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 Richard Garwin
Chris Masters interviews Richard Garwin, Physicist and
member of the Rumsfeld Commission.
Mr Garwin I want to start by asking you about the significance
of the Taepo Dong launch in August of 1998, how much did did that that
change the equation.
Well we had just published the Rumsfeld Commission Report, July 15 1998
where we said that any of these three countries of concern, North Korea,
Iran or even Iraq could produce a few unreliable ICBM's armed with nuclear
war heads or biological weapon payloads in as short as five years and
for much of the time we wouldn't know that they had such a program. Well
a lot of people said our report was scare mongering, that it was a worse
case analysis that North Korea had only short range missiles and that
they hadn't mastered staging, that is to have one missile stage bring
another one up to a certain speed, couple of kilometres per second and
then the second one take off because without staging you cannot have an
ICBM. So 6 weeks later, North Korea underlined our report, they launched
the Taepo Dong 1 which was expected by the intelligence community to be
a two stage missile and we were out there, watching, got all kinds of
good data. North Korea said that this was a satellite launch and we said
no it wasn't, but in fact a few days later the intelligence community
acknowledged that this was a test of a 3 stage missile, although a very
small third stage, it was an attempt to put a satellite into orbit, the
third stage failed, but North Korea had demonstrated a separation, that
is their ability to have a second stage take off from a first and a third
stage from the second so criticism of our report was much needed after
that.
There was some some some jubilation in some quarters
within the Rumsfeld Commission
Many in Congress drew the wrong lesson, they said now this means we must
deploy a missile defence. Well nothing of the sort. The Rumsfeld Commission
was widely quoted as being in favour of missile defence, in fact we had
never discussed it and our report doesn't contain the word defence at
all. To say that we need a defence means two things, it means there is
a threat that we can defend against it, that is that the defence would
be effective and that this is the way that North Korea would choose really
to threaten the United States. Our report had also said, hardly noticed
that any of these countries could more reliably sooner threaten the United
States with BW or with nuclear weapons…
Biological weapons
…[F]rom short range missiles launched from ships, either cruise
missiles or short range ballistic missiles of with which they are amply
supplied and the defence under development by the Clinton administration
was a mid-course intercept system which would have no capability at all
to intercept or even to see the shorter range missiles so before you decide
that you need a defence, you have to ask will it work, can we afford it
and the opportunity cost is this what we really should be able to do.
Well the joint Chiefs of Staff, our military leaders, have always been
lukewarm about national missile defence. A) it won't work, B) they don't
regard that as the principal threat from any of these potential adversaries
but technically mid-course intercept has a terrible problem. It has to
intercept these re-entry vehicles, about my size, may be somewhat bigger
as they float through space, falling toward their targets. It has to see
them at thousands of kilometres of range, it has to do something to destroy
them and what the Clinton administration mid-course hit to kill system
was based on was hit to kill intercept, that is the interceptor would
be manoeuvred to collide with the re-entry vehicle, at 10 kms per second,
this is no small thing. Each kilogram of re-entry vehicle or of interceptor
would correspond to about 10 kilograms of high explosives going off because
of the enormous speed of collision so killing it is not a problem, but
colliding with it is a technically difficult thing which we have done
a couple of times but colliding with the right object is what is up to
the North Koreans and not to the United States, so North Korea could use
penetration aids, decoys, counter measures, three terms for the same sort
of thing and in particular to keep hit to kill intercept from taking place,
they would have the warhead in a balloon, a large balloon, couple of metres
in diameter and they would have a dozen 20 inflated empty balloons accompanying
it so what is the poor interceptor going to do, it has to try to discriminate
the one with the warhead from the other, but in vacuum, a feather and
a bowling ball fall at the same speed and you put one in a balloon, the
other in a balloon, you can't tell the difference.
I know that some of the supporters of NMD say that they
have a lot more faith in the United States' ability to discriminate against
these decoys, than the ability of say North Korea to produce effective
decoys, is that solid logic?
