Image Source: Missile Defense Agency – Public Domain

Last month, I wrote about the waste and futility of deploying a national missile defense (NMD), focussing on the technical issues that make the system unnecessary, unworkable and unaffordable. This week, I want to discuss the many strategic problems that NMD will create and the geopolitical problems that will be created. There is nothing positive that can be associated with NMD, and the strategic issues are more threatening than the technical ones. It’s lose-lose in every way!

The off-and-on debate that has revolved around the feasibility and dependability of NMD has been present since the Reagan administration and the mythology associated with Star Wars or the Strategic Defense Initiative. President Ronald Reagan had a huge number of chicken hawks in his administration—Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger, Deputy Defense Secretary Richard (the heart of darkness) Perle, and Perle protege Frank Gaffney, who ran his own pro-Star Wars think tank (the Center for Security Policy) on behalf of the Reagan administration. All were opposed to arms control and disarmament.

National security adviser Robert McFarland argued that the only advantage in pursuing NMD was in its value as a bargaining chip. McFarland believed that the threat of NMD could either bring the Chinese into the arms control dialogue or entice the Soviets to........

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