KILLER satellites, nuclear-powered lasers and interceptor missiles—the
front line of George W. Bush’s Fortress America may sound a little familiar.
Yes, Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars project is back.
During the campaign, Bush made it clear that his administration is likely to
invest heavily in space-based missile defence technology to protect the US and
its allies from nuclear attack. His choice for defence secretary, Donald H.
Rumsfeld, is an enthusiastic supporter of missile defence.
“President-elect Bush’s appointment shows we’ll move forward with missile
defence in a very serious way,” says Jack Spencer, defence policy analyst for
the Heritage Foundation, a Washington-based think tank that supports missile
defence.
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Critics claim such missile defence systems are unreliable and destabilising.
And it’s not yet clear how far the Bush administration will go in deploying one,
because they are constrained by arms control agreements
(see “Farewell to arms control”).
But Bush is likely to spend billions of dollars researching the technology. “He’s talking
about global coverage. You can only do that from space,” says Tom Collina of the
Union of Concerned Scientists, a pressure group in Washington DC that opposes
missile defence.
It was 1983 when Reagan proposed his Strategic Defense Initiative
(SDI)—soon dubbed Star Wars. As much as $60 billion is thought to
have been spent on research, until Congressional criticism and the thawing of
the Cold War led George Bush senior to scale back the programme in 1991.
Rumsfeld’s appointment is a clear sign of SDI’s rebirth. He held positions in
the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations. In 1998, he chaired a commission
that called for a Star Wars-style system to defend the US from missile attacks
by “rogue nations” such as North Korea and Iraq.
That commission added new impetus to the National Missile Defense system, the
Pentagon’s relatively modest plan to use interceptor missiles to shoot down any
incoming nuclear warheads. While Clinton demurred on deploying NMD, Bush may now
go ahead, although Congress could oppose him. They are less likely to fight new
funding—possibly several billion dollars a year—for developing
technologies that would promise true space-based defence.
