U.S. Response I:  Bush Rejected Final Insurance Offer, Senators Say

By Pamela Barnett

CongressDaily

WASHINGTON — The ideological dispute over tort reform that toppled terrorism insurance legislation in 2001 is again threatening to upend the bill, with Senate Democrats late Thursday saying the White House failed to respond to what they described as their “final” and most conciliatory offer.

“People have asked, ‘What is the best you can do?’  We’re here to tell you, this is the best we can do,” said Senator Christopher Dodd (D-Conn).  “If you take this language, we can have a bill signing ceremony in 24 hours.”

“This is our final plea.  We’ve gone as far as we can go.  The trial lawyers don’t like it, I can tell you that,” Senator Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) added.

President George W. Bush Thursday called for Congress to reach an agreement by today, demanding in appearances that Congress place a bill on his desk on terrorism insurance, homeland security and Defense appropriations.  At a hastily convened news conference, a clearly exasperated Dodd and Schumer indicated they decided to go public on the secretive negotiations as a last ditch effort, after waiting since Wednesday to hear back from the White House on their most recent offer.

At issue is whether businesses should be shielded from liability associated with acts of terror.  The House-passed version of the terrorism bill incorporated tough legal-reform language that effectively prohibits any collection of punitive damages by victims of terrorism and caps attorney’s fees associated with such cases.  The Senate bill is silent on business liability, but shields the federal government.

The senators said the White House had sent “signals” that it would not accept the Democrats’ latest offer on liability.  Sources familiar with the proposal said the White House had sent it back with suggested changes.

That rejection apparently proved galling to the Democratic senators, who said they literally lifted GOP-drafted liability language included in last year’s education reform bill, which was approved by both chambers and subsequently signed into law by Bush.

The civil justice reform language in the education bill dealt with shielding teachers from lawsuits arising out of efforts to maintain classroom discipline.

Specifically, the bill limited the availability of punitive damages against teachers by requiring “clear and convincing evidence of willful or criminal misconduct, or a conscious, flagrant indifference to the rights or safety of the individual harmed.”

Dodd and Schumer said they proposed that the exact same standard, which represents an extremely high legal bar, be applied to terror-related lawsuits brought against private business.

“It has already been accepted as part of earlier legislation,” Dodd said.  “Can you take this legislation, and apply it here?”

Touted by such groups as the American Tort Reform Association as the most significant federal legal reform achieved during Bush’s tenure, the so-called teacher protection language is hardly popular with the trial bar, Schumer emphasized.

Nevertheless, Dodd said it was his understanding that the deal had been approved by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), who has been accused by the GOP of coddling the trial bar at the expense of the insurance bill.

Schumer said he was “totally befuddled” by the White House’s failure to embrace their compromise.

“We’ve gone as far as we can go,” he said, but added, “The signals we’re getting from the White House is that they’re not accepting it.”

Schumer said it would be a “tragedy” for the terrorism reinsurance bill to suffer the same fate as bankruptcy reform legislation, and suggested the White House is being held hostage to a handful of “ideologues” and tort reform “extremists” in “both chambers.”

Schumer also took a jab at the White House, saying:  “Leadership is not holding press conferences and saying you want a bill.  Leadership means telling this extreme element, this needs to get done.”

Asked whether he thought a deal was still possible this year if today’s deadline was missed, Schumer shrugged.  “There’s always life while we’re still in session,” he said.

Dodd conceded that other parts of the reinsurance negotiations remain unresolved, including questions about whether to include the House’s “payback” mechanism.

However, Dodd said he felt confident those aspects could be quickly settled if the tort reform issue was settled.

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U.S. Response II:  Senate Democrats Reject Homeland Compromise

U.S. Senate Democrats yesterday rejected a Republican compromise on legislation to establish a homeland security department, which has been mired in debate for five weeks, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, Oct. 2).

