The Misguided NATO Missile Defense Debate

Glenn Diesen

Security, Europe

The new missile defense base in Romania signifies another step towards a precarious and unpredictable nuclear confrontation with Russia.

A new NATO missile defense base in Romania recently became operational, which has revived an erroneous debate about whether the step significantly alters nuclear parity between NATO and Russia.

Discussions about NATO's current missile defense capabilities are a distraction from Moscow's actual concerns about future missile defense deployments and its argument for establishing technical 'legal guarantees' to reduce uncertainties and prevent an arms race. Risks from any escalation of tension do not derive from disagreement with Russia over the merits of its security concerns. Rather, Russia's arguments have not been addressed and discussions on the prospect of an international treaty to regulate and set an upper limit for missile defense capabilities has been absent.

The threat of missile defense gradually making first-strike dynamics favorable to a second-strike could have disastrous impact on decision-making during heightened tensions between NATO and Russia. This is not a new or controversial argument as it was the reasoning behind the US-Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 1972. The unilateral US withdrawal from the ABM in 2001 to establish a "limited missile defense system' did not produce a new international treaty to ensure it would remain 'limited." As former French President Jacques Chirac warned, missile defense could "pave the way" for unlimited and unconstrained development of an "even more ambitious system." Walter Slocombe, the former US Under Secretary of Defense, encouraged more recognition for "the more understandable Russian fear that once the US commits to a partial defense, it will inevitably proceed to technologies and scales of deployment that could conceivably put Russian retaliatory capabilities at risk."

History demonstrates that when a new weapons technology is introduced, the technology and deployments are initially rudimentary and ineffective. Focus should therefore be devoted to their likely evolution as the first deployments often serve the function of establishing a platform for future advancements.