In past elections, the Republican Party has carried the banner of missile defense — systems for intercepting nuclear warheads before they can strike their targets. It was Ronald Reagan, after all, who spent $200 billion on the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars.” Bill Clinton, on the other hand, slashed funding for the program and put off deploying a planned national missile defense system.
But, somewhat like the states of Nebraska and North Carolina, the true believers of missile defense now seem to be tilting toward the Democratic Party. At least that was the vibe last Friday at the Adventure Aquarium in Camden, New Jersey, where the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance bunkered down at its annual awards lunch. Officially, MDAA is nonpartisan and nonprofit, seeking only to spread the good word about missile defense. Most of the luncheon’s non-MDAA guests came from the Pentagon, Lockheed Martin, or Lockheed Martin subcontractors.
Riki Ellison, the former NFL linebacker who founded the MDAA, praised Hillary Clinton’s knowledge of missile defense, diplomatic work with NATO, and help with putting Lockheed Martin’s Aegis systems into Eastern Europe and its THAAD system into Guam. An Aegis anti-missile installation is now online in Romania; another Aegis system, in Poland, is scheduled to go online in 2018. “I think Don[ald] Trump is naive on the issue still,” Ellison told me. “He needs to be educated, if he comes in … we don’t know what Donald Trump, how, you know, on any issue.”
Deployment of a national missile defense system was prohibited for many years under the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. George W. Bush formally pulled out of the treaty in 2001.
Today’s systems are modest in comparison to the missile defense shield Reagan had imagined. They are designed to shoot down a few ballistic missiles before they can hit their targets. President Obama proposed a four-phase plan for European missile defense shortly after taking office, a scaled-back version of the Bush administration’s proposal. In a September speech, Trump tried to position himself as a champion of missile defense. Hillary Clinton’s campaign has issued multiple statements about building up missile defense in Israel, the Persian Gulf, and around the Pacific Rim. Clinton reportedly said she would “ring China with missile defense” in a 2013 speech.
“We’re the military,” Chris Johnson, a spokesperson for the Missile Defense Agency, said, when asked about the election. “Our job is to support whoever is elected.”
There’s a lot on the line for missile defense proponents: The president’s 2017 budget calls for $7.5 billion, a significant amount but also a reduction compared to prior years. On Friday, Vice Adm. James D. Syring, who leads the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, mentioned nuclear tests by North Korea, research by Iran, and “the continued pursuit of more capacity by nations who do not like us.” Against these threats, Syring said that he looked forward to more sales of missile defense systems to foreign governments, and a new $784 million Alaska radar now being developed by Lockheed Martin, which he called “the lynchpin for homeland defense and missile defense system for the next 40 years.”
A man at the Seoul Railway Station in South Korea watches a television broadcast reporting on the North Korean missile launch on March 26, 2014.
Photo: Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Critics of missile defense question the effectiveness of a system that could intercept an intercontinental ballistic missile and worry that regardless of whether the technology works, deploying it could upset China and Russia.
Officially at least, the ground-based missile defense system meant to protect the United States is aimed at defending against attacks from “rogue” states, like Iran and North Korea. Nevertheless, one supporter of missile defense who spoke at Friday’s luncheon named both Russia and China as potential nuclear adversaries.
“Now we see Russia flexing its muscle in the Middle East, China flexing its muscle in the South China Sea,” said Rep. Tom MacArthur, a Republican representing New Jersey’s third congressional district, home to a Lockheed Martin facility, which employs some 4,000 workers. “We are the best hope under God for this world today, and we therefore have to be the strongest nation on earth.” MacArthur has pushed to fund a new Aegis site on the East Coast, to complement existing stateside missile defense sites in Alaska, California, and a test site in Hawaii.
As MacArthur spoke about a world of pervasive, manifold threats, more than a dozen fearsome-looking sharks from Camden’s Adventure Aquarium floated in 550,000 gallons of water, immediately behind his head.
MacArthur, who was the only New Jersey congressman to attend the Republican National Convention in July, has endorsed Trump, but he appeared at a September fundraiser with Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who spurned Trump’s vice presidential overtures in Cleveland and mocked Trump’s repeated suggestion that the November election will be “rigged.” At Friday’s lunch, MacArthur did not mention Donald J. Trump, who has questioned the wisdom of American support for NATO and talked openly about using the possibility of nuclear war as a bargaining chip.