No, that's misplaced faith like so much these days. It sounds good, of
course the United States is technically much more capable than North Korea
or probably than any other country in the world but there are only so
many observables and these are based on physics, mass, the weight in 1g
is not an observable that is useful to you so you're limited to things
that you can see on radar or things that you can see from the homing system
of the interceptor, visible light or infrared and the idea of a balloon,
an aluminium foil coated balloon, is that you can't see in with radar
or with infrared or visible light and you arrange the empty balloons and
not quite empty they have a lithium battery in each, weighs about half
a pound, to provide the same heating of the balloon that comes from the
warm re-entry vehicle inside the anti-simulation balloon, the one that
makes the warhead look like a decoy. Now these people just have not looked
at the technical aspects. With 10 other authors I published a technical
paper in April 2000, really fat thing, I think 170 pages, about the specific
countermeasures that North Korea, Iran or Iraq would use to counter this
particular system. Now this doesn't say that missile defence is impossible,
it doesn't even say that mid-course is impossible, what it does say is
that these countries will have these countermeasures by the time they
have ICBM's, they will use them and unless the ballistic missile defence
organisation, BMDO as it's called, takes measures to defeat the countermeasures,
the mid-course defence system won't work at all.
What quality of countermeasures do say the Russians
and Chinese already have available for sale?
Well countermeasures are more secret than missile programs and so one
really can't discuss everything we know about Chinese and Russian countermeasures,
but there is an unclassified report of the national intelligence council
from 1999 and it lists the kind of countermeasures that the entire US
intelligence community believe will be available to these countries at
the time that they have ICBM's and these are oriented re-entry vehicles,
low radar cross-sections, radar absorbing materials, balloon decoys, not
only oriented but spinning re-entry vehicles. Now the ones that we say
are the silver bullets for defeating a mid-course system are the balloons
with the anti-simulation balloon around the re-entry vehicle, that's not
rocket science, that's a high school project and for biological warfare
agents, the countermeasure is even less disputable, it is to break up
the BW payload, call it anthrax into bomblets instead of a 500 kilogram
re-entry vehicle with 400 kilograms of anthrax that strikes in the middle
of the city and then disseminates the bugs which are carried by the wind
through the city and out of the city, you would have a couple of hundred
2 kilogram bomblets that are separated as the missile reaches its final
speed on the way up and moves with them gradually separate, spread over
5 or 10 kilometres and provide a much more effective inoculation of the
population as these bomblets fell to the ground, each with its own little
heat shield, exploded there in order to disseminate the germs. Now in
1960's the United States had a very aggressive offensive BW program and
we have published the details of our bomblets, which were to be filled
with anthrax or Q Fever or tularaemia and so these are available to any
of these countries. Of course now we have a biological warfare convention,
the US has no more offensive BW program at all, but this knowledge is
out there, these bomblets have been tested. Back with the military more
effective way of delivering BW and of course the mid course defence has
no way of countering 200 bomblets that would take as the head of BMDO
and the high of defence officials have acknowledged, one interceptor for
each bomblet.
How much is rocket science not rocket science any more,
I mean how much is the world changed since the V2 was launched against
England in '44, how easy is it to build missiles today, anybody to build
missiles and why are they attractive weapons of war?
Well two questions. You still have to build something but you can buy
the components from lots of places. In fact there is a missile technology
control regime but it's voluntary, it's not a treaty and not everybody
is a signatory. The Rumsfeld Commission emphasised that these countries
that are building missiles, and it's totally legal for them to build missiles,
there's no international agreement that keeps them from doing that except
for Iraq which has some sanctions imposed as a result of the Gulf War,
but anybody else can build anything they want. Now they have to get the
parts and they either manufacture themselves, but that's a lot easier,
everybody has computer controlled machine tools, it's a lot easier to
get the gaskets and the fuel. China sells rocket fuel to a lot of countries
and the United States is very much concerned about this sort of thing
but you don't need the latest in missile technology just the way you don't
need the latest in nuclear weapon technology in order to pose a threat.
And that's what makes this so difficult. Making 60's technology is good
enough to threaten the country in the 21st Century. So these countries
have a kind of technology trading system among them. North Korea supplies
not only missiles but missile technology to Iran, to Pakistan, for instance
the Pakistani gallery missile, a 1300 kilometre intermediate range missile
is the Nodong, it has a new coat of paint and a new name but when Pakistan
tests the gallery, North Korea chalks up another success for its Nodong
of which it has sold many dozens to other countries. Now ICBM's are bigger,
they have a choice either of clustering smaller missiles like Nodong missiles
which is an extension of the original Russian scud missile, or devising
a bigger one. And that's what the Rumsfeld Commission judged that they
were capable of if they had the money, the will and technology infusion
from abroad or from one or another of those countries.