The Republican compromise, which would have modified a bipartisan-suggested alternative, would have preserved the authority sought by President George W. Bush to waive union agreements for employees of the new department (see GSN, Sept. 25).  It would also have mandated, however, that for the waiver to apply, an employee’s job must have “materially changed” through transfer to the new department.  The Republican compromise would have allowed the president to use the waiver in the event of such a job change or of a change in the threat of domestic terrorism.

The Republican proposal contained nothing new and would have weakened the labor protections included in the bipartisan alternative, said Ranit Schmelzer, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.).

“This is all show and no substance,” Schmelzer said (Curt Anderson, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, Oct. 4).

As Long As It Takes

Leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives said yesterday that they plan to stay in session until they pass the homeland security department bill.

“If it isn’t passed, we’re just going to stay until the election, and then we’ll be right back right after the election,” Daschle said.

The House also plans to stay in session in the event the Senate completes work on the bill, House Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) said.

“If we have to come back one day a week to be in session to make sure that we are here, so that we can finish our work if the Senate does their work on homeland security, we will do that,” he said.

The Senate has made little progress on the homeland security bill since debate began in early September, according to the Washington Times.  Senate Republicans, supported by Senator Zell Miller (D-Ga.), have blocked five attempts to end debate, saying such a move would prevent an up-or-down vote on the White House proposal.  With the Senate scheduled next week to debate Iraq, there is no scheduled time to resume work on the bill before Congress is expected to adjourn Oct. 11 to campaign for the November elections, according to the Times.

Bush spoke out in support of the homeland security bill yesterday, saying he will accept no compromise on the hiring flexibility he has sought.

“The Senate must understand that I have a duty not only to protect the American people, but a duty to protect the prerogatives of the president,” Bush said during a Hispanic Heritage Month meeting of Republicans.

Democrats have offered their own version of the homeland security department bill, which is almost identical to the White House’s proposal, Daschle said.

“It’s down really to two things:  Should you have a right to belong to a union?  And if you’re fired, should some independent board have a chance to review why you were fired?  That’s really what we’re talking about here,” he said (Stephen Dinan, Washington Times, Oct. 4).

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Iraq:  U.S., U.K. Press for New Resolution After Blix Briefing

By Jim Wurst
Global Security Newswire

UNITED NATIONS — The United States and the United Kingdom are using yesterday’s briefing by the chief U.N. weapons inspectors to press their case for rapid passage of a new, tougher Security Council resolution on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Oct. 2).

Hans Blix, head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), and Mohammed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, briefed the council yesterday on technical talks that they had with Iraqi officials in Vienna earlier this week.  Blix’s analysis that “there are still various loose ends that should be picked up” was cited by the U.S. and British ambassadors as proof that inspections to locate all of Iraq’s nuclear, chemical and biological weapons facilities cannot be effective under the current Security Council mandate.

“We have stated that we do not wish to deploy inspectors until practical arrangements have been talked through.  In large measure this has not been done.  Some loose ends remain which should be tied up,” Blix said, according to the talking points of his closed-door presentation to the council.  Unresolved issues include freedom for inspectors to interview Iraqis, safety in no-fly zones and access to presidential palaces.

After the briefing, U.K. Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told reporters that all “relevant” matters are not clear, therefore “it is going to mean another resolution, a resolution that makes it unequivocally clear what the duties of Iraq are in meeting the requirements of disarmament.”

Deputy U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham said, “These terms of reference aren’t good enough to get the job done that we need to have done.  We repeated that we are seeking a further resolution with additional guidance and authority for them that will strengthen their efforts and enable them effectively to pursue the goal of disarmament.”

Another U.S. official said, “Blix was perfectly clear … there are loose ends that remain.  The access to presidential sites has not even been discussed, so the Iraqis have not agreed to full and unfettered access. … If you do not have access to presidential sites, you do not have access.”

Access to the eight presidential sites is regulated by a 1998 memorandum of understanding negotiated by the United Nations and Iraq.  The sites are not off-limits, but inspectors must give advance notice before examining them and diplomats must accompany the inspectors.  The memorandum, and therefore access to the sites, did not come up in the Vienna talks.

