International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation

Bulletin 18 - Moving Beyond Missile Defense

Aim for a Campaign:
Linking Past, Present, and Future

Jacqueline Cabasso

The technology and policy links between nuclear weapons and ballistic missile defenses, and ballistic missile defenses and space-based weapons, have been well established by a handful of specialists. But if we are to create an effective campaign of resistance, I believe that we have to establish the links between the past, the present, and the future in terms of how we understand these issues and explain them to a broader audience. And we will need to develop new tools to help us educate, empower, and activate the public. Finding convincing arguments will require us to go beyond the usual framework of 'expert' discussion. In the course of my analysis, I will offer a few of the arguments that in my experience have resonated with the general public.

Force Application Vision End State Maintain strategic deterrence Provide low risk, low collateral damage force projection against all terrestrial targets Strategic Deterrence - Nuclear-armed ICBMs Conventional Strike - Rapid, global precision strike with space-based systams Air Force Space Command, Strategic Master Plan for FY02 and Beyond, February 2000, Figure 2-6: Force Applications capabilities evolve to timely, flexible and precise Global Engagement

I'd like to start by describing an illustration from the Air Force Space Command Strategic Master Plan for Fiscal Year 2002 and Beyond. The "end state" of the "vision" it graphically depicts is to "maintain strategic deterrence" with "nuclear-armed ICBMs," and to "provide low risk, low collateral damage force projection against all terrestrial targets" using "rapid, global precision strike... space-based systems." Nuclear weapons and space-based conventional weapons systems are literally part of the same picture. To people who ask what's wrong with the U.S. building a defensive system, it is important to point out that a defensive system in a post-nuclear-weapons-abolition world is a very different question. I suggest that we have that discussion then. Right now, we're talking about the military establishment of the lone superpower planning for an integrated, offensive global war fighting system including National Missile Defense, Theater Missile Defense, space-based weapons, first strike strategic nuclear weapons and precision, lowyield nuclear weapons.

In my travels over the last few years, mostly in the United States and Western Europe, I have found that people - that is, activists and sympathetic, even informed members of the public - tend to fall along a spectrum of information and beliefs. Most of these people hold a set of assumptions that are about ten years old. They want to believe, without thinking about it too clearly, that with the end of the Cold War nuclear weapons simply evaporated into thin air, or were put into storage, and are no longer a problem. I call this state of mind, psychologically, the 'best case' scenario. At the other end of this particular spectrum is an emerging and dynamic global network against the militarization and weaponization of space. This movement is bringing to light vitally important issues that should be of profound concern to everyone. However, many of the people involved are motivated by a kind of science fiction hysteria, which I would characterize, psychologically, as the 'worstcase' scenario. As an organizer, I don't believe that fear-based motivation is sustainable. In this case, I also believe that it is at least partially displaced.

This brings us to the present. In the present situation, people are experiencing what I would characterize generally as a state of denial about the true nature of United States 'national security' policy. Most people - again I'm talking about peace activists and sympathetic members of the public - are in this state of denial, somewhere between the best case and the worst case scenarios described above. At one end, there are those who simply believe that nuclear weapons are a thing of the past. At the other end, people who may have seen the United States Space Command Vision for 2020, with its lurid cover illustration depicting a 'death ray' zapping the earth from outer space, are rightly alarmed about the Space Command's announced objective, boldly displayed in a science fiction comic book style:

"US Space Command - dominating the space dimension of military operations to protect US interested and investment. Integrating Space Forces into warfighting capabilities across the full spectrum of conflict."

But people at both ends of the spectrum, as well as those in the middle, are not aware, for example, that the 'cornerstone' of U.S. national security policy today is the threatened first use of nuclear weapons. They don't realize that U.S. Trident submarines are patrolling the world's oceans at Cold War levels, ready to fire hundreds of the most destructive and precise weapons ever conceived, on fifteen minutes notice. They are oblivious to the fact that the implicit threat to use nuclear weapons backs up every U.S. or U.S.-led military action anywhere in the world. They have no idea that over the past decade the U.S. has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Libya (April 1996), North Korea (July 1994), and Iraq (1991 and 1998). And they are in the dark about the fact that the U.S. nuclear weapons labs are quietly upgrading every weapon type in the U.S. arsenal, while also exploring the development of more 'useable' low yield nuclear weapons. Those who have been awakened by the frightening rhetoric of the George W. Bush Administration don't realize that these are not new developments. They are a continuation of policies begun under President Truman and carried on through every U.S. administration since, whether Democrat or Republican. 'Star Wars' research and development, for example (much of it at the nuclear weapons labs), did not end after the Reagan years. It just went underground, where it has been steadily funded ever since.

What I'm suggesting is that in order to build an effective movement, we have to find a way to draw together these past, present, and future dimensions. In my view, this movement must be informed by the political and technological history that has brought us to this point, the current realities about nuclear programs and policies, and future plans - both near and far term - for ballistic missile defenses and space-based weapons.

I'm talking here mostly about the American public, because fundamentally we have to get to the American government. Most Americans don't want to believe that the United States is a bad actor. In a newspaper article late last year, entitled When Might Makes Wrong, Chalmers Johnson, a well-respected political science scholar and Vietnam-era 'hawk,' wrote that "The American people believe that their role in the world is virtuous - that their actions have been for the good of others as well as themselves. And they insist that even when their country's actions have led to disaster (as in Vietnam) its motives were still honorable."

