Professors lambast Rumsfeld '54's plan for missile defense system

Donald Rumsfeld '54 has been making headlines the last few weeks as President Bush's recently confirmed secretary of defense. Rumsfeld, who held the same post in the Ford administration and served as an assistant to President Nixon, returns to Washington championing a hotly debated and controversial program — national missile defense.

The proposed missile defense plan has drawn criticism from foreign policy experts and technical gurus alike, raising questions about its feasibility and impact on foreign relations.

Many members of the University faculty have said they oppose the program. In an informal poll, not a single professor said he or she supported the plan.

Ken Schultz, a Wilson School professor who specializes in international relations theory, said he supports in principle the idea of missile defense, but obstacles make the plan impractical.

"If the technology were feasible and if the costs were reasonable and if there were no diplomatic tradeoffs to doing such a thing, then sure, it'll be great to be able to protect the nation against a possible missile attack," he said.

Despite tremendous Republican and public support, opposition against missile defense remains strong.

In addition to technological and financial concerns about the program, opponents worry it could spur another nuclear arms race.

"It seems to me that we are in no position to make a commitment to a system that is going to be as expensive as that until we know its workability and the price that we will pay for Russia, China and European allies," said Frederick Hitz '61, a former inspector general of the CIA and a visiting professor at the Wilson School.

Rumsfeld and other proponents of the plan say the advantages outweigh the downsides. The Commission to Assess Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, headed by Rumsfeld in 1998, began a serious look into the possibility of missile defense.

In its report, committee members argued that nuclear powers such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq will have missiles capable of reaching American soil as early as 2005.

But Frank Von Hippel, a professor at the University's Center for Energy and Environmental Studies, said the program could prove a threat to U.S. national security.

"[Many foreign leaders] see the U.S. pursuing once again the Republican fantasy of an impregnable shield that will make cooperative nuclear disarmament unnecessary," he said.

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Lynn White, a Wilson School professor who specializes in American relations with China, said missile defense could even result in the use of smaller, tactical nuclear weapons in other parts of the world.

Some regional powers, like China, might be "be more opportunist in using what they misjudge as their [nuclear] trump card in regional conflicts where they imagine that the United States' stake is less than theirs," he said. "This would decrease everybody's security."

Some experts argue that missile defense — a project that likely would cost between $30 and $60 billion — would not necessarily guarantee total safety from nuclear attack.

The shield is designed to defend only against ballistic missiles. But rogue nations or terrorist groups could choose to mount their nuclear attacks through other means, such as a bomb hidden on a truck or boat.

In addition to the potential impact on foreign relations, missile defense critics say the technology does not yet exist to make the system effective.

"The technical fact is that there is no effective defense against nuclear weapons and none is in sight, even if we throw additional hundreds of billions of dollars down this rat hole," Von Hippel said.

Intercepting and targeting warhead-bearing ballistic missiles and distinguishing them from even simple and cheap decoys are difficulties that missile defense designers are attempting to overcome.

"Everyone believes the possibility of a very robust missile defense is extremely remote, extremely unlikely that [it] would shoot down 95 or 99 percent of the missiles," chemistry professor Warren Warren said. "I personally feel like trying to deploy in 4 or 5 years is premature."

But he added, "It is something worth revisiting on a regular basis, to see whether technology is moving sufficiently far ahead."

Hitz, too, said he does not believe the nation is ready to undertake constructing a missile defense system.

"With not knowing the intentions of a number of states that may be in a position to launch missiles at U.S. territories, we ought to take the precautions we can to prevent damage," Hitz said. "But the risk in committing to a system of a sort of bottomless costs when we don't even know whether or not it were to work . . . seems to me embarking on a road with signposts and pitfalls we haven't scoped out."