The one thing we can say with certainty about the likely outcome of the new strategic review ordered by President George Bush is that we don't know. It is too early in the process and there are too many unknowns to predict with any confidence what policies President Bush will promote and what will be the consequences of his new approach. We can, however, outline some of the major possibilities and describe the major players and their respective positions.
First Possibility: The historical record and the declared positions of the new president of the United States indicate that the administration may be willing and able to implement sweeping arms reductions and negotiate new agreements more effectively than the Clinton administration. This is by no means certain-a great deal will depend on the outcome of struggles between the hard-line ideologues and the conservative pragmatists in the Bush camp-but it is quite possible.
Second Possibility: The hard-line positions of many of the new Bush appointees and the general apathy (even antagonism) to the treaties and arrangements of the international non-proliferation regime result in abrogation of treaty commitments, disregard and deterioration of international norms against weapons of mass destruction and a net increase in new threats to the United States.
Third Possibility: Muddle-through (a Washington favorite). There is no coherent new vision, but rather partial steps and compromises that try to minimize disruptions to the U.S. alliance system and the advancement of the President's domestic agenda. Missile defenses are promoted, but deployment decisions are deferred and the ABM treaty remains intact. The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is neither ratified nor abandoned. Substantial cuts in deployed offensive forces are coupled with new declaratory policies to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear threats.
Each of these scenarios is possible, depending on the reactions of U.S. allies, Russia and China to the president's plans, the role of the U.S. Congress, and the outcome of debates within the Administration itself.
The New Dynamic
Democratic presidents seem to be always looking over their right shoulder, fearful of being attacked as "weak on defense." President Bush has no such concerns. He could, like his father, move swiftly and surely to reduce nuclear arsenals and redesign U.S. nuclear policy. He has already promised to unilaterally cut nuclear weapons to "the lowest possible number consistent with our national security." He has now begun the promised strategic review. He also promised during the campaign to de-alert nuclear forces, arguing that the present posture has unacceptable risks of accidental or unauthorized launch: "The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status-another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation," he said.
The general consensus of experts across the political spectrum in Washington is that the United States can met all it's security needs with the 2,500 deployed weapons proposed for the START III treaty. Some Bush advisers believe there is little reason to field more than a thousand strategic nuclear weapons. Conservative senators like Arizona Republican Jon Kyl, who legislated a prohibition against President Clinton unilaterally reducing nuclear weapons below the START I level of 6,000, say they would lift the restriction for Bush because they would have greater trust in his leadership. There is every reason to believe that after completing a promised nuclear posture review, Bush will sharply reduce deployed nuclear forces, without a treaty agreement and without a conservative backlash. Unilateral reductions are preferred to treaty negotiations, which several advisors view as unnecessary, cumbersome and a possible restraint on U.S. freedom of action.
Bush's problem issue is the deployment of national missile defenses. Coupled with his nuclear cuts, Bush has promised to deploy theater and national missile defenses "at the earliest possible date." He would like to present his policies on defensive and offensive weapons as a coherent whole, establishing a new strategic doctrine for the United States. This is fine goal, and makes for great campaign rhetoric, but in office he will be confronted with hard reality-there is nothing to deploy.
Pentagon officials will tell Bush and Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld that it will take the better part of this decade to field either land- or sea-based systems. Even then the systems will be only partially effective. It would not be until the end of the next decade that the United States could consider the space-based weapons that some of his advisers imagine. The cost of the new systems will be substantial, prompting quiet opposition from military leaders, who have not included missile defenses in their list of high priority items and fear the budgetary competition. "The military leaders don't want this at all," asserts Lawrence Korb of the Council on Foreign Relations. "They see a lot of money going into something that is not going to work that well."
The danger is that President Bush might abrogate the ABM Treaty before he realizes the limits and costs of the technology. Some will urge him to do so immediately. Analysts with the Heritage Foundation, for example, have already presented the administration with draft Presidential Decision Directives declaring that the ABM treaty is no longer in force and establishing a new strategic doctrine based on the centrality of missile defenses. The directives would also set deployment deadlines for ground-, sea- and space-based weapons, including deployment of the first space-based interceptors by 2006 and the first space-based lasers by 2010. Neither system is remotely feasible in those timeframes.