Later yesterday, the five permanent members of the council — the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia and China — met without coming to any firm decision on the U.S.-U.K. draft resolution.

While speaking with reporters after their briefing, Blix and ElBaradei hinted that they might back off from original plans to send inspectors to Iraq by mid-October — which rely on their existing mandate from Resolution 1284, the December 1999 resolution establishing UNMOVIC — and instead wait until the council passes a new resolution.

“We can go back there, no one denies that we have a legal basis for doing that,” Blix said.  “The question was whether one should solve every practical arrangement — we solved a good deal in Vienna — but there are matters and some loose ends that need to be resolved before we go to Baghdad.”

ElBaradei told reporters, “We need to align our dates with the deliberations of the council and I think there was an agreement in the council that both the council and us should proceed without a great deal of delay.”

Blix added, “We have not purchased the air tickets yet, but we have plans to go, yes. ... I hope we wouldn’t be delayed long, I think the council would want us to go early.  We are ready to go at the earliest practical opportunity.”

The United States and United Kingdom repeated the view that Blix should wait.  According to Cunningham, “It would be desirable to have clarity about the outcome of that debate prior to the return of inspectors, rather than having the inspectors go back under the existing situation.”

Greenstock said, “I think [Blix] wants full clarity from the council before he begins to deploy his inspectors … It would be practical and I would say politically wise for those discussions to finish so that he is 100 percent clear across the full range of his business.”

Blix and ElBaradei are meeting U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell and other officials in Washington today.  Blix told reporters, “I hope to hear something of what their planning is and we’ll tell them what our planning is.”

“New Opportunity” to Verify Disarmament

According to Blix’s talking points, he told the council, “For progress on key remaining disarmament tasks, it will not be enough that Iraq open doors promptly and widely to inspectors.  More evidence is needed to erase question marks and whatever proscribed items may exist should be declared and eliminated under supervision.  There is now a new opportunity.”

In UNMOVIC terminology, there are “sensitive” and “presidential” sites, each with their own terms of reference for inspections.  Blix said the agreement on access to sensitive sites — ministries, military camps, offices of security services — “could be without prior notice and … it would be immediate.”

Blix said there had been progress in establishing procedures for the use of UNMOVIC aircraft.  However, Blix said, “Iraq was not in a position to provide full guarantees about safety in the no-fly zones.”  The two no-fly zones, which cover more than half the country, are controlled by the United States and United Kingdom.

Concerning procedures for interviewing Iraqis, Blix said that in the past there were “highly unwelcomed incidents in which the interviewed person was clearly intimidated” by Iraqi officials.  Blix wants to be able to interview people “without any official presence,” he said.  He did not get a commitment on this point from the Iraqis.

Blix told the council that many of the practical arrangements that were followed from 1991 to 1998 “remain viable and useful and can be applied.”  These arrangements include that inspectors will have diplomatic status, which means, among other things, their nationalities do not have to be revealed and communications equipment may be brought into Iraq without declarations.  Blix also said “there was a readiness to accept” field offices in the cities of Basra and Mosul.

In Vienna, Blix received four CD-ROMs from Iraq containing the backlog of monitoring declarations for sites and items that have dual-use capabilities, meaning that they have both civilian and military applications, covering June 1998 to July 2002.  Blix told the council the data “will show us changes in facilities and equipment.  We will be able to better select sites for [inspections] with this documentation.”

For further information, see:

U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission

International Atomic Energy Agency

U.N. Resolution 1284

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North Korea:  U.S. Envoy Begins Second Day of Talks

A U.S. delegation led by Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly began a second day of talks today with North Korean officials in Pyongyang (see GSN, Oct. 3).

Kelly met yesterday with a North Korean delegation led by Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye Gwan and then ate an informal dinner with the officials, State spokesman Richard Boucher said.  Kelly plans to continue discussions today before returning to Seoul Saturday, according to Boucher.

