Rumsfeld watches Bush's speech
But cost and technology woes plagued Safeguard. Rumsfeld, a onetime G.O.P. Congressman from Illinois, knew it. Even worse, the Soviets were rendering Safeguard useless by putting multiple warheads atop each of their missiles. After three months as Defense Secretary, under orders from Congress, Rumsfeld shut it down. Safeguard's ghostly remains still litter the prairie just south of the Canadian border.
So, last week, when Rumsfeld, three months into his second tour of duty as Defense chief, launched an offensive to build another missile defense, it was a surprising new chapter. And when President Bush stepped to the microphone at the National Defense University and declared his unswerving commitment to the costly and controversial project, "Rummy," as old friends call him, stood by proudly. He had reason to beam. After all, Bush was reading from Rumsfeld's script. As head of a 1998 panel weighing the ballistic-missile threat faced by the U.S., Rumsfeld had helped build political pressure for just the kind of shield that Bush was proposing. In the quarter-century since he had put Safeguard out of its misery, Rumsfeld had become convinced that national missile defense was not only technologically possible but also essential to America's national security. He had become its chief architect, salesman and even evangelist.
But will Rummy's gambit pay off? Missile-shield backers criticized the Clinton Administration for lacking the political will to construct such a system. Their tone suggested that the project could be accomplished simply by ponying up the money and jawboning U.S. allies into accepting the inevitable. But the reality is that there is no shield at the ready. And because so many of the challenges associated with missile defense are technological--and may require years of trial-and-error development--simply pouring billions into such programs won't ensure success anytime soon.
Building a missile shield is a challenge on a par with building the atom bomb and putting a man on the moon. But those challenges were forged amid World War II and the cold war, when the White House, Congress and the public saw their achievement as high national priorities. There is no such consensus on national missile defense. Democrats are balking. Even the CIA's latest threat analysis says the most likely threats are not incoming missiles but rather such portable weapons of mass destruction as truck and suitcase bombs.
The calendar isn't any kinder to dreams of a missile shield. The Clinton program--a ground-based system--is the nearest to being fielded, and it flunked two of its first three tests. The only other possible national system on the drawing board--an orbiting network of killer satellites--won't be ready until at least 2020. That's why the Pentagon is scurrying to modify two systems now in development. The Navy's ship-based missiles and the Air Force's plane-based lasers were originally designed to take out shorter-range missiles. But the military is grooming them to play major roles in a national missile-defense system aimed at ocean-crossing ICBMs.
So what's Don Rumsfeld to do? Given the constraints imposed by physics, fiscal reality and foreign policy, the man who served as co-chair of Bob Dole's failed 1996 campaign will have to use Bill Clinton's system as his base. Pentagon officials say Bush's system will have to begin with Clinton's ground-based system--a handful of missiles deployed as early as 2004--followed by more research into ship- and plane-based interceptors. Ultimately, missile-defense advocates want the space-based lasers, ready to destroy missiles fired from anywhere at any time, bound for any place.
Significantly, Bush didn't mention space-based missile defense as a possible solution. But Rumsfeld did, alarming those who fear turning outer space into a battlefield. More defensive layers mean fewer missiles can leak through. The downside? A layered system will cost more money, take more time and generate more opposition from allies, foes and arms-control advocates. But adding space to the missile-defense recipe is part of Rumsfeld's brash style, one that has led some Pentagon officials to dub him "the lean, mean, in-fighting machine." Rumsfeld, a former Navy pilot and Princeton wrestling champ, relishes such skirmishes. He took command of the Pentagon with his own boarding party, a quiet team of trusted aides, and has begun cloaking his plans to remake the military behind heavy drapes of secrecy.
Rummy and his posse have set up more than a dozen panels to quietly review the Pentagon from top to bottom. The uniformed military, not surprisingly, is unhappy with the secrecy. "He's breeding an atmosphere of distrust by not including the military in his deliberations," an admiral gripes privately. "He's playing things too close to the vest, and that's leading to errors." Case in point, says the officer, is last week's China flip-flop: Rummy's Pentagon had announced an end to U.S. military contacts with the Chinese armed forces--and then reversed itself in a matter of hours, promising to review contacts on a case-by-case basis. The White House quickly said a Pentagon aide had misspoken, despite Rumsfeld's reputation for running a disciplined operation.