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Richard Perle
Former Assistant Secretary of Defense

Ballistic Missile Defense
14 March 1996 - House National Security Committee

Mr. Chairman, I want to begin by thanking the Committee for the substantial time and effort it is devoting to this most important issue of ballistic missile defense. It is not often that the legislative branch takes the lead on a matter that would ordinarily originate with Administration policies and programs. But this committee--and you, Mr. Chairman-have seen the black hole into which serious thought about ballistic missile defense has fallen, and you have tried to shape a program for strategic and theater defenses that recognizes the importance of such defenses to the security of the United States and its allies.

It hardly needs saying that the refusal of the administration to work on that program with the Congress is disappointing. And the impoundment--I don't know what else to call it--of funds appropriated for the development and deployment of missile defenses will at least slow, and possibly jeopardize, the achievement of an orderly, efficient and cost-effective program.

Mr. Chairman, I have read the prepared testimony of my friend Jim Woolsey and agree fully with his excellent analysis of the threat. The attempt to anticipate the future date on which a potential adversary may have the capability to launch a ballistic missile and reach American targets is a guess which, however educated, entails a huge margin of error. I can remember when the intelligence community confidently predicted that the Soviet Union was a decade or more away from a multiple independently-targeted re-entry vehicle (MIRV), a prediction that gave way with a jolt two years later when the Soviets conducted successful MIRV tests. Estimates of when the Soviets would achieve missile accuracies sufficient for counter force purposes were similarly inaccurate. And the development of Stalin's H Bomb, which followed ours by a few months, shocked the community of analysts who thought it would take Moscow many years to catch up.

In any case, as Jim rightly observes, the potential threat from ballistic missiles must be understood to include missiles that have been purchased from such potential suppliers as China or Russia rather than developed indigenously.

But in my view, Mr. Chairman, the question of exactly when the threat is upon us is not the central issue. If we achieve a defensive capability a little before it is absolutely necessary, no harm will have been done. But if we are too late, the result could be catastrophic. In cases like this, it is always wise to err on the side of too much, too soon rather than too little, too late.

In seeking to justify its impoundment of funds, the Administration relies heavily on the idea that the threat is far enough in the future so we can safely proceed at a leisurely pace. But I believe that the source of administration opposition to ballistic missile defense has little, if anything, to do with judgements about the threat. After all, the opposition of key administration officials to defending America from Soviet ballistic missiles, an intensely ideological position with its roots deep in cold war concepts of deterrence, was deeply--and evidently ineradicably-entrenched long after the Soviets acquired a vast arsenal of ICBM's. It persists to this day and looms as the principal intellectual underpinning of administration policy.

The idea that we are safest when we are undefended, that security resides in vulnerability, was the conventional wisdom through much of the cold war. That senior officials of the administration continue to accept this bizarre notion is a tribute to the durability of even the most ludicrous ideas once they have been embraced by vast bureaucracies, permeate the budgets and careers of government departments, and achieve the mantle of orthodoxy at great, inquiring institutions of higher learning.

The ABM treaty of 1972 appeared--on the surface, at least--to enshrine the notion of mutual vulnerability between the United States and the Soviet Union. For the last 24 years the treaty prohibiting the deployment of nation wide ballistic missile defenses has been the fixed star in the firmament of arms control, the true north for legions of officials, academics and politicians who believe that vulnerability to missile attack, far from being a dangerous threat to our security, is in reality a source of safety and protection. ABM treaty proponents have been so single-mindedly fixed on the presumed benefits of the ABM treaty that they have failed to notice the collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the end of the Soviet Union. For them, the treaty remains a cornerstone of American security, an instrument of transcendent importance, an arrangement between the United States and Russia that should for all time prevent either of us from deploying a defense against ballistic missiles.

So far committed to the ABM treaty are its proponents within the administration, that they are willing to broaden its scope to include limitations on our freedom to develop and deploy theater defenses in order to accommodate the claims of Russian officials that such limits are necessary to clarify the line separating permissible theater defenses from prohibited strategic ones.

Do not be misled, Mr. Chairman: the administration's zeal to negotiate clarifications to the ABM treaty that would have the effect of encumbering our theater defenses flows from the administration's passion for the ABM treaty. And while the Russians, at the urging of our arms control establishment, have been insisting on such clarifications, an administration properly concerned with obtaining effective theater defenses for our troops and allies would find it easy to deflect Russian demands. Rather than negotiate limits on the performance of our theater defensive missiles, we would simply tell the Russians that theater defenses are not covered under the ABM treaty; and if they wish to charge that our theater defense program violates the treaty, they can file a complaint, to which we can respond persuasively, with the Standing Consultative Commission. In the meantime we would go full speed ahead to develop effective theater defenses, with significant coverage and capability, as the Congress has wisely legislated.

On this matter there is no serious issue of law. The matter is one of policy. And the preferred policy of the administration is willingly,cheerfully, to be hobbled with respect to theater defenses as a way of broadening the ABM treaty and diminishing the pressure for theater defense now, and national ballistic missile defense later.

I suspect the administration senses the broad public support for ballistic missile defense that emerges from every poll and discussion. Perhaps that is why they are loathe to admit that their policy toward missile defense is one of outright opposition. They find it convenient to obscure their opposition with arguments about timing, budgets, technology and the threat. And while these other considerations undoubtedly preoccupy individual departments and offices within the Department of Defense and the military services, the broad policy of opposition is one of principle. As such, it is best countered by a principled policy of support for defensive systems.

The threat of a Soviet missile attack on the U.S. that ABM treaty proponents once thought could be countered by a document banning ballistic missile defenses is now largely irrelevant to our safety and security. Since the end of the cold war, the more immediate danger lies in a theater missile attack against our troops or our allies, and in the acquisition of ballistic missiles by our enemies. To diminish our capacity to deal with these threats in the mistaken belief that it is more important to preserve the ABM treaty unchanged is dangerous nonsense. Those who urge this course are hopelessly mired in the tar pits of the cold war. It should be the urgent business of the Congress to insist that the ABM treaty be revised, if necessary, to allow for sensible defenses against real threats. The treaty provides a procedure for amendments. In practice, little amendment is necessary. A sober interpretation and the resolve to make the most of the freedom the treaty allows should suffice. And under no circumstances should the treaty be elaborated so as to limit our freedom to deploy theater systems made as effective as our technology allows.