“His mission is ... to explore comprehensive dialogue with North Korea and, based on close coordination with South Korea and Japan, to explain U.S. policy and seek progress on a range of issues of long-standing concern to the United States,” Boucher said of Kelly’s discussion plans (Martin Nesirky, Reuters/Yahoo.com, Oct. 4).

North Korea expects the visitors to outline the U.S. policy on Korea and to “exchange views of issues of bilateral concern,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported.  Kelly is the highest-ranking U.S. official to travel to North Korea since a visit in 2000 by then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, according to the agency (Korean Central News Agency, Oct. 3).

IAEA Waits for Final Confirmation on Inspections

Meanwhile, the International Atomic Energy Agency is awaiting final confirmation from Pyongyang to begin inspections of North Korea’s nuclear program, the agency said yesterday.

“We have made initial contact with North Korea’s diplomatic mission here in Vienna and are awaiting a response to a follow-up fax we sent to Pyongyang,” IAEA spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.  “We’re ready to go there anytime, the same as (with weapons inspections) in Iraq.  We’ve even developed some specialized equipment tailored to North Korea’s nuclear fuel to analyze its contents” (Reuters, Oct. 3).

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United States:  Air Force Begins Peacekeeper ICBM Dismantlement

The U.S. Air Force Tuesday began dismantling 50 Peacekeeper ICBMs stationed at Warren air base in Wyoming (see GSN, Sept. 27).  The dismantlement should help the United States reach the maximum limit of 2,200 deployed warheads that the U.S.-Russian Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty dictates.

Air Force technicians Tuesday began removing 10 warheads from the first Peacekeeper scheduled to be dismantled, according to the Associated Press.  They sent the warheads Wednesday to an Energy Department site for storage.  U.S. officials plan to use the warheads to replace older ones on Minuteman 3 ICBMs stationed at bases in Montana, North Dakota and Wyoming, AP reported.

Officials plan to dismantle each Peacekeeper in sections because of its sophistication, Air Force Col. John Faulkner, commander of the air base’s 90^th Maintenance Group, said.  Technicians plan to remove one section per day from a missile, resulting in a 17-day process for each missile.  Each launch facility will be maintained as a nuclear site until the missile is completely deactivated, and then the Pentagon will decide what to do with it, Faulkner said.

“I honestly didn’t think this day would happen when I left the service in the early 1980s ... I’m delighted this day is here,” Air Force Secretary James Roche said during a visit to the air base.  The deactivation “is a reflection of how the world has changed and is adapting to a new era.  In that new era we don’t need as many nuclear systems,” he said (Sarah Cooke, Associated Press, Oct. 4).

For further information, see:

U.S.-Russia Nuclear Reduction Treaty Text (U.S. State Department)

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U.S.-Russia:  HEU Deal Eliminates Equivalent of 6,000 Warheads

More than 150 metric tons of Russian highly enriched uranium, the equivalent of 6,000 nuclear weapons, has been eliminated to date through the U.S.-Russian “Megatons to Megawatts” program, the U.S. Enrichment Corporation said yesterday (see GSN, May 10).

Under the program, USEC purchases uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons for use as fuel in U.S. nuclear power plants.  Since 1994, the program has provided enough fuel to power a city the size of Boston for about 230 years, USEC said in a press release.

When the Megatons to Megawatts program is completed — scheduled to be in 2013 — 500 metric tons of uranium taken from Russian nuclear weapons will have been converted into enough nuclear fuel to power the entire United States for two years, USEC said.  So far, the program has completed about one-third of its 20-year goal, USEC and Techsnabexport, the Russian agent for the program, said in a joint statement.

“Each and every day, the Megatons to Megawatts program eliminates more nuclear warhead material.  And from this warhead material we derive a valuable resource — clean-burning nuclear fuel, used to light and power our nation from coast to coast,” USEC President and Chief Executive Officer William Timbers said at a press conference yesterday in Washington.

