Missile crisis with North Korea recalls U.S. Cold War measures

The last such missile confrontation occurred during the final months of the Bush administration, when President Dmitry Medvedev of Russia announced deployment of Iskander missiles to Kaliningrad, a forward area close to Western Europe. This move was to protest Bush administration plans to deploy anti-ballistic missiles in Poland, with associated radar installations in the Czech Republic.

Medvedev's announcement was timed to coincide with election of Sen. Barack Obama to the White House. The president-elect stressed that our country has only one president at a time, and the administration has since endorsed the deployment of this anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system.

“Hitting a bullet with a bullet” is the way even proponents of anti-missile systems describe the extraordinary technical challenge. Yet there has been sustained pressure within the United States for a half century to build such weapons, dating back to the 1950's and the Eisenhower administration.

At that time, defense spending absorbed more than half the entire federal budget, and a much larger percentage of gross national product than today. Ike maintained control over the military primarily, though not exclusively, by putting an overall ceiling on the Pentagon budget, effectively setting the Air Force, Army and Navy against one another for available resources.

One byproduct was considerable duplication of effort. Each service developed a separate strategic missile program, jealously guarding research and development information from the others.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in the Kennedy administration was instantly offended by the lack of logic in this approach and decisively imposed organization-chart order. The Air Force was given land-based strategic missiles, the Navy sea-based submarine systems, and the Army was removed from the game.

The secretary and his civilian analysts also rejected arguments for anti-ballistic missiles because any conceivable defensive systems could be overwhelmed at relatively low cost by simply increasing the number of attack vehicles. Under then prevalent U.S. strategic concepts, hardening missile sites was stabilizing but protecting populations was not. If a nuclear Pearl Harbor was being planned, there was no point in protecting missile launchers which would be empty.

McNamara's policies and style quickly unified the services against him. The Army pressed successfully for an ABM role. When President Lyndon Johnson forced the secretary to resign, he made him President of the World Bank but also required public support for the ABM system.

President Ronald Reagan gave priority to exotic space-based missile interceptors, termed the Strategic Defense Initiative or “Star Wars.” The Air Force became the leading service but the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff endorsed the effort, with Reagan and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger prime exponents.

The Czech-Poland deployment is defended as prudent given possible threats from Iran or other extremist states. Nuclear strategist Herman Kahn used precisely that argument in trying to bolster the humiliated McNamara when the earlier ABM system was announced.

The radical rogue regime of North Korea, still committed to Cold War totalitarianism, is precisely the sort of threat Kahn had in mind.

Arthur I. Cyr is Clausen Distinguished Professor at Carthage College in Wisconsin and author of “After the Cold War” (NYU Press and Palgrave/Macmillan).

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