Sitting beside Ellison and MacArthur at the head table was Rep. Donald Norcross, D-New Jersey. Norcross did not call Trump out by name, but he did seem to allude to his election threats: “How important it is — that peaceful exchange of power,” he said. “I was in Washington when President Obama was sworn in the first time and President Bush was leaving. It just brought such value to my heart that somebody who controls, really, the legacy of our civilization, peacefully turns it over under the great democracy we have.”
“I’m not here to talk about the election,” MacArthur told me, after the event. “We have countries that are rattling their sabers. We have rogue regimes. And we have quasi-states like ISIS, or individual cells that want to attack us.”
MacArthur declined to address Trump’s repeated threat not to concede the election should he lose.
“The American people are going to choose our leader in two and a half weeks,” he said. “I have no comment on that.”
Top photo: Gen. Vincent Brooks, U.S. Army Pacific commander, speaks with soldiers of the A4 THAAD unit about numerous personnel and operational issues during his visit to the Anderson Air Force Base in Guam on Aug. 18, 2013.
Instead of quoting an NFL linebacker one ought to check on the exchange modelling underlying the decision to sign the 1972 ABM treaty.
All the assertions above are simply nuts and irrational wishful thinking.
It is a lot cheaper to circumvent or saturate ABM as the Russian are proving now.
In the mean time ABM is expensive and extremely destabilizing especially placed near the Russian border with the intent/capability to intercept ICBM in boost or coast phase before MIRV separation.
Actually placement of Aegis on Shore in Poland and Romania constitutes a Cuba Crises Level provocation. The restraint Russia is demonstrating is commendable. Russia warned the US for instance during 43rd Munich Security Conference 2007 against continuing on this path. Neocons went ape.
The only thing this article above proves is that the US has become so irrational that it can’t even analyze such exchange modelling anymore.
Lately we’ve ve been seeing the sudden demonizing of Russia, which plays into ramping up tensions between the US and Russia. There seems to be an urgent effort to recast our current relationship based on cooperation to one reminiscent of the cold war era. The reason for this is clear. The powers that be want to scare the pants off of those who have the slightest apprehension about Trump and his ability to manage the Football without “needlessly” starting a nuclear war. And here it appears likely the Intercept is playing the same fiddle complete with scary pictures, etc. All of which tends to make light of the more plausible and ironic reality that if anyone takes us down the road to perdition it will most likely be Hillary Clinton.
The end all audit is clear. Dispense with all the words, remove the smoke screen, and what do you have left? You have a patriotic American who has a life long history of creating wonderful things, one after another. In contrast Hillary Clinton is a destroyer who has produced nothing but misery, death, calamity, and division in her wake.
Figure it out America.
Only an idiot would think HilLIARy is better for America when it comes to our defense. The woman HATES our military, for C sake she INSTALLED the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, she took hundreds of millions from the Saudis and Russians in ” donations” to her “Foundation”….
As for the transition comments, anyone remember AL GORE QUIETLY CONCEDING?
And don’t barf any of your crap about “violence”. Read the damn wikileaks already and watch the Okeefe Veritas videos.
DEMOCRAT OFFICIALS PAID THOSE RIOTERS.
Throw the corrupt bastards out, vote Trump and Pence.
3,2,1…liftoff to the new cold war era?
“We are the best hope under God for this world today, and we therefore have to be the strongest nation on earth.”
Mattathias – I’ve a few follow-up questions:
?Did God send Jersey Boy this message, or was outsourced via angels?
Was it through wi-fi, fiber or cable?
?And which provider was it, Time Warner or AT&T?
??God told me nothing. I’m going to have send an encrypted message to the Goddesses to see who they think is the best hope. Maybe it’s not a nation…maybe it’s an international organization like the United Nations…nah, that would be too logical! ??If I get a return message from the goddesses, I’ll will instantly report back to TI & TIB in both English & Portuguese so that Americans in both hemispheres can know what the female gods are pondering, because it seems like ‘God the Guy’ has a monopoly over values.