“We have reached a milestone on the way to a better future,” said Techsnabexport General Director Vladimir Smirnov.  “The celebration today would be inconceivable without the constant cooperation of the executive agents, the goodwill they have demonstrated so many times and their constant readiness to seek mutually acceptable solutions.”

The United States and Russia signed an agreement in 1993 to create the Megatons to Megawatts program.  Russia is expected to receive $8 billion from its participation (U.S. Enrichment Corporation release, Oct. 3).

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Anthrax:  Vaccine Makers Hope to Begin Production Next Year

The United States has contracted two pharmaceutical companies to produce 25 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine, health officials said yesterday.  Under a fast-track proposal, production is scheduled to begin by late next year (see GSN, Aug. 8).

“There is an urgent need to devise more effective measures to protect U.S. citizens from the harmful effects of anthrax spores used as instruments of terror,” Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson said.

British company Avecia and U.S. company VaxGen received the contracts to produce the vaccine, worth a combined $22.5 million.  The contracts call for a vaccine that can be used as a post-exposure treatment and can be administered in three or fewer doses.  The current vaccine, in use by the Pentagon, requires six doses administered over 18 months.

The new anthrax vaccine is also to be produced through more modern techniques than the current vaccine, according to the Washington Post.  Developers plan to use “recombinant” technology to use genetically engineered bacteria and leave out extraneous substances that could cause side effects, according to the Washington Post (Washington Post, Oct. 4).

For further information, see:

CDC Frequently Asked Questions About Anthrax

Journal of the American Medical Association Background on Anthrax

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United States:  Oregon Shuts Down Weapons Incinerator

A test burn at the U.S. Umatilla Chemical Depot in Oregon released more than the allowable amounts of chromium and lead into the air, forcing state environmental officials Wednesday to declare the facility closed until further notice (see GSN, Sept. 5).

The incinerator’s stack released more than twice the allowable amount of chromium and slightly more than the permissible amount of lead, but the 10-minute test did not release enough metals to harm the general public, officials said.  Army technicians are testing the incinerator to determine the cause of the problem, the Associated Press reported.

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality told the Army it has until Monday to produce an assessment plan identifying the problem and a solution.  The department said it will require weekly meetings with the Army until the problem is fixed and burns may begin (Associated Press, Oct. 4).

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Pakistan:  Officials Test-Fire Shaheen Missile

Pakistan test-fired a Shaheen surface-to-surface missile today, government officials said.  The missile, also known as a Hatf 4, can carry nuclear or conventional warheads and has a range of 380 miles, according to officials.

Pakistani officials played down the significance of the tests and said its neighbor and rival India should not be alarmed (see GSN, June 19).  India was notified in advance of the tests, they said.

“This is a sort of routine test,” an army spokesman said (see GSN, May 28).

“It has nothing to do with anything but to test the technical aspects of the missile,” said a Foreign Ministry spokesman

The last missile test that Pakistan conducted was in May, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, May 21; Associated Press/New York Times, Oct. 4).

India dismissed today’s test as playing to elections next week in Pakistan.

“As we have said before, we are not particularly impressed with these missile antics of Pakistan,” an Indian government spokeswoman said (CNN, Oct. 4).

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Iran:  Shahab Missile Designed to Oppose Israeli Counterpart, Official Says

Iran developed its Shahab missile for the purpose of retaliating against possible Israeli strikes, the Jerusalem Post reported today (see GSN, July 10).

The Shahab was designed to hit Israel and counter the Israeli Jericho missile, Ahmed Wahid, head of Iran’s missile development said Thursday.  Wahid did not specify the version of the Shahab to which he was referring.

The comments may have been made in light of a possible U.S. conflict with Iraq, experts said.

“This could be seen as a warning to America and perhaps to Israel not to even consider trying to carry out any operations against Iran during a strike on Iraq,” professor Gabriel Ben-Dor, of the University of Haifa, said.

Iran is not trying to develop missiles that can reach the United States, Wahid said.

