There is a strange paradox when it comes to anti-missile defense: while in theory seeming to increase stability by providing a shield against incoming missiles launched by an adversary, in practice an anti-missile system tends to be destabilizing and increase tension.  The reason is that such a missile “defense” reinforces the second strike capability of the deploying nation and could thus increase the likelihood of a pre-emptive first strike by the nation against which the system is deployed.

Robert S. McNamara realized this paradox in the 1960s, when he was secretary of defense under U.S. president John F. Kennedy and then Lyndon Johnson.  Kennedy was elected to the presidency, partly on concerns of an imaginary “missile gap” between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., with fears being that the Soviets possessed many more ICBMs than did the Americans.  McNamara was horrified to discover that the U.S. had nuclear plans to unleash an all-out nuclear retaliatory strike against the “Sino-Soviet bloc,” as the two powers were termed in the paranoia of the day, should either take an aggressive step.  There was no scale of escalation: some 1700 cities were targeted under the plan known as J-SCAP (Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan) and SIOP (Single Integrated Operational Plan).

Concerning SIOP, Scott D. Sagan writes, “The nuclear superiority of the United States in 1961 was indisputable. SIOP-62 sought to maximize the effect of such superiority through a massive, simultaneous nuclear offensive-in preemption if possible, but in retaliation if necessary-against the full set of military and urban-industrial targets in the Sino-Soviet bloc.”

At about the same time in the winter of 1961, the new Discoverer spy satellite provided data on Soviet ICBMs, indicating that the U.S. outgunned the U.S.S.R. massively—there was a missile gap alright but the reverse of the Pentagon’s paranoid thinking.  However, instead of breathing a sigh of relief, war planners, among them Paul Nitze, pushed for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union.  McNamara put a stop to this with his policies of “flexible response” and “controlled escalation” in place of “massive retaliation.”

McNamara’s new strategy was responsible for a further spike in the arms race due to Soviet fears of falling behind the U.S., but both sides seemed to come away from the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962 with renewed resolve to defuse the nuclear confrontation.  Kennedy’s national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, wrote, “Recognition that the level of nuclear danger was unacceptably high may be the most important legacy of the Cuban missile crisis.”

In the midst of the U.S. war on Vietnam, McNamara argued against a missile defense system proposed by Lyndon B. Johnson, after realizing that all efforts toward a “rational” nuclear arms strategy had done nothing but result in an ever upwardly spiraling arms race.  In short, bilateral paranoia between Moscow and Washington had increased the number of nuclear weapons and decreased security.  

McNamara argued that the easiest way to circumvent any missile defense system was to merely increase the number of missiles, thus causing the missile defense system into a state of overload.  Therefore, he explained, any attempt at deploying such a system in the U.S. would only result in an escalation of the arms race by the Soviets.  “Were we to deploy a heavy ABM system throughout the United States,” McNamara stated in September 1967, “the Soviets would clearly be strongly motivated so to increase their offensive capability.”  Hence the paradox was clear even then.

Now, the U.S. Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has announced a successful test of a Ground-based Midcourse Defense (GMD) interceptor, which consisted of targeting an ICBM decoy in flight.  The anti-missile missile was fired from Vandenberg air base in the U.S. state of California at the decoy, which was launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands, some 8,000 km (4,972 miles) from Los Angeles.  

The test targeted North Korea with a strong message that is likely to spark a further escalation of tensions with South Korea and the United States.  As was predicted in 1967 for the Soviet Union, so would it be today with North Korea.

YAW/PA