Reagan's 'Strategic Defence Initiative' (SDI) was derisively dubbed 'Star Wars' back in 1983. If anything it was unfair on Star Wars because Darth Vader actually had a laser and it worked pretty well, while the success of SDI seemed entirely dependent on Soviet missiles colliding in space.
No-one is calling it Star Wars anymore. Today, Condeeleza Rice signed an agreement with Poland to station ten US missile interceptors in Poland by 2012. Subject to ratification from the Polish parliament, the US will have 'boots on the ground' in Poland, and the missile shield will become reality; a reality that will cost the US taxpayer upwards of $4.8 billion over the next five years.
The shield is being built to counter the threat of Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles, says President Bush. Except Iran doesn't have any ICBMs. To develop them it will need a nuclear capacity, a colossal pile of money and, ideally, Wernher von Braun, three things it currently lacks. What Ahmadinejād does have is the Shahab-3 rocket which can get to the shops and back, but looks a long way from being operational, as former UN weapons inspector Geoffrey Forden testifies. We know this because the last time they tested it bits fell off.
'Irrelevant', blusters Missile Defense Agency director, Lieutenant General Obering. "We can't wait until we actually see one of those long-range tests to begin to build the missile defenses," he puffs. Fair enough, but if Iran's weapons program is as advanced as the Bush administration would have us believe, surely it will be able to target Israel long before it can send them anywhere near Poland? And Bush has made it fairly clear that airstrikes will prevent that ever happening (as Pilger argues). So how does the shield reconcile with the doctrine of pre-emption, the one consistent principle driving an administration virtually principle-free?
Thankfully this will soon be Obama or McCain's problem, because with Putin in the Kremlin, the Georgian crisis still unresolved and the restoration of Russian prestige high on the agenda, this is a frightening situation. Bush's move is provocative and breaches the spirit of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, unbalancing the long-established principle of nuclear deterrence and mutually assured destruction. Ah! Not so, says Obering:
"We talked about taking transparency measures with the Russians. First of all, we've invited them to our missile defense sites. But more importantly, we said, 'you're concerned about this being aimed at you and not the Iranian threat.' We will build the sites, activate them, test them, and then we will not bring them to an operational status unless the Iranian threat emerges. That was our proposal. We think that's eminently reasonable."
Somehow I don't think the Russians are going to buy that. You don't need to be Jack Ryan to realise that the line Putin's generals will be taking right now is that if the US can build ten interceptors for Poland, it can build 100. Dr. Strangelove would probably call it 'the missile interceptor gap'.
The shield make no sense — strategically, economically or diplomatically — so why then? President Eisenhower answered this question almost 60 years ago in his brilliant final Oval Office address. He warned the nation to guard against "the acquisition of unwarranted influence by the military industrial complex," which would develop a momentum of its own.
"The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
It was a point made in Eugene Jarecki's 2005 documentary Why We Fight and made forcefully again by George Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian: "Federal Government is a vast corporate welfare programme, rewarding the industries that give millions of dollars in political donations with contracts worth billions." Missile defence, Monbiot contends, is "the biggest pork barrel of all, the magic pudding that won't run out."
Someone, somewhere has edged us a little closer to the edge for that extra spoonful.
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