09/02/98 Letter R.L. Garwin to Senator Carl Levin re National Missile Defense.
Richard L. Garwin
Philip D. Reed Senior Fellow
for Science and Technology
Council on Foreign Relations
and
IBM Fellow Emeritus
Thomas J. Watson Research Center
P.O. Box 218
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598-0218
(914) 945-2555
FAX: (914) 945-4419
INTERNET: RLG2 at watson.ibm.com
September 2, 1998
(Via Email to senator at levin.senate.gov)
The Honorable Carl Levin
459 Senate Russell Office Building
Constitution Avenue, between
Delaware Ave. and 1st St., NE
Washington, DC 20510-2202
Dear Senator Levin:
When the Rumsfeld Commission testified to the Select
Committee on Intelligence on July 29, I was unfortunately
unable to come from California for this important session,
but I see from my fellow Commissioner Barry M. Blechman's
letter to you of August 20 that you asked about the
implications of our findings for U.S. defense and foreign
policies. It is indeed true that the Rumsfeld Commission
did not discuss responses to the missile threats to the
United States that we identified, because we were not asked
to do so. Clearly it was not the intent of the Congress,
which could otherwise well have asked the Commission to
evaluate, for instance, the proposed National Missile
Defense program. But we could not have done that in six
months, together with the assessment of the threat-- which
was itself barely possible in the allotted time, even with
the hard work of all concerned and the full support of the
intelligence community.
Nevertheless, many of us on the Commission have personal
views. Mine are derived from years of work for the United
States government on strategic defense, extending to the
present day. My judgement on the advisability of the kind
of National Missile Defense that we are able to deploy is
perhaps more experienced than Dr. Blechman's, whose letter,
in saying "As soon as it makes sense technically" may seem
to assume that the defense can, in the normal course of
events, be made workable. As I argued in my brief Op-Ed in
The New York Times of 07/28/98, it is folly to assume that a
nation that goes to the expense and considerable technical
achievement of developing long-range missile that can strike
the United States with biological agents or with nuclear
warheads, would not take the relatively easy step of making
these weapons more effective and of making them less
susceptible to intercept. The tools to do so are well
known; I published them in several articles more than a
decade ago in the discussion of the Strategic Defense
Initiative.
For biological agents, the military effectiveness is greatly
increased by packaging anthrax, or whatever agent is used,
in scores of submunitions, released just as soon as the ICBM
finishes burning at the start of its flight. Such an
approach would infect many more people than would a half-ton
package of germs at a single point, and it would have the
additional merit of being invulnerable to a missile defense.
As for a nuclear warhead, it is a small task to put it in an
enclosing balloon-- a lazy, gargantuan air bag-- that does
not hide the existence of the warhead, but simply conceals
it somewhere in the vast interior of the balloon. Or 20
smaller balloons (one containing the warhead) will
predictably exhaust the interceptor supply.
Nor would Russia or China be long in equipping their
missiles with such effective penetration aids.
And the proposed National Missile Defense does absolutely
nothing to counter the more likely and nearer-term threats
of short-range ballistic or cruise missiles launched from
ships near our shores, from nuclear weapons detonated on
ships in our harbors, or from biological agents disseminated
from a car or truck on a peripheral road upwind of a U.S.
city.
We should not portray ourselves as helpless against the
long-range missile threat. Deterrence did not fail against
the Soviet Union or China, and it is likely to work should
any new nations secure missiles capable of reaching our
shores.
Indeed, should they acquire such a threat, such nations will
certainly be the focus of detailed plans for preemptive
non-nuclear strike to prevent their launch. And the actual
use of such weapons would result in a massive return strike
from the United States.
In the case of North Korea, it would be easier to intercept
ICBMs launched against the United States while they are
still in their boost phase from that small country. We
ought to initiate a joint effort with Russia, perhaps with
an additional Ballistic Missile Defense test range on
Russian territory between Vladivostok and the North Korean
border, supplementing a possible ship-based boost-phase
intercept system on which we could work together with
Russia. I would prefer such joint programs under the ABM
Treaty to a major amendment of the Treaty or its
renunciation, and they fit well with new agreements being
reached between ourselves and Russia to advise Russia of
missile launchings.
The Rumsfeld Commission Report may have inadvertently given
rise to the impression that, if the missile threat is
nearer-term than otherwise assumed, a missile defense system
is more urgently indicated than before. One way to rectify
this unfortunate misapprehension is to reconvene the
Rumsfeld Commission with a related relevant mandate or to
create a second Commission. I do believe that if nine
individuals of the quality of those who constituted the
Rumsfeld Commission were given the task of studying for a
similar intensive six-month period the proposed National
Missile Defense, there would be agreement that it would be
ineffective against the likely threat.
And if this is not possible, perhaps a Senate Hearing could
be held at which my views could be compared with those of my
fellow Commissioners or others.
I would be happy to discuss these matters further with you.
Sincerely yours,
Richard L. Garwin
Encl:
07/28/98 "Keeping Enemy Missiles at Bay," by
R.L. Garwin, Op-Ed in The New York Times. (072898OPED)
___ ___ ____ ______
cc:
B.M. Blechman, DC.
G.L. Butler, NE.
S.A. Cambone, CSIS.
S.A. Cambone, CSIS.
W. Graham, VA.
D.H. Rumsfeld, IL.
W. Schneider, VA.
W. Schneider, VA.
L.D. Welch, IDA.
P. Wolfowitz, DC.
J. Woolsey, DC.
RLG:jah:X245CL:090298..CL
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