jepzilla.com - Ballistic Missile Defense

May 19, 2010

or how Russia came to hate the ballistic missile interceptor.

This topic is in the news again, since a pair of BMD critics are calling into question the US military’s claims of success in SM-3 trials. But as always, the political implications of the missile shield has entered the discussion, so I feel obliged to explain the situation somewhat. Bear in mind that I don’t claim to be an expert on geopolitics or nuclear war, just an interested outsider who understands the issues a little better than most.

So Russia is not a fan of the American missile defense plan. Many people don’t really understand why though. The shield is intended to protect America from an attack by a country like Iran or North Korea, with only a handful of missiles and warheads. Surely Russia’s ~8000 nuclear weapons would be sufficient to overwhelm any shield, is a common statement. Well, not so much.

To understand missile defence, you must understand nuclear war. We have a popular conception, created by Civil Defense publications, dystopian predictions and popular fiction, of the reality of nuclear war: cities annihilated in atomic blasts, mass death and destruction and survivors struggling in the ensuing wasteland. A testament to human evil, for what other purpose would such a horror serve?

Reality is, of course, not so simple. If America wanted to invade Russia, or vice-versa, attacking the others’ population centers with nuclear weapons isn’t really a great idea. Such an attack would, in a matter of minutes, reduce either nation to the state of Europe, post-WWII, but with less need for streetlights at night. Western Europe recovered, with great assistance from America: the Marshall plan. The Marshall plan is now regarded as a great historical success, but it’s worth remembering that it was politically unpopular at the time due to its great cost. In the UK rationing continued for almost a decade after the end of the War, despite surviving relatively unscathed (compared to continental Europe). No invader would want to deal with the fallout (literally and figuratively) of this kind of attack.

The feared nuclear holocaust is what would be called a ‘second-strike.’ A second-strike is the response of one nuclear armed state to a nuclear attack: “from Hell’s heart I stab at thee.” Your country has just been attacked by nuclear weapons, so as a last dying act, you unleash hell upon your attackers. Mutually assured destruction: you can attack me, but in response I will bring down a holocaust upon your head, and death to your people.

The second major kind of nuclear attack is called a ‘first-strike.’ And represents the first nuclear attack of any hostilities. Since your enemy will certainly attempt a second-strike in response, the primary role of the first-strike is to stop them. You don’t aim your weapons at civilians, you aim your weapons at the other sides’ weapons. Nuclear missiles targeting missile silos and air bases, hunter-killer submarines with nuclear-tipped torpedoes targeting other submarines and aircraft carriers. You can defeat a conventional military with a handful of nuclear weapons; you need the other 10,000 nuclear weapons to defeat the enemy’s 10,000 nuclear weapons they plan on firing right back at you.

So a hypothetical nuclear war could proceed with America launching its weapons at Russia (you can swap those around if you want), with the primary goal of destroying Russia’s weapons before it can fire them back at American cities. A handful of other weapons would be targeted at Russian conventional forces. Whatever Russian weapons survive are then launched back at American cities. New York and probably a few others population centers disappear, and then America and Russia slug it out with what’s left of their armed forces.

An American first strike on Russia would probably wipe out almost all of Russia’s nuclear weapons[1]. But a few would survive, and America would not politically tolerate the loss of a major city in exchange for a nuclear first strike on Russia.

Here’s where BMD comes in: a Russian second-strike today would probably resemble an Iranian or North Korean first-strike. The missile shield would certainly be overwhelmed by a Russian first-strike, but it might just be able to defeat a second-strike. So Russia is no longer America’s equal in nuclear warfare; mutually assured destruction now only works one way.

Despite this “destabilizing influence,” I still support ballistic missile defense. A more subtle analysis (but not an expert one, I’ll remind the reader) suggests that it’s not really as destabilizing as some fear. I’ll explain why in another post.

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[1] “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61508/keir-a-lieber-and-daryl-g-press/the-rise-of-us-nuclear-primacy