Since I’m for equality, I believe we need to ask both the God(s) & Goddesses before coming to such a finite & absolute conclusion that the USA is Earth’s best hope for humanity.
Yours Truly,
The Sun of Goddesses
Postscript
I love this line below. Keep up the good work!
“As MacArthur spoke about a world of pervasive, manifold threats, more than a dozen fearsome-looking sharks from Camden’s Adventure Aquarium floated in 550,000 gallons of water, immediately behind his head.”
Postscript 2
For those who were also unaware about the meaning of ‘rattling their sabers’ – the original story is from South America. Yet I still don’t get how moving one’s sword (saber) leads to nuclear retaliation…again, maybe I’m just not getting the right message from above on how warfare works, or maybe I don’t understand the marketing lingo of warfare.
I try to dumb myself down when listening to these alpha males, but sometimes, they just go to low into stupidity that I just can’t bite their bate. I mean really….rattling their sabers. Is this suppose to provoke an orgasm of aggression within my veins? To be fair, the Russians put out their fair share of bogus propaganda, so I’m in no way endorsing one side over the other, but what I’m trying to say is that we – the world – will lose if this cold war begins anew. And as far Iran goes, please!! It was largely the Saudis, not Iranians, who were aboard those planes that crashed on September 11th, 2001.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber_noise
In Chilean history, Saber-noise or saber-rattling (Spanish: ruido de sables) was an incident that took place on September 3, 1924, when a group of young military officers protested against the political class and the postponement of social measures by rattling their sabers within their scabbards (sword case).
The term is now applied generally to cover any indication of military aggressiveness. In a sense, strategically timed war games can serve as an explicit form of saber-rattling, in that the extent of a country’s military muscle is put up on display for other countries (namely, adversaries) to see
Whats to be naive about? If you put some nukes in a little vase with water and with an aspirin, they should last about a week or a week and a half.
If you’re decided on building a comprehensive ballistic missile defense system for your country, it’s a pretty stupid idea to broadcast your plans about it to the media or discuss it publicly. All that will do is trigger another cold war by enraging China or Russia who will then build better ICBMs with multiple nuclear tipped re-entry vehicles. The better idea is to just announce you won’t be building any more missile defenses as you already have enough to stop 1 or 2 coming from North Korea. Then in secret (using strategic division of labour), you build an underground network of anti-ballistic missile defenses. Build them in a forest or desert and cover the silos with trees, folliage or sand. Then Russia or China can launch 2000 missiles at once all across America and these underground bunkers will automatically open up and fire an equal number of missiles to shoot them out of the sky before they can detonate the nuclear payloads.
One missile follows another and the p,Aneta is finished but no one it stupid enough to launch the first one. If it didn’t happen in 61 it ain’t happening now
It’s becoming ever more clear that the only way to come out ahead since the merger of the Democratic and Republican Parties in fealty to the PNAC agenda is to invest all you can in “Defense” stocks.
The only problem is that with these Neocon madmen/women in charge of US foreign policy, you won’t have long to enjoy your money.
“We are the best hope under God for this world today, and we therefore have to be the strongest nation on earth.”
You mean you are the most destructive and evil force on the planet killing millions since the WW2 mainly for resources
Makes you wonder which god he answers to.
The “god” is clearly defined. It is stated,
“In God We Trust”
on every coin
because the money and its accumulation are what is sacred
in the faking U$A.
In this perversity of corporate capitalist global religion,
the masquerade of (fake) democracy pays off richly for those
who are most “blessed” with money and who
do not let any emotional attachment get in their way of
accumulating more of their god.
As was stated near the end of “The Devil wears Prada,”
these predators devoutly and indifferently believe,
“Everybody wants to be us.”
Reflecting what I just stated,
The vast desperate majority of voters has consistently reinforced
the above stated perversity in each election. Anyone who dares
mention real socialist ideas is quickly put in their place by the
democrats and the republicans. They will only tolerate socialist
sorts of language for a brief time until they eliminate those
voices or, at least, portray them as extremists and push them to the
outer edges of the capitalist machine as a sort of unnecessary
decorative element to distract and deceive the majority of people
into believing that the powerful give a rat’s ass about the
plight of their victims. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are
both hard-core capitalists and their appeals to equality are
the necessary lies they both share to make sure their
servants stay in line.