“American territory is not part of our strategic defense targets,” Wahid said.

Contrary to reports and U.S. assertions, Iran is not attempting to develop nuclear weapons, Wahid said, and Iran’s interest in missiles is only for retaliatory strikes.

“Israel has 200 nuclear warheads,” Wahid said.  “We have no nuclear weapons and we are not trying to obtain them.  If there is a strike against us, however, we will respond with all our abilities” (David Rudge, Jerusalem Post, Oct. 4).

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U.S. Plans I:  Missile Debate Is Over and Bush Won, Prominent Critic Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — One of the most prominent voices of the U.S. arms control community has declared that the Bush administration and other proponents of developing a national missile defense have won politically, and that the 20-year debate over whether to pursue such a defense is over.

The view does not necessarily reflect a consensus in the arms control community, with another prominent critic saying the debate should continue.

“I think the great strategic debate over national missile defense is over,” said Joseph Cirincione, speaking to a crowd containing numerous arms control heavyweights Wednesday night who were assembled to preview a television documentary profiling the debate’s major arguments and trends.   Cirincione heads the Nonproliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which hosted the preview. 

Arms control community concerns about the negative implications of withdrawing from the missile defense-limiting 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, he said, have turned out to be wrong.

“Other treaties did not fall like dominoes.  The world did not get destabilized.  The ABM Treaty is dead and it turns out it doesn’t really matter,” he said.

Missile defense opponents had argued that withdrawal from the treaty, commonly referred to as the “cornerstone” of global arms control, would prompt other countries to back away from commitments to other agreements, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, U.S.-Russian strategic arms reduction pacts and a treaty banning nuclear weapons testing.

The question about missile defense will no longer be whether or not to pursue and deploy it — some sort of limited system will be deployed, Cirincione said.  Rather, questions will persist about how aggressively the United States should pursue missile defenses in light of any evidence they will ever work. 

“I think that the missile defense system is going to be treated like any other defense system now, it is going to be judged on performance, cost and schedule and will compete with other programs for scarce defense dollars,” he said.

Cirincione also raised some eyebrows when asked what it would take for him to support a national missile defense.  Evidence of a proven space-based technology, he said, adding he believes it the only viable approach to national missile defense would be by developing space-based directed energy weapons.

Missile defense proponent David Smith generally agreed with Cirincione’s views.

“One thing that’s new is that Joe Cirincione and I find ourselves in agreement on an awful lot of things these days,” said Smith, senior U.S. arms control official in former President George H.W. Bush’s administration and now chief operating officer of the National Institute for Public Policy.

Baker Spring, a Heritage Foundation missile defense advocate, said the ideological component of the debate over missile defense is fading but is not gone yet.

Death Defying

Charting a roller coaster trajectory, the debate over missile defense has been a core issue for the arms control community since the 1983 unveiling of former President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative, which called for an expanded research and development program of missile defense systems.  Critics dubbed it “Star Wars,” and cast it as excessively costly and technically infeasible.

Advocates would later claim the U.S. commitment to the program, which the Soviet Union could not match other than by expensively ratcheting up nuclear weapons production and deployment, was an important factor leading to the end of the Cold War.  Missile defense opponents seemed to have scored a decisive victory in the early 1990s, however, with the disappearance of the Cold War Soviet nuclear threat, which prompted a dramatic decrease in political support and funding.

Backed by re-emerging, vocal political support in a hotly contested Congress and perceptions of the growing threats posed by North Korea and Iran, however, the fortunes of national missile defense gradually reversed during the past decade, with the annual budget for developing a range of technologies climbing to nearly $8 billion last fiscal year.

Senators and representatives from both parties in hearings as late as this summer did continue to press the administration for answers on questions of whether the systems will ever work, whether the long-term international political implications might outweigh potential benefits and whether they just might be too costly.

For the second year in a row, however, a Senate effort to cut significant funding from the national missile defense resulted in a compromise that allowed the Pentagon to spend the contested money as it wished.