But other, more sober officials will tell him that breaking the treaty will provoke a serious international crisis, not just with China and Russia, but with the United States' closest allies. The issue could dominate his first year in office, while there would be no military benefit realized any time during his presidency.
In short, President Bush may realize that the consequences of withdrawing from the ABM Treaty (particularly after the Senate rejection of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty) are so severe that he may opt for the policy posture assumed by his father and Ronald Reagan-talk tough, increase budgets, deploy nothing, and stay within the treaty.
He could, however, also go further than his predecessors. He may well succeed in developing a sensible plan for the deployment of the more technically feasible theater defenses. He could deploy both the improved Patriot PAC-3 system and the new short-range Navy Area-Wide system based on Aegis ships during his first term. Both have only limited capability against short-range Scud-type missiles, but the general public may not distinguish between these limited systems and real national missile defense.
Bush could also succeed in developing joint systems with the Russians, or perhaps, coupled with his deep cuts in nuclear forces, he might negotiate modifications to the treaty that would permit the kind of very limited national defense that may someday be possible. In the meantime, it is possible that the nature of the regimes in Korea and Iran will change significantly, and with them the alleged threat, reducing pressures from the right for more sweeping defensive systems.
A great deal depends on the Congress. The House is marginally Republican, the Senate evenly split. While the House and Senate Republican leadership will push the new president towards hard-line, anti-arms control positions, it is not clear whether they can command the loyalty of their members. Even so, President Bush probably has only 18 months to capitalize on this precarious balance of power, as election politics will thwart any major initiatives beginning in mid-2002. The Democrats are favored to capture a majority in the Senate in the 2002 elections, with an outside chance at retaking the House.
This would be good news for threat reduction. Historically, a Republican President with a Democratic Congress has proven to be a favorable arms control combination. Most of the treaties and agreements that make up the non-proliferation regime were either negotiated or implemented by Republican presidents with at least one house of Congress in Democratic hands. These include the Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Biological Weapons Convention, the Chemical Weapons Convention, the ABM Treaty, SALT I, START I and II, and the Missile Technology Control Regime. The non-proliferation regime is, in large part, a Republican-built regime.
The role of European allies should not be underestimated in this U.S. decision process. The failure of the Clinton administration to win strong European backing for its missile defense plans in early 2000 (a plan then also regarded as inevitable), thwarted efforts to get Russian agreement to amendments to the ABM Treaty. The allies didn't say no; it was enough that they did not say yes. When the drive to deploy stalled, test failures and mounting skepticism about the systems ability to deal with simple countermeasures crippled confidence in the Clinton plan. Many remember the humiliating test failure in July, but may not recall that it was the allied reluctance in January that began the unraveling of this "done deal." European governments now dithering over this new "inevitability" may decide that they need to weigh in with their concerns before any new precipitous presidential policies promote problems.
There will also be struggles within the Bush cabinet. New Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed the CTBT and is very cautious about the technological promise of national missile defense (as are the Joint Chiefs of Staff). He will contend with the more ideological views of Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, while Vice-President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice will form the middle, trying to balance all the President's priorities. One troubling sign that the balance of power may shift decidely right in the early months of the administration is that key staff positions at defense and the national security council are being filled by conservatives derisive of treaties they consider vestiges of past conflicts and weak thinking.
Still, the preferred course seems to be to win Russian and even Chinese agreement to missile defense deployments. In fact, U.S. and Russian representatives are reported to have begun informal discussions on missile defense in Moscow moments after the new president was inaugurated. Debate within the administration of Russian President Vladimir Putin mirrors the discussions in Washington. Some advisors are said to favor negotiating amendments to the ABM Treaty, while others want nothing to do with missile defense agreements and would rather place the onus squarely on the Americans for destroying what both nations have described as a cornerstone of strategic stability. China, of course, remains in strong opposition to U.S. missile defenses and may prove less compliant.
In sum, as of the end of January 2001, the Bush team does not appear likely to tear down the existing non-proliferation regime without either something more substantial to demonstrate on missile defenses or new negotiated agreements with the Russians to replace past pacts.
Like Schrodinger's famous cat, we won't know if arms control is alive or dead until the Bush team fully assembles, conducts a new strategic review, and opens the box.