How many countries has Russia overthrown, invaded, or destroyed in the last 20 years?
How many for the US??? (Don’t blah blah blah about the UN or “coalition” shit.)
One thing this article has done is show that the Democrats led by neoliberals like Clinton are most certainly NOT the party of peace anymore than the Republicans. That distinction belongs to the Green Party, and I wish The Intercept could follow Democracy Now!’s lead and cover the Green Party and other national/significant alternative parties and candidates more often. Perhaps Glenn Greenwald might write some of those articles? He’s been seen defending Jill Stein on Twitter.
The disease of “pragmatist” thinking is commonly found within
the websites of liberal writers. The Intercept is part of that community.
This is nothing new, but it is more apparent to those who do
not allow themselves to be brainwashed into thinking that the
answer to the problems of inequality, injustice, and the
degradation of the environment in this world can only be
found within the democrat or republican sources of the problems.
THAT is extremely difficult for “liberals” who identify as democrat
and nearly impossible for “conservatives” who identify as
republican (and I include libertarians within that group).
To a large extent, it seems that their careers depend upon their
being (what they believe to be)
right kind of pragmatic.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
That’s what you get when you have armed forces that are “too damn big” because the rent is “too damn high”.
“We have countries that are rattling their sabers. We have rogue regimes.”
__
Mattathias, Mattathias, Mattathias! When will you wake up to reality?
Look at the U.S. history of aggression – it’s staggering: bombing, sabotage, assassination, drugs, weapons, overthrow of legitimate government, installation of puppet dictators, condoning of ethnic cleansing and genocide. The list goes on and on. No other country can even come close to the outrageous violence and aggression shown by the U.S., and yet it trumpets its hollow rhetoric of “spreading democracy” louder than anyone.
The stench of hypocrisy is sickening. And you parrot it, without any criticism, AND you call yourself a journalist. Fucking pathetic.
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
That’s what you get when the age and experience for the analysis of the issues at hand is “too damn low”.
Was there a mix-up? I get the feeling that this
article was supposed to be submitted to MAD Magazine.
“What, me worry?”
Only the clueless and credulous believe that US missile “defense” could actually be effective as defense, or that it is intended to be defensive at all.
“We” are the rogue state. “We” are doing the muscle-flexing.
And Killary Klinton is about to become the Chief of the Rogues, not Herr Drumpf.
Schwartz is neither an imbecile nor an innocent neophyte, so what, exactly is the point of this piece?
can’t figure out if this is supposed to be anti-trump or pro-nuke. maybe both. in any case i don’t think the brain trauma-induced rantings of a dumb jock really warrant any attention. nor does any defense of any action taken by lockheed-martin.
“missile defense” is offense because it allows for first-strike capability. anyone who thinks it’s to defend against iran’s fantasy nukes (i just hope we can shoot down their brigade of flying unicorns when the time comes) or north korea’s fission-based bottle rockets is naive at best. thaad and all those nuclear-capable missiles popping up in former soviet shitholes like romania are for russia and china.
framing this simple fact as some kind of “derp trump is teh suck lol” narrative is expected in the NYT or washington p.o.s.t.* but given the increasingly establishment flavor of this site i can’t say i’m that surprised to see it here.
*piece of shit tabloid
‘“missile defense” is offense because it allows for first-strike capability.’
Yes, this was understood by the saner generations which preceded ours. 2016 America needs Richard Nixon!
The state of the art of missile defense is that we have a small chance of knocking out a single missile if the attacker notifies us in writing of the planned trajectory several days in advance.
It is trivially easy for the attacker to make his missile wobble. An interceptor which misses by a few yards is a failure. A nuke which misses by a few yards is still an unmitigated disaster.
Proponents of missile defense are not credible on any subject remotely related to defense. Talk to them about wasteful profiteering and you might learn something.
Tell it like it is Mikey. To think that the entire American public cannot fathom the true news reports (this time MSM is actually reporting reality) that the SDI interceptors & their systems DO NOT WORK! How many times do you have to have this fact banged into your cranium?
If these interceptors (glorified 4th of July skyrockets) were dishwashers you would be hanging the Maytag repair man from the yardarms.
