The Truth Behind the Missile Shield

This news is not new, but it comes and goes quite often, even when the major globalized medias responsible for information do not present it in its true dimension. The United States and its allies, including Israel, forge plans to develop and establish “missile shields” in Europe, Asia and the Middle East.

The idea of missile defense systems, commonly known as “missile shield,” is part of the now exaggeratedly long arms race that emerged in the United States in the 1940s. Conceived as a mechanism to protect the define boundaries of that country from an attack by nuclear weapons, even at a time when the United States was the only one who possessed such weapons.

From the time the United States successfully tested a nuclear weapon in 1945, which was followed by a nuclear test in the Soviet Union in 1949, and by successive advantages in the arms race, the design of the missile shield, with different variants, was always present. Indeed, the decision of the Soviet Union and the United States to sign the ABM Treaty in 1972 sought not only to protect the territory of the two countries, but also to limit the production and deployment of this type of system. It was the belief that the owner of such a system could be stimulated to deal a first strike using nuclear weapons.

It’s that belief that explains why the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, more commonly known as the ABM Treaty, limits the deployment of these “shields” from only two areas in each country and not from the entire territory, with a limited range and specific number of detonators. In 1974, during the decade of “relaxation,” the U.S. and the Soviet Union agreed to limit the “protected” areas to only one in each country. Such was the importance and relevance that was granted by the ABM Treaty.

The idea of missile defense, however, reappeared suddenly with great force and great publicity in the United States on March 23, 1983, when President Ronald Reagan announced on television to the American public his “Strategic Defense Initiative,” commonly known as “Star Wars,” which, in essence, proposed the creation of a large nuclear umbrella that can detect and destroy all missiles aimed at any part of the U.S. territory.

An immediate consequence of this proposal was the increase to the military budget of the United States, under the guise of research and development, considerably swelling the coffers of big U.S. companies involved in the sector. From a military standpoint, the initiative, which soon attracted the rejection of broad sectors worldwide, represented a radical change of strategy in the policy pursued by the United States against the Soviet Union from the very beginning of the Cold War. Its implementation would destroy the foundations of nuclear deterrence, which had prevailed until then in Soviet-American relations, in order to avoid the first use of nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction (MAD). This mutually assured destruction, and the interest in avoiding the first use of nuclear weapons by either party, was at the root of the ABM Treaty.

The “initiative,” which among other things envisaged the development of spatial databases and satellite lasers to intercept missiles in space, was highly criticized at the time. In 1987, during Reagan’s second term, there appeared a study by a group of specialists of the American Physical Society, which questioned its feasibility.

Despite all of the criticism, which included the high economic cost and doubts about its real viability, the idea of a missile shield continued to be explored and developed by successive governments in the United States. In his 1991 State of the Union Address, expecting a breakup of a very weak Soviet Union, President George H.W. Bush returned to this idea with certain innovations.

It is in this context when the Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) appeared, which meant a change in the design of the missile shield. It advocated for a system that does not protect the entire territory of the United States — prohibited under the ABM Treaty — but rather a limited defensive system designed for a particular theater and with a limited number of interceptors. It was felt that with the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, no state would have in its arsenal a large number of nuclear weapons capable of a massive attack on U.S. soil. It was believed the number of missiles to intercept, perhaps now coming from what the United States qualified as “renegade” states, would be much lower.

In 1993, during the administration of President Bill Clinton, the United States remained in a struggle over the missile shield. The Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO), which was established in 1984 under the administration of Ronald Reagan, was transformed into the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO), now in line with the new vision of former President Bush; it now consisted of a more limited scope, and was not necessarily designed to protect the entire territory of the United States at once.

In January 1999, the U.S. Congress passed the National Missile Defense Act (National Missile Defense Act of 1999), in which the second section clearly calls for the policy for missile defense: “It is the policy of the United States to deploy, as soon as is technologically possible, an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorized or deliberate).”

That law became a formidable instrument for sectors in the U.S. Congress that called for accelerating the work leading to the establishment of a missile shield. Since its adoption, the law has been used on many occasions to show “bipartisan” participation on the subject, with the aim of promoting support for it.