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and the Bush administration’s treaty withdrawal in June effectively ended the missile defense debate, Cirincione said.

He also gave credit to Russia for its “historic decision … to realign itself with the West in such a way that there wasn’t an international crisis, as many, including me, predicted there would be.”

Cirincione also cited Russian and Chinese convictions that the system will never actually prove effective.

“Basically Russia and China have come to realize, that although they may not like it, that they may have to live in a world without the ABM Treaty, but it’s probably going to be a world without ballistic missile defense as well because nothing is happening real soon on this,” he said.

Spring cited the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, arguing it changed Russian and U.S. perceptions about the requirements of arms control agreements intended to limit the threats they posed to each other.

“When that ceased to be essentially the pertinent environment, it was inevitable in my judgment that both sides would go back and reassess all of the things that had to do with the notions of strategic stability, and offensive strategic nuclear force requirements, and the wisdom of strategic defenses.”

A Draw

While conceding a loss in the political debate, Cirincione claimed no defeat in the debate over whether the system ultimately will prove effective, or whether it will amount to a colossal waste of billions of dollars.

“Both sides won,” he said.

The arms control community has also prevailed with its view that national missile defense is unlikely to overcome serious technological changes and will prove costly at the expense of other defense priorities, he said, citing continued congressional skepticism and an administration decision to cancel one underdeveloped missile defense program.

He predicted that this skeptical view would prove correct.

“I am a technical pessimist on missile defense.  I don’t believe that we’re going to ever, ever have an effective missile defense system. That the cost is simply too high and the technology is just too great,” he said.

Critics Will Keep Fighting

Cirincione’s views on the end of the debate do not necessarily represent a consensus in the anti-missile defense community.

“As a matter of fact, I don’t agree with Joe Cirincione on that and I went up and told him afterwards,” said John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World and a long time anti-missile defense lobbyist.

Isaacs agreed that there have not yet been any significant repercussions from the treaty withdrawal, but “we don’t know the long-term implications, we don’t know what China will do.”

“As to say we both won, and the fight’s over and it’s just going to be treated like any old major procurement program, I certainly don’t agree with that … The fight continues,” he said.

Isaacs noted the administration plans to proceed with placing up to six interceptor missile silos at Fort Greely, Alaska, ostensibly for testing but also available for use in the event of an attack.

He said it remains to be decided whether the military will be able to go beyond that and fulfill its plans to deploy ground-based, sea-based and space-based defenses.

“Especially a missile defense system in space has all sorts of other consequences about using space for war, which is a very different concept with very bad implications,” he said.

“That fight certainly has not been settled,” Isaacs said.

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Russia:  Missile Interceptor Test-Fires Successfully

Russia Wednesday evening launched a successful flight test of a 20-year-old missile interceptor, Moscow’s Interfax reported (see GSN, Oct. 2).  Officials said the launch, which took place in Kazakhstan, was designed to test the interceptor’s reliability.  The success of the launch will allow Russia to extend the interceptor’s service life, said Maj. Gen. Oleg Gromov (Interfax, Oct. 2).

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U.S. Plans II:  New Radar Could Improve Cruise Missile Defense

U.S. Air Force and defense industry officials are touting a new radar as a “three-dimensional, high-definition, cruise missile defense system,” Aviation Week reported this week (see GSN, Aug. 19).

Northrop Grumman and Raytheon have dramatically upgraded a radar system used for ground surveillance aircraft to create the Multi-Platform Radar Technology Insertion program, officials said.  Improved modules on the radar enable it to detect low-flying cruise missiles at more than 200 miles (see GSN, April 16).

Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles are also being considered for cruise missile defense, according to Paul Meyer, Northrop Grumman’s vice president for business and strategy development.  The aircraft would patrol for cruise missiles 1,000 nautical miles off the U.S. coast and be able to track them closely enough to direct air defense.  The UAV might also be equipped with sensors to detect chemical and biological weapons (David Fulghum, Aviation Week, Sept. 30).

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