July-Sept 2001

Star Wars or Heavenly Peace?

Will Missile Defense Shield Us From Harm Or Take the Arms Race Into Deep Space?

On July 14, the Pentagon will conduct another in a series of ongoing tests of its missile defense system. Despite doubts among allies and adversaries alike, the Bush administration is pressing ahead with plans to mount this massive space-based “shield” intended to shoot down missiles launched by “rogue” states. Citing “new threats” posed by would-be nuclear nations like North Korea and Iran, President Bush argues that the U.S. must move beyond our half-century dependence on Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) and develop weapons capable of downing enemy missiles in flight. Fine, say his critics, but you won’t get there by turning outer space into our deadliest battleground.

Bush’s plan revives the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which at $100 billion was the most expensive weapons system ever devised – and, its critics contend, the least effective. The President has placed no price tag on his new initiative but independent analysts say it could cost hundreds of billions. Proponents say that’s a small price to pay for a real defense against nuclear weapons, which we’ve never had. Critics say missile defense is a technical impossibility and a financial catastrophe. The only real defense against nukes, they say, is to eliminate them.

In his recent European tour, President Bush encountered wary NATO partners whose skepticism echo what has been triggered among many American space scientists and defense analysts. Their doubts center around several key concerns:

• It won’t work. “A bullet shooting a bullet in space” doesn’t approach the complexity of the challenge. Mounting a defense is complicated and costly while countermeasures are simple and cheap. No foreseeable threat justifies the expense and diversion from higher priorities.
  
  
• It will project weapons and war into space. And once there, they will be impossible to dislodge. While military surveillance satellites have orbited the earth for decades, no weapons have been deployed there yet. The U.S.-sponsored Outer Space Treaty bans nukes from space but says nothing about lasers and other exotic arms the Pentagon is developing. Many allies and adversaries resent declared Pentagon plans to “dominate the space dimension of military operations to protect U.S. interests and investments.”
  
  
• It will only intensify our insecurity. A unilateral U.S. decision to deploy NMD and weapons in space could trigger a chain of unpredictable reactions. China and Russia have already threatened to multiply their nuclear warheads in response to NMD. If we placed weapons in space, how soon would others blind us by taking out our surveillance satellites?

Guest Speakers by Topic:

Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation

Karl Grossman, Professor of Journalism, State University of New York, Old Westbury, Author, The Wrong Stuff: Nukes in Space

Dennis Kucinich, D-OH, U.S. House of Representatives

Mike Moore, Senior Editor, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

Bruce Gagnon, International Coordinator, Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space

Jonathan Granoff, President, Global Security Institute

Jonathan Rowe, Contributing Editor, Washington Monthly

Tom Collina, Program Director of Global Security, Union of Concerned Scientists

Susan Eisenhower, President, The Eisenhower Institute, Founder and Chairman, Center for Political and Strategic Studies

James Clay Moltz, Associate Director and Research Professor - Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies

Merav Datan, Director, UN Office, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom

Jonathan Dean, Adviser on International Security, Union of Concerned Scientists

Bates Gill, Freeman Chair in China Studies, Center for Strategic and International Studies

Andrew Kuchins, Director - Russian and Eurasian Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Arjun Makhijani, President, Institute for Energy & Environmental Research

Alistair Millar, Vice President, Fourth Freedom Forum

Tim Savage, Security Program Officer, The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainable Development

Leon Sigal, Director, Northeast Asia Cooperative Security Project, Social Science Research Council

John Steinbruner, Professor of Public Policy, Director - Center for International and Security Studies, Maryland School of Public Affairs, University of Maryland

Joseph Cirincione, Senior Associate and Director of the Non-Proliferation Project, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Craig Eisendrath, Senior Fellow, Center for International Policy

Thomas Graham, President, Lawyers Alliance for World Security

Jack Mendelsohn, Senior Associate, Center for Defense Information

Lisbeth Gronlund, Senior Staff Scientist, Union of Concerned Scientists

Theodore Postol, Professor of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Alise Frye, National Security Project Director and Space Policy Analyst, Taxpayers for Common Sense

William Hartung, President's Fellow - New School, World Policy Institute

Steven Kosiak, Director of Budget Studies, Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments

Gary Ruskin, Executive Director, Commercial Alert, Executive Director, Congressional Accountability Project

Natalie Goldring, Executive Director - Program on Global Security and Disarmament - Department of Government and Politics, University of Maryland

Alice Slater, President, Global Resource Action for the Environment

Michael Krepon, President Emeritus, Henry L. Stimson Center

Bob Edgar, General Secretary, National Council of Churches

Ibrahim Ramey, Director, Peace and Disarmament Program, Fellowship of Reconciliation

Dave Robinson, National Coordinator, Pax Christi USA

Melanie Duchin, Climate and Nuclear Campaigner, Greenpeace USA

Christopher Paine, Senior Research Analyst - Nuclear Program, Natural Resources Defense Council

Jon Aguilar, Greenpeace Activist

Sally Breen, Vice-Chair of the Board, Disarmament Committee

John Burroughs, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Nicolas Clyde, Campaigner, Greenpeace Australia Pacific

Daniel Ellsberg, Research Associate - Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Stacey Fritz, Founder , No Nukes North

Martha Honey, Director, Peace and Security Program, Institute for Policy Studies, Co-Director, Foreign Policy in Focus Project, Institute for Policy Studies

Michael Klare, Professor of Peace & World Security Studies, Hampshire College

Katya Komisaruk, Attorney, Just Cause Law Collective

Jill Lancelot, Taxpayers for Common Sense

George Lewis, Associate Director - Security Studies Program, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Carah Ong

Miriam Pemberton, Research Fellow - Peace and Security Program, Institute for Policy Studies, Military Affairs Editor for Foreign Policy in Focus

Pavel Podvig

Jonathan Schell, Journalist

Bill Sulzman, Citizens for Peace in Space

Rosalie Tyler Paul, Chair, Peace Action Maine

Cora Weiss, President, Hague Appeal for Peace, President, International Peace Bureau, Rubin Foundation