Even if Kim Jong Un were to tell us a week in advance that he was going to send one of his equally deficient vehicles towards (let’s just say) Seattle, the U.S. Navy would have a better chance of hitting it with a Standard Missile (block 3) during launch rather than ANY interceptor from Ft. Greeley even getting close.
To say that BMD is a FRAUD would be nice. It is a sham!
This multibillion dollar total waste of cash, brought to you from an old B-movie actor/president suffering from dementia, Parkinson’s, and being advised by his wife’s astrologer.
Just another misguided, lasting legacy from Ronald Reagan… Just say no & EO1233.
Boeing & Lockheed Mart are only too happy to milk the cash cow. You!
Correction: make that EO 12333
Ostensibly, these missiles are intended to target Iran’s missiles and other “rogue nations.” Alas, the missiles based in Europe can barely protect the area around them. The Poland site is at the outer edge of the range of a missile from Iran (or Saudi Arabia).
Who is the actual target? Whose missiles are a lot closer? Russia. (Condoleeza Rice said as much when it appeared that Obama would end the program.)
The staging of these missiles is a political rather than military statement, just like the deployment of Patriots in Israel during the first Iraq war. Not a single Scud was shot down, but the Israeli population was placated.
There have been enough success-oriented tests and bellicose statements by our military establishment to give any foreign leader pause to consider whether these missiles might now actually be effective, and thus potentially deter them from launching attacks. The name of the game is to instill doubt, as opposed to actually offering protection.
A single nuclear warhead reaching its destination would result in a catastrophe. No responsible military leader can promise a defensive shield so effective as to prevent at least one city from being vaporized, and no responsible government leader would wish to have it happen to anyone.
Countries like Iran and North Korea can see what happened to Libya once its leader decided to forgo development of a nuclear capability. The US, UK and France are untrustworthy.
Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is a direct descendant of Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), also once nicknamed “Star Wars,” and has included research programs like the Airborne Laser (ABL). Few military procurement efforts have wasted as much for what they produced as the 30+ years of running away from the paralyzing thought of mutually assured destruction (MAD).
The “offensive” side of the house has been reorganized and renamed, also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_Force_Global_Strike_Command
i saw WARGAMES and i learned an awful lot. It occured to me that real or not, WOPR is correct in it’s assessment of futility. Yet we spend trillions on stuff we cannot use without wiping out everyting – maybe even cracking the planet in half. So i put my mind to work and came with a solution. FANS. Yes, no more nukes, put the money in inrastucture and public resources, medical paid, education paid, it’s all paid. Now many will say, we’re defenceless and could be nuked off the map! No. FANS. Take for instance a series of nuke hits – the giant FANS kick in and blow the fallout back to the originating source. We get minimal damage and they get the BLOWBACK – literally. We could also devise some giant trampolines, sky high, nukes hit and bounce and never reach blowout altitude. With enough spring we could even lob them back. Actually, high range EMP’s could fry the circuits and render them duds.
some planet. mars is starting to look better.
“The ONLY way to win is not to play.” ~ Joshua/WOPR
you all forgot low tech. bring a nuke in on a cargo ship under a fake flag while everybody is looking up to the skies. much more cost effective. so i have to agree with nfjtakfa that the only way to win is not to play. send a message that we are not going to hem you in or threaten your existence.
Filler, a la NYT Bob.
Shouldn’t this be reduced to a tweet on Trumpdown?
There is only programming differences between intercept and first strike missiles, USA is setting a collision with existence.
One of my favourite concepts from fiction is from Frank Herbert’s Dune books – “the slow blade penetrates the shield” to paraphrase. I interpret it as the idea that Sure-Steady & Persistent beats Crash-Bang-Wallop and that this is the current US philosophy on the exportation of Imperialism. Don’t move too fast, don’t get everyone too excited or alarmed, let sleeping dogs lie, just chip away nice and steady. Demonise, isolate, weaken, attack, neutralise, exploit, demonise, isolate, weaken, attack, neutralise, exploit…
I say this because nukes to me are the Ultimate Deterrent, or should be anyway. Yes, they are not perfect and yes, they are very unpleasant and scary – that’s the point. I believe the presence of nukes has stopped Europeans particularly from their annual Bashing Each Other Over the Heads sessions that have happened, well, since forever. Nukes are the first weapon we’ve had that pretty much ensures you die along with your enemy and all their and your friends, relatives and associates, and even if you did survive, you probably would’ve rather been evaporated rather that get hurled back into an eternally poisoned post-Apocalyptic Stone Age.
