TIME EUROPE
May 1, 2000 VOL. 155 NO. 17
Going Ballistic
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U.S. officials may try to lure the Russians with promises of further warhead cuts and offers to share missile-defense technology. "Russia should be more scared of (rogue) missiles than we are," points out one senior defense official. But Putin is unlikely to give in easily. He gained another bargaining chip last Friday when the Duma ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty. "The Russians want to set the stage so that the pieces are in place when it's time to deal," says Steven Simon of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. "In the meantime they'll say, 'Drop dead.'"
The danger in such a scenario is that the whole elaborate, decades-old structure of arms control could come tumbling down if the White House, under Republican heat, abandons the ABM pact. Frets a top E.U. foreign policy official: "The Americans say that unless they go to the precipice [of abrogating the treaty] the Russians won't move."
The absence of Allied cohesion will make swaying Moscow more complicated. "The Russians want to divide the alliance by saying we don't have unanimity," U.S. defense secretary Willam Cohen told TIME. "That's the most effective way to terminate any national missile defense by the U.S." So far, none of the European allies has expressed support for it (though Britain has lately tilted in that direction) and American officials hold little hope of winning a consensus within NATO. What they would prefer is for the naysayers, at the very least, to shut up. Says one State Department official: "If they don't support it, we don't want them to undercut it."
The Clinton administration is, however, at least partly to blame for European diffidence. Many European officials were stung by the U.S.'s failure to send anyone over to explain the NMD project until more than a year into its development. In December, after Cohen had finally met with NATO ministers in Brussels, he said that "we haven't changed any minds, but I think we've opened some." Perhaps, but earlier this year, when French Defense Minister Alain Richard outlined his objections to NMD in a meeting with Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State told an aide, "We really should give them more briefings." Commented a Richard aide: "Stop the goddam briefings already."
The rift over NMD comes at a sensitive time, with the two continents already squabbling over the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo and the E.U.'s plans for a defense identity outside NATO. To Europeans, NMD raises fears about what experts call decoupling: the idea that having a missile shield could tempt the U.S. to shirk commitments to NATO allies if they came under fire. Europeans also fret about a new arms race. "Europe is much more aware than the U.S. of Chinese opposition to missile defense," says Tom McDonald, an analyst with the British American Security Information Council, a London think tank: "NMD would emasculate the Chinese arsenal. So the impetus on the Chinese will be to build more nukes and if they do, India will say they have to as well — and pretty soon all efforts to strengthen nonproliferation will be shattered."
The chief source of European unease, though, is domestic politics. Once the U.S. goes forward — and even Europeans admit the question is not whether, but when — Europe's leaders could face volatile reactions at home. In Britain, for example, opposition is already brewing to a U.S. plan to update early-warning missile radars at Fylingdales, a base in northern England. Menzies Campbell, foreign affairs spokesman for Britain's Liberal Democrat Party, says that "it's not difficult to envision the kinds of protests outside Fylingdales that we saw for a long time at Greenham Common" — the U.S. cruise-missile site besieged by protesters for much of the 1980s. In his meeting with Putin last week, Prime Minister Tony Blair positioned himself as an interlocutor between the U.S. and Russia — rather than as a cheerleader for the U.S. position — and encouraged Putin to take up his misgivings directly with the Americans. "It will be much better if Washington and Moscow can make a deal," says one British diplomat.
But even that won't make the issue go away. To many Europeans, missile defense is just another example of America's troubling tendency to act unilaterally. It has also raised doubts about Europe's ability to respond to the threats of the new century. Washington policymakers would like NATO to develop its own missile defense system, but the prospect of European governments with skimpy defense budgets pouring billions into still-unproven military technology is fanciful at best. "NMD will oblige Europeans to have a debate, sooner than we'd like, on the necessity of developing our own system," says one French defense official. "And that's not a debate we need to tackle right now."
But it will have to be tackled sometime, and the sooner the better. Nuclear technology is still reaching the hands of outlaw nations whose behavior is less predictable than that of the old superpowers. The steady barrage of American briefings about the rogue-state missile threat has impressed some European diplomats: one top Turkish offical says now that "we don't share the complacency of some of our allies." While North Korea may remain a faraway concern, there are growing apprehensions about Iran, Iraq and Libya — mercurial regimes that may soon be able to strike Europe with mid-range nukes. In a crisis, however remote, they might target defenseless European capitals rather than challenge America's missile shield.
"The real problem for the Europeans," says a State Department official, "is if there is a clear threat and they don't do anything about it." The hard truth is that Europe can't stop America from pursuing its missile shield. But now may be the time for Europeans to start thinking about building one of their own.
— With reporting by William Dowell / United Nations, James Graff / Brussels, J.F.O. McAllister / London, Thomas Sancton / Paris, Mark Thompson / Washington and Yuri Zarakhovich / Moscow
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May 1, 2000
COVER
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DEPARTMENTS
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World Watch
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