Shouldn't a threat assessment be more sensibly focused
on the ability of these nations to produce weapons of mass destruction
rather than say 2, 3 stage missiles.
Yeah missiles don't hurt you, in fact the Bush administration has eliminated
the "N" from National Missile Defence so it's only Missile Defence.
And that mixes some things that are perfectly feasible and desirable with
things that are infeasible and dangerous. For instance our troops in the
field, if we get into some kind of war would be threatened by aeroplanes
but we have very capable air defence systems, for instance the Patriot —
a local air defence system goes out to maybe 20 kilometres or so. Missiles
have not been very useful, carrying high explosive payloads because they've
been so inaccurate but a recent Indian test appears to have guided their
ballistic missile to impact with global positioning system so now a high
explosive warhead on a missile that cost a million dollars or a fraction
of a million dollars can be launched from hundreds of kilometres away
and guided to 10 metre accuracy or better.
That's a powerful tool of war but it can be countered by a defence that
only keeps it a hundred metres away, you're perfectly safe from a 1 tonne
high explosive payload. So the defence offence calculus for intermediate
range, short range missiles armed with high explosive in the field is
very different from that against missiles armed with nuclear weapons,
a million times as powerful and threatening a city.
Now you have to keep the weapons 5 kilometres away and if the side that's
attacking you has only a few such missiles, you still have to deploy to
defend your country in every possible target so it's a tremendous leverage
that the offence has. Furthermore, if you're not going to do terminal
defence because you would have to have thousands or tens of thousands
of interceptors on the ground, but mid-course we've already discussed
how easy countermeasures are to keep these hit to kill systems from being
effective. So, it's not at all clear really even so that building a long
range missile is the best way to deliver one of the strategic payloads.
The shorter range is more important.
Nuclear weapons we can probably have a pretty good idea whether people
have them, the Rumsfeld Commission judged that North Korea might have
one or two and we have an agreement with North Korea since 1994, the framework
agreement, that they will not reprocess fuel, they won't have reactors,
except the ones that we're building for them and so that has certainly
slowed their nuclear weapons program. Yet if North Korea continues to
provide missiles to Pakistan and Pakistan in return provides nuclear material
to North Korea, North Korea could have an effective nuclear weapon sooner.
So yes, it's the weapon of mass destruction that counts. The long range
missile is only a carrier and one that's peculiarly difficult to intercept
so that's why some people say this is the real threat because we have
some air defence system, actually have no continental air defence system
at all and we can do something about smuggled nuclear weapons, actually
very little even though we spend 10 billion dollars a year in countering
terrorism, and so they make the argument that we need a defence against
these long range missiles, we need primarily to deter the use of any of
these weapons of mass destruction, we need to deter their building, we
need to deter their deployment and we've been very effective at that so
far.
Now if we want to counter them actively, we can pre-empt, that is we
can destroy the long range missiles before they are launched and we could
also catch them in boost bays while they're going up before they get to
a speed where any of the payload could get to its target area. And so
I've been favouring publicly for the last 3 years boost bays intercept
systems where … instead of putting an umbrella over the entire United
States and the eastern Pacific as the Clinton administration and the Bush
administration want to do with their mid course intercept system, we put
a lid over the tiny state of North Korea and we could do that jointly
with the Russians, from Russian territory south of Vladivostok, just north
of North Korea or we could do it from US ships in the Japan basin, out
to a thousand kilometres from North Korea.
We could still catch those ICBM's when they get developed in their boost
phase where they're much easier to see … and within 60 or 70 seconds
we would know in which direction this rocket was going toward the United
States, by 100 seconds we would have launched an interceptor from the
ground or the sea. A large interceptor, not a difficult thing, the same
kind of interceptor that's used in the national missile defence system
and it would collide with the rocket booster, the third stage while it's
still burning and before the missile can get to a speed where you would
be, with even within 5,000 kilometres of the target…
You say we can do it, but we can't, currently under
the terms of the ABM Treaty.