That stays the hand rather and makes even the boldest warmonger think twice. We should be reaching a point where we finally hold hands and be nice to each other. But we aren’t, mainly because SOMEONE and their rich buddies don’t want to play along. Don’t point at anyone else: WE KNOW IT IS YOU.
It would be fantastic to take that threat away for ever, but that would mean growing up as a species and the likes of Clinton and Trump suggest that in the World’s Most Powerful Nation (TM) that’s not about to happen very soon.
I am almost for Iran having nukes. The problem with taking them away and NOT being peaceful is that death is death is death and the people being threatened with death are willing to do anything to avoid it no matter what form it comes to them as – biologically, chemically, conventionally or posted to them via a Cruise missile.
Missile Defence Systems take away that returned threat in the minds of the mad. They may or may not work – you only going to get one chance to find out so that’s a rather huge roll of the dice in itself – so I guess anyone who truly buys into them is probably the sort of Blind Faith crazy fanatic that should be nowhere near nukes or their counter measures anyway. But guess what – they are!
So now America thinks it can keep pushing the limit of its aggression around the world because it thinks the Ultimate Retaliation is not working as the Ultimate Deterrent, which is why I guess we find ourselves in the current problems as the Slow Blade no longer seems Slow or Subtle as the US launches drone attacks, openly and vigorously threatens Russia and China, invades nations, keeps a huge military presence in others, co-opts NATO into its schemes, expand ever further into the former Eastern Bloc, continues to control the economic staples of our world, like oil and other essential resources, and continues to make one-sided trade deals that present a new trade bloc aimed at squeezing outsiders ever tighter and milking the taxpayers of other nations for US corporations’ benefits alone. Phew!
So these missile systems represent a kind of ecumenical decision in the Cult of America that tells the Faithful that Yes, they can be Saved from the Enemies’ Nukes and so strive on and claim what is yours, you are after all Exceptional!
Except it is bullshit and they don’t work against nukes. Great against ships, planes, drones and tanks, though, which the Americans also have lots of and spend trillions on.
Got to justify it somehow I guess.
Well, it is a little simplistic to say that only the republicans have advocated and funded ballistic missile defense. The democrats have consistently funded a number of BMD programs such as Patriot and THAAD. And both have drunk the kool-aide about the effectiveness of those systems.
I am quite sure that the companies that are selling BMD (e.g., Raytheon, Lockheed-Martin, GD) are quite aware of Clinton’s gross technical incompetence (unable, for example, to use a desktop PC) and are rubbing their hands eagerly in anticipation of selling their wares to yet another gullible president.
Anti-nuke missile defence systems to me are the ultimate “closing the stable door after the horse has bolted” situation. If – or when given the insanity prevailing in the USA at the moment – nukes are ever launched I believe we have failed as a species and any one who doesn’t think that way is insane, American, or a complete warmongering cunt, or most likely any combination thereof.
Let’s take take Riki the Banged-on-the-head-too-much-Linebacker as an example: If say, Russia or China do fire missiles at you, Riki, it is because you and the people you support have failed so miserably to consider the other peoples of this planet that the Chinese or Russians have decided to roll the dice on their own fates just to try to blow you off the face of this beautiful yet abused planet. I would suggest you think about that, but I guess you are too stupid to do that. I would suggest that the potential for that moment should warrant some prior soul-searching as getting all philosophical after the event is entirely pointless, much like the your missile defence systems.
So, cutting to the chase, should taxpayers in these Austere Times sweat a 60 hour week for a few dollars so they can give their taxes to you for a pointless missile system to protect a small area of America probably responsible for causing said missiles to be launched and thus probably very much deserving of not actually being in any way protected and most likely deserving of a vapourising along with Clinton’s lover, Benjamin Netanfuckyoo and his idiotic Palestinian-murdering compatriots?
Check above for the answer.
Hey,a pro Trump article at last!
Donald Trump for POTUS!