Weapons of Mass Destruction and International Order by William Walker

Author:William Walker [Walker, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780198568414
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2005-03-08T00:00:00+00:00

Taepo-Dong, missile defence and the critique of deterrence

In August 1998, North Korea launched a multi-stage rocket over the Sea of Japan (East Sea). The Taepo-Dong test aroused acute concern in Japan over its vulnerability to North Korean blackmail and over its potential humiliation by a state and people that it had traditionally held in low regard. Within the United States, the North Korean missile test intensified criticism of the Agreed Framework, the deal struck in 1994 by the US and North Korean governments under which North Korea would freeze and then dismantle its weapon programme in return for various benefits. Equally significantly, it provided timely ammunition for proponents of missile defence. As in the 1980s, increasingly influential critics of nuclear deterrence underlined the necessity of missile defence: although deterrence may have worked in the Cold War, they argued, it could not be relied upon to constrain ‘irrational actors’ whose calculations might be very different from those of the US.4 Furthermore, the risk-aversion of Western democracies meant that ‘rogue states’ armed with a handful of WMD might be able to deter rather than be deterred, despite US military superiority.

The Taepo-Dong test appeared to validate the Rumsfeld Report to the US Congress of July 1998, which had claimed that Iran and North Korea, held as the ultimate irrational actors, would soon be able to threaten the US mainland with warhead-bearing missiles.5 Calls for the construction of a national missile defence quickly gathered pace leading to the US Congress’ passage of the National Missile Defense Act in July 1999.6 This decision aggravated relations between the US, Russia and China, and between the US and its allies in Europe, as it challenged both the ABM Treaty and the system of nuclear deterrence developed over the previous half century. To American opponents of the ABM Treaty, its abrogation would enable the United States to use its formidable technological capacities to develop an unmatchable strategic advantage over future rivals (prominently China), regain invulnerability to external threat, and end the anachronistic maintenance of parity with a weakened Russia. What excited the ABM Treaty’s opponents appeared dangerous to its supporters: national missile defence would encourage the militarisation of space and jeopardise the ‘strategic stability’ that had long underpinned relations between the great powers. Deep down, the argument was over the kind of international order that would prevail in future: the establishment of a condominium of great powers, or a shift to a more naked form of hegemony.

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