This is a barrier that we have to overcome in the United States. But moving beyond missile defense is a global issue and it is essential that we also work in an international context.

In my view, one of the mistakes we keep repeating is too narrowly focusing on opposing particular weapons systems or supporting particular treaties, and forgetting the larger context. The debate around the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty is a good example. I think it's a problem for a peace movement to put a lot of effort into advocating saving a treaty with a flaw - i.e. enshrining the principle of Mutually Assured Destruction - so fundamental that it contradicts our larger goal, the abolition of nuclear weapons. Obviously, in the short term, and as a transitional measure, there are good reasons why the ABM Treaty should be preserved. But I don't think that it's our purpose as a movement to be advocating the preservation of that treaty. Rather, we should be actively opposing actions that are going to abrogate the ABM Treaty and actively supporting positive alternatives such as a missile ban, a nuclear weapons convention, and an outer space treaty.

I also think it's important that we go back to fundamental values of nonviolence at this time of increasing state violence and the potential for even greater violence. We're talking about plans for global domination through the most horrific weapons of all kinds: weapons of mass destruction; weapons with tailored, precision capabilities; all purpose weapons for every conceivable use. I believe it is incumbent upon us to return to the core values of the nonviolent struggles of the past and to revisit the nonviolent campaigns that have been successful. This translates directly to the way we do our work, prefiguring the kind of society we want to create in the ways that we work with each other; listening carefully to each other; treating each other as equals; respecting the fact that we're coming from different political systems and cultures. From our international non-governmental organization work, we know that it is possible to have a nonviolent democratic discussion about alternative ways of being in the world.

To deal with the current situation in the immediate term, in the United States we need to develop a campaign to avoid the demonization of China, the way the Soviet Union was demonized during the Cold War, when the American people were told that the U.S.S.R. was an 'evil empire.' One of the things we did at that time was to establish direct citizen-to-citizen contacts. Through these exchanges we learned that we were all people, and that we had a lot more in common with each other than our governments had. I went to the Soviet Union for the first time in 1990, and I found that the sun shines; that you can go out and buy things; that it's a normal place. If you were an American at that time, you wouldn't know those things if you just stayed in your job and read the newspaper. I also have been to China, where I discovered that the Chinese people are a whole lot like the American people - friendly, relaxed and casual. I was able to easily travel around China by myself, without any problems. This is the kind of common sense information that needs to get out. These citizen-to-citizen contacts can be made on a small scale, because individual experiences can be broadly shared and the benefits thus magnified.

Another obvious argument is that the United States, by far the dominant global military superpower, has nothing to lose by pursuing diplomatic approaches with other countries. Let's say, for example, in view of China's no-first-use nuclear weapons policy and its long support for negotiations to eliminate nuclear weapons, that instead of aiming missile defenses at China to defend U.S. territory against China's small ICBM capability, the United States were to take China at its word, and start negotiating. What does it have to lose? Maybe China is bluffing. Let's find out. This is a common sense argument that works with ordinary people.

We also need to counter the demonization of Islam and Islamic peoples. This is particularly important, since the 'selling' of missile defenses by the U.S. government is largely based on the notion of 'rogue' states, and several of those identified happen to be Islamic nations. In this regard, I think we need to emphasize the distinctions between governments and civil society. We need to be very clear about our identities and our roles in the world. For those of us who are non-governmental entities, it is not in our own best interests to associate ourselves with the national security interests of any government. As Gabriel Tetiarahi of Hiti Tau, an organization of indigenous peoples' groups in French-occupied Polynesia has said, "we need to decolonize out minds." It cannot be us or them; it must be us and them.

Ultimately, I believe that we need to fundamentally redefine security, not in terms of nations, but in terms of people and the environment. Mahbub Ul Haq, a former Finance Minister of Pakistan who later worked with the United Nations Development Program, did some outstanding work in this area. I make this argument every time I speak to a group, and people always respond enthusiastically, because they've never thought about it before. We need to redefine security as security of people, not just of territories; security of individuals, not just of nations; security through development, not through arms; security of all people everywhere, in their homes, in their jobs, in their streets, in their communities, and in their environment. This kind of security is universal. If you explore the requirements to bringing about and ensuring this kind of security, you do not get nuclear weapons, missile defenses, space-based weapons, or any other kind of advanced, high-tech weapons - in my view, we don't even get hand guns. I think that this is a very important argument, and it works because it's positive - it puts forward a positive alternative and invites a new way of thinking.

Finally, the last and perhaps most important argument is that you don't have to be an expert to get involved. These issues can become very complicated. But you don't have to be an expert to understand that a national security policy premised on the threat of national annihilation to others is not sustainable because other countries will eventually adopt the same kind of policy. The fate of the planet is too important to be left up to experts. Each of us is an expert on how we feel; now go out and speak up!

This essay is based on a presentation made by the author at the "Moving Beyond Missile Defense" workshop of the International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation and the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, March 19-21, 2001, in Santa Barbara, California, USA.