems with US allies and potential adversaries alike.
Some of the US’s European Nato allies are opposed to NMD, which they say will breach existing treaties, bring to a halt 25 years of largely successful offensive arms control negotiations and provoke a new global arms race. Such fears were given credence last weekend when Russia and China announced the forging of a treaty and strategic alliance over arms and space programmes that could rupture the post-Cold War world order. If the treaty is developed into a fully-fledged alliance, it would be the first to be joined by China in decades.