Well the ABM Treaty between United States and the Soviet Union bands
the defence of the national territory, it bands interfering with a strategic
ballistic missile in flight trajectory and it bands interceptors for missile
defence, an ABM system as it was called, Anti-Ballistic Missile System,
launched from ships or from air or from space so this would violate the
Treaty multiply and yet it doesn't violate the spirit of the Treaty, there's
no reason why Russia shouldn't agree to this specific system, so I proposed
for a long time and discussed with the Russians to some extent, and there's
some favourable response over there that a specific system which has no
threat to US or to Russian strategic weapons, should be permitted under
this Treaty and that this one should be agreed to by the Russians as falling
within the scope of the ABM Treaty. Now this could be done either by interpretation
or by a formal protocol, you don't have to re-write the entire Treaty,
you just say in addition to the defences permitted in the Treaty and there
is one site for each country, it is also permitted to deploy jointly agreed
defences, jointly operated defences or defences limited to this type and
there we went up date that as North Korea, Iran or Iraq actually got ICBM's.
There's a very a good site in Turkey, just to handle the Iraq missiles.
Iraq's bigger than North Korea but it's still not very big. Iran is a
bigger problem, you would need to have ship based, boost base interceptors
in the Gulf of Oman and have one of the more or less friendly nations
around help you, permit you to put a barge in the Caspian Sea.
Of course it would also not work against missiles deployed
from Russia or China. Does that make the boost phase option less attractive
to some of the supporters of of missile defence?
Well that's really the touchstone of a person's intent. I've already
quoted a supporter of national missile defence who says he would not support
a system that had no effectiveness against China or Russia and yet to
me it is an advantage because if the threat is North Korea, Iran and Iraq,
then this would eliminate or reduce Russian opposition and quiet the Chinese
response as well because even if you expanded the system, it would not
be effective against Chinese missiles.
So what is the evidence that some people do consider
the real threat to be China?
Because some people even say that they regard China as the real threat,
in fact we quote in the Rumsfel Commission Report, but just in general
comments by a Chinese general that now that China has nuclear weapons,
we could no longer intimidate them with our nuclear weapons. Now that's
sometimes misquoted as saying that the United States could no longer intervene
in Taiwan because the Chinese will use nuclear weapons against Los Angeles
and would be trade Los Angeles for Taipei. In fact that's not what was
said but the Chinese do have nuclear weapons, they can no longer be pushed
around or attacked with nuclear weapons without promising a response.
And then there's explicit testimony that people would support missile
defences only if they had some effectiveness against China or Russia.
Now the American public doesn't distinguish the people who have the nuclear
weapons, Russia has 6,000 missiles ready to go, that's the big threat
even though Russia is not an enemy. It's a threat because the Russian
warning system has deteriorated, the Russian survivability has deteriorated
because they have only one or two submarines at sea at any time and so
Russia feels vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike by the United States.
Of course they would shoot some missiles back, launching them before they
could be destroyed and that's why they feel that even a relatively modest
missile defence, that the United States might build would be of hostile
intent.
So when Secretary Rumsfeld talked about needing only
a handful of anti-ballistic missiles, which company do you think he was
talking about being the potential threat.
I think he was talking about North Korea being in the lead. But deploying
any kind of missile defence system has been a tenant of conservatism.
It's part of the faith for the last 20 years, you cut taxes, you ban abortion,
you deploy missile defences… Deploying a missile defence would be
regarded as a tremendous victory by some, political victory, over the
opponents of missile defence but it's not that the army is fighting the
navy, the army should be fighting some enemy of the countries and the
Republicans shouldn't be fighting the Democrats, we should all be working
together to improve not only US security but world security and we do
not get there by deploying an ineffective system.
Now let me track back a little to when you reported
back in 1998, you said at that time that the rogue nations have the capacity
to build these weapons, does that mean that they're they're likely to
do so and likely to launch against the United States?
