In a remote corner of North Dakota, there is a group of odd-looking buildings and buried structures known as the Stanley R. Mickelson Safeguard Antiballistic Missile Complex. It is one of two complexes earmarked to be constructed for the Safeguard Antiballistic Missile. It is the only one that ever became functional, albeit for four months. Safeguard was America’s only working missile defense system. It was never meant to protect people directly, of course. Its long-range Spartan missiles and short-range Sprint missiles collaborated to protect nearby Minuteman missile silos from annihilation in the event of a nuclear exchange. Immediately obsolete, the system cost $21.3 billion in adjusted dollars.

Attempts to build missile defense systems began in the late 1940’s, predating deployment of the intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) the military has been indoctrinating us to fear. The most extensive systems, using Sentinel missiles and the Nike family of missiles (to which the Spartans belonged) were developed to intercept Soviet ICBMs. These missile systems were small compared to what quickly became known as the “Star Wars” program—Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). $50 billion dollars was eventually poured into the wildly ambitious SDI that called for space- and ground-based interception lasers, and missile kill-vehicle similar to the ones built for previous defensive shields. The plan fizzled out with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the United States once again saw a multibillion dollar defense plan rust on the drawing board, with no technological progress.

In the fall of 2000 Clinton decided to postpone implementation of NMD until the technology had all kinks worked out. That August, the Pentagon’s chief weapons tester advised the Clinton administration that the system would not be ready by its slated 2005 deployment date. The system has not suddenly jumped ahead of schedule.

The Bush administration is ignoring the past fifty years of defense history with its proposal to pump ever more funds into the NMD. “The grave threat from nuclear, biological and chemical weapons has not gone away with the Cold War,” Bush said. When asked where for the source of these threats, the administration repeats the cliched round of enemies: North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya, and delightfully vague “terrorism.” The “rogue states”, however, are years away from developing the needed technologies to fire missiles into U.S. territory. Besides the former Soviet Union, with which America enjoys good relations, no other nation has the military infrastructure to maintain a nuclear attack while being attacked. Sanction-whipped Iraq and hungry North Korea will surely not attempt unilateral self-destruction. Terrorism is a trickier target to protect against, too, lacking an easily target for retribution. Even if international terrorist groups attain ICBMs, the United States has much better ways of spending its defense money than on another aerospace boondoggle. There are many cheaper ways for terrorists to use off-the-shelf technology to attack the U.S. with weapons of mass destruction. Cruise missiles cost substantially less and are more accurate than ICBMs. Warheads smuggled into the U.S. — or even off the coast — would be just as deadly as those riding a speedy missile. While smuggling nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons may not be easy, it certainly pales in comparison to the difficulty of launching missiles into space and guiding them down on one’s enemy halfway across the globe. If the enemy did succeed in constructing ICBMs, America would know beforehand of their abilities, as missiles require a long period of testing before they can be deployed. U.S. spy satellites would readily detect such testing, and give America a big grace period during which the threat could be defused. After the Persian Gulf War, Iraq fell under sanctions and UN restrictions. If former President Bush had instead jury-rigged a missile defense system and left Saddam Hussein to his ways in building weapons of mass destruction, bad things might have happened. Surely any administration watching a buildup of ICBMs in a hostile nation will not feel secure behind a tried-and-untrue NMD system, especially a system like this one, with only 19 scheduled flight tests. The less ambitious Safeguard system underwent 70 interception tests, and passed 58 of them. Even the much-maligned Patriot missiles passed 17 of 17 interception tests before being deployed. The current system can’t even get its “fail-safe” booster rocket to separate from the interceptor — a possibility never considered! Though it knew exactly where and when the test missile would be launched, though it was told when one decoy missile head would separate from the real one, it could not but fail. This is not, to say the least, a reliable system.

Even though potential enemies do not yet have the technology to launch menacing ICBMs, they already have the means to fool Bush’s National Missile Defense. It is acknowledged that the simple heat-seeking method of guidance to be employed by NMD’s anti-ICBM missiles would not be able to detect and destroy: warheads shrouded in liquid nitrogen; warheads hidden amid many (balloon!) decoys; and multiple bomblets carrying hazardous biological agents. Any of these simple tactics will render NMD — projected to cost upwards of $60 billion — useless.

