The Secretary Of Missile Defense

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Rumsfeld rejects such bellyaching. "Not everybody's involved in everything that goes on," he said last week. His famous, copyrighted "Rumsfeld's Rules," some 150 maxims for surviving in Washington are a mix of Peter Drucker and Yogi Berra, puts it succinctly: "If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much."

Rumsfeld's return to power is all the more remarkable because he and the first President Bush were participants in a 25-year rivalry. When Ford was hunting for a Vice President, it was Rumsfeld who pushed Bush the elder all the way to Beijing--and out of the running. Rumsfeld wanted the Veep job, but Nelson Rockefeller got it. When Rockefeller was cut from the G.O.P. ticket in 1976, Rumsfeld, again seeking the spot, maneuvered Bush over to the CIA. Bob Dole got to be running mate. Rumsfeld made a brief and furtive run for the No. 2 spot in 1980 under Reagan and considered the nomination eight years later--losing both times to Bush. Rumsfeld put aside his ambitions for political power and chose to make millions running pharmaceutical giant G.D. Searle & Co.; General Instrument Corp., a television-and-cable-technology company; and Gilead Sciences Inc., a drug firm. His return to Washington was engineered by Dick Cheney, a protege Rumsfeld had helped make chief of staff in Ford's White House.

While Rumsfeld's shop faces the challenge of building the shield, it is the nation's diplomats spreading out over the world who face the equally arduous task of selling it overseas. This week deputies at the State and Defense departments and the National Security Council will jet to foreign capitals to peddle Rumsfeld's shield. It won't be easy. Washington's allies and its foes have grown accustomed to dealing with a world larded with nuclear weapons. During the cold war, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty of 1972 ensured that the U.S. and the Soviet Union would remain naked to the other's atomic wrath. While the logic of such mutual assured destruction was ghoulish, it did have one thing going for it: it worked.

Still, there are some signs that Bush may carry the day. British officials in Tony Blair's government have made receptive noises about missile defense. Indeed, the bipolar world is gone, the threat of rational superpowers replaced by rogue states or terrorists. The Bush team plainly views the ABM Treaty as a relic. Secretary of State Colin Powell has told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that "it may be necessary, ultimately, to walk out of the ABM Treaty and abrogate our responsibilities." Bush says he is willing to reduce the U.S.'s 7,200 nuclear weapons quickly and unilaterally to entice both allies and such potential foes as China and Russia into embracing a more defensive strategic balance.

Rumsfeld's rhetoric, designed to be calming, has some nations concerned. "This isn't the old Star Wars idea of a shield that will keep everything off of everyone in the world," Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee during confirmation hearings in January. "It is something that in the beginning stages is designed to deal with handfuls of these things and persuade people that they're not going to be able to blackmail and intimidate the U.S. and its allies." That phrase--"in the beginning stages"--vexes China and Russia. Both fear that a U.S. missile shield, once built, will continue to expand until it is robust enough to thwart attacks from anyone.

Not surprisingly, China reacted most vehemently to the Bush-Rumsfeld speech, saying the U.S. "has violated the ABM Treaty, will destroy the balance of international security forces and could cause a new arms race." Beijing knows even the initially modest system proposed by Clinton--a fleet of 100 missiles designed to knock out as many as 25 warheads from the heavens--could render obsolete their 20 single-warhead, long-range missiles, which can reach the West Coast of America. Once that system is in place, Beijing's leverage with the U.S.--especially on the touchy topic of Taiwan--could be crippled.

U.S. officials suggest that the only logical way around China's opposition is for Washington and Beijing to agree, at least tacitly, to allow China to have enough nukes to trump whatever missile shield the U.S. deploys. That won't endear Bush and Rumsfeld to G.O.P. conservatives, but Washington insists the shield is not aimed at China anyway. "They may even double the number" of their missiles aimed at the U.S., Powell told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Other government arms experts believe a U.S. missile shield could trigger a tenfold increase in Chinese missiles aimed at the U.S. China's push for more weapons would act only as a spur to India, which might feel compelled to increase its arsenal to keep pace with its historical nemesis. And that could then push Pakistan, India's avowed foe, to build more nuclear weapons.