No, the Rumsfeld Commission didn't say that. We said that they have the
capacity to build given the will, the money and access to technology and
so we didn't predict that they would, no. The National Intelligence Estimate
has the job of saying not only what is possible but what is most likely
and they say well it's possible for them to do this sort of thing, there
are different analysts in the community who have different judgments as
to what is most likely and it's likely that Iraq's first test of an ICBM
that could threaten the United States range is likely before 2015, possibly
before 2010 and so on. And so they have that big responsibility of saying
what is likely to happen which involves not only capability but intent,
resource allocation and that sort of thing. So I think the intelligence
community believes that North Korea is likely to have an ICBM before 2010,
in fact they have explicitly been expecting the launch of the Taepo Dong
2, a test launch. Much bigger missile than the Taepo Dong 1. Ever since
1999, a Taepo Dong 2 with three stages could carry a payload of hundreds
of kilograms to any place in the United States.
Why is it considered the deterrents wouldn't work against
someone like Kim Jong-il?
Well I think one of the reasons to argue that deterrents wouldn't work
is because that argument favours the deployment of a missile defence system
that people want for unstated reasons, probably against China so Secretary
Rumsfeld, it's interesting to note, does not argue that these people are
undeterrable, now he argues in his speeches that a missile defence will
add to deterrence because if the dictator cannot be sure that the missile
would get through, if it's likely to be intercepted, he's going to be
deterred from launching it because the response would be the same, whether
the missile gets here or not, his country will be destroyed and why should
he do that, there are easier ways to destroy his country, which he's probably
doing now anyhow, than to launch a weapon of mass destruction at the United
States. So these people may have different values than we, they may be
ruthless but they're not stupid and they make their own judgments, staying
power is very important to them.
Dying and having their country destroyed, or at least their total military
might is not high on their priority list so in fact I believe that they
are highly deterrable, I believe it would help in fact to have boost bays
intercept. Rumsfeld says now these things don't need to work perfectly,
which is a big change from the Clinton administration approach because
there they argued that we would shoot several interceptors at each of
these four or five ICBM's that they were planning against and then in
October 1999, a defence official from the Clinton administration argued
that 20 interceptors weren't enough, we would have to have 100. He never
made the argument clear but in my opinion it was because 100 interceptors
are allowed under the ABM Treaty and the Democrats felt that they would
be pillaried by the Republicans in the year 2000 Presidential election
if they planned to deploy fewer interceptors than were permitted under
the ABM Treaty. So that's what's most important in these arguments really
it's domestic political benefit.
Secretary Rumsfeld now seems to be a lot more confident
about the effectiveness of missile defence even though as you say it wasn't
really discussed at the time. Has his view changed, has he become so much
more of a supporter of missile defence?
Well in his hearings in Congress earlier in 2001, Rumsfeld said you know
I really understand the threat but I don't understand defences, I don't
know well what will work, what's needed and you've got to give me time
to wrap my mind around this. He's convinced of the need you know politically
in the international scene, that the United States must not be seen as
defenceless against some weapon or other and that's a political judgment,
that's not a technical judgment.
On the technical side, he's not convinced that these things will work,
he says we're going to do everything, we're going to test airborne lasers,
airborne interceptors, C-based interceptors, ground based interceptors
and we're going to see what works and what doesn't work and we're going
to build on the things that work and maybe even deploy them in experimental
form, so that's what they're talking about now, deploying a few developmental
interceptors in Alaska, declaring them operational if there's an emergency,
at the same time cutting out those programs that prove not to work. Well
I think that this approach in principal is ok but that you can make the
decisions at lot earlier stage, you don't have to bring all of these things
to test and when you test, you really have to make the judgment on the
basis of a more realistic test with anti-simulation balloons around the
warhead, decoy balloons to divert the the interceptor and of course those
are vastly expensive tests and will certainly result inferior if done
to soon so the solution, the right way to do it, is by analysis and by
simulation, by commissioning some high school kids to make balloon decoys
and some others to make these bomblets, of course not filled with anthrax,
so all you really need is a dispensing mechanism. To do some real analysis,
contractor analysis in the government and the April 2000 countermeasures
report I helped prepare, so that people no longer say these would work
if they could be built but it's infeasible, too hard for North Korea to
do. Not too hard when you talk about garage operations, you can make these
things in your garage.
China has said that they see that missile defence is
very much aimed at them and that they will acquire more weapons, isn't
this really what we should be worried about, that missile defence will
promote a new arms race?