The National Missile Defense Act of 1999 was a clear and decisive step toward the U.S.’ exit from the ABM Treaty. Moreover, as noted by a researcher of these issues, the United States rushed to deploy its defenses against the threat of intercontinental ballistic missile attacks by “renegade” states, even before that threat materialized and before those systems had even been tested. These actions, it’s been considered, has cost the United States considerable expenses and loss of other opportunities.

President George W. Bush, who, despite having received fewer popular votes than his Democratic opponent, was made president of the United States in 2000 thanks to the tricks of the terrorist mafia of Cuban origin in South Florida, continued with great strides toward the missile shield, even with a more active participation than its NATO allies. It was early in his administration that the United States abandoned the ABM Treaty, which left the country with a free hand to realize the ideas that were being designed long before, like that of testing missile systems both by itself and in coordination with its allies.

Efforts toward the development of a missile defense by the United States, including research and testing of its components, were always present throughout the postwar period and did not stop after the breakup of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact.

In the period of President George W. Bush, the United States was particularly aggressive on this issue, only comparable with Reagan’s presidency. The stated purpose now, as it was then, was to intercept enemy missiles before they reached their goal. Never mind that there has been no Soviet Union or Warsaw Pact in a decade; that the Cold War was considered done and over with; or that the alleged justifications put in hand were not convincing. The important thing was to maintain U.S. military superiority and maintain a hegemony that had arrived at the confluence of the last two decades of the 20th century, no matter the cost.

That is the essence of the renunciation of the ABM treaty the U.S. signed 30 years ago, which prevented the development of such a program; it not only regulated missile creation, but the parties agreed to not to create, deploy and test them. With the denunciation of the treaty in 2002, the United States removed a formidable obstacle to their plans of armament growth. And for the five years from 2004 to 2009, the Pentagon had already provided 59 billion dollars in the budget for that purpose.

What the United States seeks to establish with a missile defense system is in fact to maintain absolute military superiority, in line with the principles of the Defense Planning Guide, written after the breakup of the Soviet Union where it was advocated that worldwide military dominance would increase American superiority. It relies on the huge financial and material resources of the U.S and its allies, as well as the scientific and technical capacity developed by the military-industrial complex since the beginning of the arms race.

Regardless of the excuses employed, the real objective of the “missile shield” is to impose itself on countries that might be able to break the current hegemonic order, notably Russia and China — key props in The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, who represent a formidable challenge to the existing international order.

They are the desires of domination and hegemony, coupled with the economic and financial interests of powerful corporations, which are at the very foundation of the development and sophistication of weapons, including missile defense systems, which is a strong stimulus for a new leap in the arms race. In the current hegemonic world order, the missile shield, precisely because it is designed to intersect and destroy missiles in flight from a potential enemy, gains relevance as a first-strike nuclear weapon, as the United States might feel undeterred, as never before, to perform such an attack against another country.

Russia and China have rejected, on more than one occasion, the plans to develop and expand to several regions of the world the missile shield, recognizing the dangers it poses to international peace and security. But the United States and its allies are willing to go ahead with this aberration. Hence the emphasis on the concern regarding the development of the missile shield that could drag the world into a new spiral in the arms race, with all its negative consequences, in several of the world’s spheres.

This is precisely why more and more countries, despite facing economic difficulties, do not seem willing to accept much longer American hegemony. These countries have begun to act on the international scene with more determination and independence, raising their voices to strongly oppose the U.S.’ militaristic plans.

This can also be seen as a move against those countries to reinforce the positions they hold in the international arena, seeing as many of them do not possess the ability to produce nuclear weapons, yet remain as possible missile defense targets. This is, at heart, an effort to maintain the current hegemonic order, where these countries begin to curdle for conditions of change.

For this reason, the Defense Department’s budget, approved by the U.S. in 2012, reached a staggering $662 billion — nearly half the total military budgets of all countries in the world. Opposing the missile shield is therefore opposing the arms race, the current hegemonic order and the increasing dangers of a war that, by its nature or scope, could become nuclear breaking out.