USA8217;s missile defence pause

...It makes sense for Mr Clinton to kick the ultimate choice into the next administration. This is a fateful determination that should be ...

8230;It makes sense for Mr Clinton to kick the ultimate choice into the next administration. This is a fateful determination that should be made by a president operating under a fresh mandate with more information, after a campaign in which all the pros and cons of the various missile defence options have been fully aired. Now let that debate begin.

Both candidates claim to believe that a missile defence should be deployed as soon as technically feasible and that, while due attention must be paid to the concerns of other nations, no one should have a veto over America8217;s security decisions.

Beyond that, however, there are important differences of emphasis and attitude. Governor George W. Bush is clearly more unbridled than Vice President Al Gore in his faith that the technical bugs can be worked out 8212; so much so that he has called for the earliest possible deployment of a missile defence that would protect not only the United States but its 8220;friends and allies.8221; He would offer unilateral reductions in the US nuclear arsenal to assuage Russian concerns, but if the Russians didn8217;t buy in, he would proceed, even if that meant scrapping the ABM Treaty.

Mr Bush didn8217;t quite explain what system, exactly, he had in mind, or how it would work. One popular Republican alternative, a sea-based system designed to strike enemy rockets at a lower point in their trajectory, might not be ready for many years after 2005, if then.

MR Gore has denounced Mr Bush8217;s plan, saying it would 8220;create instability and undermine our security.8221; In essence, he appears to embrace the current strategy of building a limited system to defend the 50 states against a rogue-state missile attack, while going the extra mile to preserve the ABM Treaty. He promises to 8220;work hard8221; to gain Russian acceptance but does not explain why the Russians would be any likelier to accept from him the same inducement 8212; large mutual strategic arms reductions 8212; that they already turned down from president Clinton.

The missile defence issue raises the most profound of strategic questions. Are US and global security best served by continuing to keep the nuclear peace exclusively, or mostly, through deterrence 8212; ensured by the credible threat of a devastating retaliation to an enemy first strike 8212; as during the Cold War? Or have geopolitics, proliferation and technology evolved to the point where a stronger element of defence should play a central role in US plans?

President Clinton could not quite square these circles, so he has defensibly deferred a decision into the next president8217;s first term. But it cannot be postponed any longer than that.

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Excerpted from a Washington Post8217; editorial and carried in the International Herald Tribune8217; of September 4