Well it's certainly one of the big problems. Russia will not build more
weapons, but it will stop the reductions in the weaponry which are very
much in our interest so what we should be focusing on now first of all
is reassurance to Russia by improving their warning systems providing
co-operative warning. Reductions in the numbers of US and Russian nuclear
weapons. We probably have 12,000 nuclear weapons, Russians have about
15,000 nuclear weapons. President Putin is talking about reducing the
number of deployed strategic weapons to a thousand or fifteen hundred
and President Bush in his campaign and even more recently has such numbers
in mind as well. But the big problem is what you do with the other nuclear
weapons. To limit the number of deployed weapons to a thousand, while
you still have eleven thousand more that are being kept in good health,
is not only a real burden on our economy and and technical programs, but
a real threat to Russia and to the rest of the world.
We want to limit the total number of nuclear weapons in the United States
to a thousand or two thousand, equal number on the Russian stide and start
bringing, reigning in the numbers in Britain, France, China and some of
these other countries as well. So that's a high priority item some of
these other Russian nuclear weapons could be stolen, sold, so that's the
big threats. Turner could if they wanted missile defence or not, increase
the number of their warheads. They have no interest in doing that. That's
not their strategy or their philosophy so yes I believe that not only
would they deploy effective decoys, but because they are inherently conservatively,
their leaders would say we don't know that these decoys would work, therefore
we need to have to more weapons so instead of building maybe 20 mobile
ICBM's which would be invulnerable to a US first strike, they would build
200 or however many would give them confidence that they could overcome
our defensive system even if it were projected and expanded.
Take me back to to 1974 and what were the lessons learned
from the Safeguard experience, or if you like the lessons not learned.
Well we were trying to limit offensive weapons in the late 1960's and
1970's but as you say, take me back, this was the Cold War, Russia Soviet
Union had very little understanding of the west, they had enormous military
capabilities, we're building nuclear weaponry. On our side, we said this
is going to be an unending spiral if the two sides deploy defences because
the other side will then deploy more weapons in order to assure destruction
even if the defences worked, so worst case analysis for one side is the
defence works perfectly, worst case analysis for the defender is that
the defence doesn't work at all, which is probably closer to the truth.
So the 1972 ABM Treaty which bans a defence of the national territory
was key to limiting offensive weapons and I believe that even though MIRVs,
the multiple warheads were deployed after that, we would have had a much
larger offensive force without the ABM Treaty.
But the ABM Treaty permits a single sites, why because the Whitehouse
and the defence department didn't want to fight the technologists who
wanted to gain some experience with missile defences in case they would
later be used. So we spent the equivalent of 21 billion dollars on the
system that had been proposed by the Johnson administration which left
office in 1968. As an anti-Chinese system, the Secretary of Defence, McNamara
in a 1967 speech said you know missile defence really won't work but nevertheless,
we're going to deploy one…
Now we've already discussed the terminal defence has to be deployed over
the entire country and so that's why I who is on the strategic panel of
the President's Science Advisory Committee and my colleagues opposed that
system because the Chinese could attack anywhere we would have to deploy
everywhere, turned out that people didn't want nuclear armed interceptors
in their backyards so when the Nixon administration came in, they had
argued for the deployment of a defence, but are no longer going to defend
the territory against China, they were going to defend one site of offensive
missiles, minute manned missiles against Russia. Mainly the system had
no merit, no function at all, but there was so much enthusiasm for doing
something, then just as now that they build a nonsense system in North
Dakota to defend 150 of our 1000 minute manned missiles. And after four
months at most in operation it was shut down and has been largely dismantled
except for a radar there. So that's a lesson, that for no reason, except
political and technological enthusiasm, you deploy systems which cause
unending trouble and take an awful lot of money.
Supporters of mid course say look we were able to go
to the moon, you can put a cruise missile through a chosen window, why
not have that faith in good old fashioned American know-how to conquer
the science?
That's different fighting nature, the moon didn't turn off its lights,
it didn't jump out of the way, it didn't fight back and so you have to
ask what are the feasible technical ways to defeat the particular defence.