Ignoring the feasibility of such a defensive shield, there are myriad reasons for Bush to not sink money into his National Missile Defense program. Foremost on the list is a little document signed into existence in 1972, when the world was deep in the Cold War. As it does now, Armageddon lay mere minutes away, with U.S. and Soviet missiles alert and at the ready to launch. Both the United States and the Soviet Union were rapidly stockpiling nuclear weapons and deploying them worldwide in silos, mobile launchers, and “invulnerable” nuclear-powered submarines. But anti-ballistic missile systems threatened to nullify the intimidation power of the superpowers’ nuclear arsenals. If such a system could be efficaciously employed, the opposing side would have to rapidly come up with weapons that could get past their shield—otherwise they’d end up with the short end of the stick in a nuclear war. Basically, defensive shields would fuel an arms race.

“Considering that effective measures to limit anti-ballistic missile systems would be a substantial factor in curbing the race in strategic offensive arms and would lead to a decrease in the risk of outbreak of war involving nuclear weapons,” the U.S. and the U.S.S.R ratified the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems. The Treaty, among other things, prohibits the development of ABM systems based in the sea, air, or space, limits ABM coverage to two zones—one protecting the nation’s capital, the other protecting ICBM silos—and expressly prohibits any development of a national ABM defense. President Bush and his advisors have brashly set aside any concerns over the treaty they intend to violate. When asked by the Wall Street Journal how long before he would push to simply revoke the Treaty, Bush responded, “months, not years.” This is not worrisome simply because the leader of the free world feels so at ease with unilaterally reneging on a long-standing treaty, but because nations worldwide have urged him again and again to reconsider.

Russia has consistently, and with increasing urgency, denounced NMD. China, a growing nuclear power, also cautions the U.S. that its plans will harm carefully-crafted stability. Sun Yuxi, spokesperson for the foreign ministry, exhorted that NMD “will have a far-reaching and extensive negative impact on the global and regional strategic balance and stability.”

Even the U.K., the staunch U.S. ally, has warned that rapid development of NMD would endanger its foreign relations with, among others, Europe, Russia and China. Heads-of-state and diplomats worldwide have come out against NMD. French President Jacques Chirac put his concern eloquently: “If you look at world history, ever since men began waging war, you will see that there’s a permanent race between sword and shield. The sword always wins. The more improvements that are made to the shield, the more improvements are made to the sword. We think that with these [anti-missile] systems, we are just going to spur swordmakers to intensify their efforts.” Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy counseled, “There are so many other ways we could be pursuing stability...We don’t like anything that would further expand acceleration of missile capacity.”

Peter Hain, the British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, aired the most blatantly ignored problem with NMD: “This system has not been tested. It’s vulnerable to decoys and all sorts of other technological devices.”

The nuclear program of the United States has beset the world with problems from the start. Military experts during the Cold War touted “mutual assured destruction” as the world’s primary defense against the specter of nuclear annihilation. Over 60,000 warheads have been produced worldwide, enough to allow for leveling of the planet many times over. An analysis done by Stephen Schwartz of the Brookings Institute determined that America’s nuclear arsenal, when all development, deployment, cleanup, and associate costs are factored in, cost over $5.5 trillion. Fallout from weapons testing in the atmosphere and on the ground will in the end have killed roughly 800,000 people—more than the combined American casualties of war since World War I.

In addition to the astounding financial burden NMD will impose upon the country, it will prod the lesser nuclear powers to accelerate their nuclear programs lest they fall behind. New nuclear powers India and Pakistan, who frequently skirmish along their border, are particularly volatile. President Bush should sit long and hard on NMD before deciding he wants to be the man who led the world down a path of global destabilization, rampant hostility, and potential nuclear war. Considering the cost the world has incurred from America’s program, spurring more devastation with a $60 billion ground- and space-based shield is not a good idea.