Now we've said that there are easy countermeasures. Now there are counter-countermeasures
and I've discussed with the Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation how
I would counter the countermeasures that I say the enclosing balloon,
the bomblets that I say these countries will deploy by the time they have
their first ICBM. The only way to counter the bomblets, the multiple bomblets
with a biological warfare agent is to catch the missile before it gets
to the stage where it's fast enough so the bomblets will go to their target,
that's boost base intercept or pre-boost base intercept. Or even putting
tiny little interceptors, maybe even explosive mines on the ground that
will be detonated by the missile as it takes off but you've got to think
about it, you cannot go ahead and spend 60 billion dollars on a system
that you're confident will work because you've never looked at how it
would be defeated if you really want to solve the problem. Now you could
perfectly well use some of your interceptors to deploy puffs of gas or
explosives to break these balloons but that cuts into the number of interceptors,
it's a totally different concept, there are counters to that as well and
this is an analysis that has to be carried out, you can't just test, you've
got to think what you can do, what the other side can do, it's like a
game of chess and some of these people, or for that matter go if you're
talking about North Korea.
What is the consequence of the United States going it
alone?
I think it's bad for the United States. It is a global world. Our companies
have to work throughout the world, in fact they aren't even our companies
any more because they're have been so many mergers… We cannot go
it alone, we need to work with these countries. If we have nuclear power
for instance, which I favour and other people have nuclear power plants,
we need some place to put the spent nuclear fuel. This will require international
transport of spent nuclear fuel, IAEA, International Atomic Energy Authority
approval of sites for putting the fuel away. If we say we are the pre-eminent
military power, we have the technology, we are the 800 pound gorilla,
we don't care what other people think, it's not going to be favourable
to US security. After all NATO is a miliary alliance, now of 19 nations,
it's fundamental to US security, to ignore the wishes, the analyses and
the urgings of our allies without good arguments why it is necessary and
persuading them is not going to help us.
What is the biggest threat to the survival of the United
States?
Well I think the biggest threat is internal… a kind of madness that
seizes us is a destruction of our political system because people don't
vote, because of money for campaigns, the loss of the desire of elected
officials really to do what they were elected to do, namely to support
the individual and rather to respond instead to corporate money or special
interests so I think that's a much bigger threat than these external military
threats.
And how much do individual Americans feel vulnerable?
Well they don't. You have to ask them very pointed questions before any
of these military matters come to the fore. They really worry about crime,
they worry about health care and their rights, in my opinion. But and
way down the list is military aspects and even further down the list is
missile defence and so if you ask them should we deploy a missile defence,
they say we think we already have one, you know I don't worry about that.
Then you explain that you don't have a missile defence, you've never had
one, and these countries could build ICBM's, they could send nuclear weapons
over, or anthrax, now do you want a missile defence and the answer's overwhelmingly
less — yes, but do you want one if many scientists say it won't work,
the answer's no. Or if it requires a breaking a treaty and that other
people want us to maintain, the answer's no so really you have to talk
to a person for a long time and it's not something that they really care
about.
And so what do you expect from the review, do you think
we're going to have missile defence no matter what and what kind of missile
defence?
Well I have a friend who used to be in the Defence Department, gave a
very interesting paper recently at one of the national laboratories, he
says this is a madness that comes every 17 years and we didn't mention
the strategic defence initiative and the Reagan administration where the
idea was to have a non-nuclear defence based on space weapons. There's
powerful lasers in space, neutral particle beams, multiple little interceptors
and people now talk about these multiple little interceptors, space based
interceptors. I spoke at a meeting in April in Washington of the American
Physical Society and Henry Cooper spoke also who was head of the Strategic
Defence Initiative Organisation, and he said you know what we really need
to do is to have these thousands of space based interceptors that would
solve the problem but of course Russia would not be happy with out putting
thousands of space based interceptors up there, which would have as targets
Russian ICBM's and Chinese ICBM's as well. And when this came up in the
1980's, I published papers showing how easy it is to destroy these interceptors,
even easier to destroy space based lasers before they have a chance to
work so you destroy them in peacetime. So I think that the United States
rather than protecting our ability to put weapons into space ought to
take the lead to have an international treaty banning weapons in space
and banning tests of anti satellite weapons. The tendency seems to be
in the other direction but I firmly believe this is the way to go.
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