Western Missile Defense: An Interview with Three Experts

 

 Western Missle Defense [60:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup

Original Air Date
Wednesday, February 18, 2009 3:00 Pm

Western Word Radio interview with Brian Kennedy, President, Claremont Institute
Avi Schnurr, Executive Director, Israel Missile Defense Association
Dr. Jim Carafano, Senior Research Fellow, Heritage Foundation and Producer Of “33 Minutes”

Introduction

Avi Davis: This is Avi Davis and welcome to Western World Radio where we discuss issues relevant to the defense and protection of Western values and ideals. On Monday this week, North Korea now says it will test launch its Taep’o-dong 2 ballistic missile which has a reputed range of 10,000 kilometers and is thought to be capable of reaching the West Coast of the United States. Meanwhile, the Obama Administration affirmed this week that they accept this estimate. It is now believed that Iran is aggressively moving ahead with the production of weapons-grade uranium which could be used to manufacture a nuclear warhead. Iran has successfully tested long-range missiles before capable of reaching not only Israel, but Western Europe. In Pakistan, Ali Khan, described as the busiest trafficker in nuclear knowledge in history, was recently released from house arrest in Pakistan, making it possible that he would use his knowledge to aid and abet terrorist groups in obtaining weapons of mass destruction.

Given all these situations, what are the West’s options? For one, it could seek to prevent the construction of nuclear weapons through either diplomacy, sanctions, or else the threat of massive military intervention. But what if all these approaches fail and both Iran and North Korea, or terrorist groups, become armed within a relatively short period of time with significant nuclear threats that threaten the safety and security of the citizens of the West?  The most realistic answer to that question is a robust missile defense shield that could effectively deter the launch of such weapons and, if they are launched, make sure they are quickly dispatched before entering the airspace of the target countries.

The questions we will address today are: what are the threats to the West,?  Are our missile defense shields adequate in defending civilian populations against them and, if they are not, what needs to be done to strengthen them? And in answering these questions, we are fortunate to have with us this afternoon, three experts in the field. Jim Carafano, Senior Research Fellow at the Douglas and Sarah Allison Center for Foreign Policy Studies at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., and producer of the new documentary “33 Minutes.” Jim, welcome.

Jim Carafano: It’s good to be with you.

Avi Davis: Brian Kennedy, the President of the Claremont Institute in Claremont, California. Welcome, Brian.

Brian Kennedy: Thank you, Avi.

Avi Davis: And Avi Schnurr, the Executive Director of the Israel Missile Defense Association from Jerusalem, Israel. Gentlemen, welcome.

Avi Schnurr: Happy to be here.

Avi Davis: Let’s start with Jim Carafano. Can you give us an outline of the threats that the United States faces today and what is being done here to address them.

What Threats Does the United States Face?

Jim Carafano: Well, I think it’s a great question, and sometimes I think actually it’s a mistake to talk about “the threat” because the problem is much more existential. I mean, the problem is that nuclear weapons technology and ballistic technology is proliferated so widely. You know, a decade ago there were a half dozen nuclear nations; today there are nine. A decade ago, there were a half dozen countries that had ballistic missiles; today there are over twenty. And the fundamental problem here is that virtually any country that’s serious about, even some non-state actors can get into the game for a relatively modest amount of money. And what that means is, they could get a ballistic capability, they could get some kind of warhead on it – maybe a nuclear warhead, maybe something else. And even if they didn’t want to start a war, they basically could have a capacity to hold another country hostage. And say look, if you mess with me I will shoot this missile. Sure you might shoot back at me; you might blow up my cities. But are you willing to gamble with the fate of a New York, or a Los Angeles, a San Francisco, a Rio, a Munich, a Tel Aviv … are you willing to do that gamble?

So basically, this is kind of a cheap way to become a, not a great power, but a significant power. And the notion’s that almost anybody, any ill-meaning country or even some non-state actors, could hold somebody else hostage. Or even worse, transfer that technology to a non-state group that didn’t care and just wanted these to kill people. That really to me is the scourge of the 21st century. As deadly as the plague was in the Middle Ages or as fearful as we were of nuclear holocaust during the Cold War.

Avi Davis: Avi Schnurr, where do you see this threat right now, from your perspective? You’re in Jerusalem, you’re in Israel which has been, which has come under threat from statements from the leadership of Iran … where do you see the threat to Israel? And to Western Europe, for that matter?

The Threat to  Israel and Western Europe

Avi Schnurr:  Yeah, I have to agree with Jim. I see this threat over all as a major change. I would call it a “new threshold” development. And what we’re really seeing is that the kinds of wars that we’ve been used to over, I’d say in recent history, that picture is now changing. And we’ve become used to the idea that wars, at least from the U.S. perspective and even from the Israeli perspective, are fought between armies. One of Israel’s classic strategic approaches has been to make sure that wars are not fought on Israeli territory. That’s really basically essential for a country the size of Israel. You can’t survive and fight wars when on your own territory at this size. That strategy has worked fairly well over the years. But now, unfortunately – with this missile threat – we find that our enemies have found a way to basically bring the problem to the home front. And Israel is currently facing a variety of missile threats – everything from the very short range, to katyushas and kassaams that have been in the news for the last few years and, most recently over the last couple of months, to the medium-range threats which are in the hands not only of Syria, but also of Hezbollah. We’re talking here about threats that can reach every city of Israel in the hands today of a terrorist group. And then of course, we know that Iran is facing us still with long-range weapons. Both Syria and Iran have a capability already for weapons of mass destruction. Nothing nuclear yet, as far as we know. And one of the interesting headlines that was in the papers here over the last couple of days is a recent discovery, and a public announcement, that Syria has been found to be in the process of putting together a chemical weapons facility immediately adjacent to one of their missile launching capabilities.

Avi Davis: Avi, does the government of Israel recognize this threat, or the extent of the threat? And is it preparing for it?

Israeli Government’s Awareness of Threat

Avi Schnurr:  You know, that is a question which is always curious. Because the answer has to be yes, but I think there’s a fundamental problem here. First of all, I would say that both the United States and Israel are leading the world in terms of working on missile defense. So that’s clear. Nevertheless, I would also say that in both countries the amount of effort that’s going on, the scope of the effort is small in comparison to what’s needed. There is a fundamental problem here and I think it has to do with just the nature of Western democracies. That the decisions that would need to be taken to greatly amplify the effort in an area like this tend to be made by large military institutions which move much, much more slowly than our enemies. If you’re talking about, for example, a terrorist group …  institutionally terrorist groups are flat. They can make decisions in an instant. They can absorb new technology – ballistic missile technology – instantly and begin using it creatively. It’s much slower; much more difficult for any large institution to respond. That’s going to be the challenge – can we respond quickly enough?

Avi Davis: I now want to bring in Brian Kennedy. Brian, can you give us a detailed assessment of preparedness in the United States for a major intercontinental ballistic attack on the continental United States.

Preparedness in the United States

Brian Kennedy: Well, today we really don’t have one. We have a very limited missile defense up in Alaska and deployed partly in California, with limited interceptors to stop a North Korean missile launch at the United States. We have not prepared ourselves for a Russian attack or a Chinese attack, or a ship-launched attack of the kind that Iran is trying to produce today. One, let me salute you for even doing this type of show to call public awareness to this problem. It turns out millions and millions of Americans live every day under the belief that we have a ballistic missile defense to defend this country against a wide range of threats. Ronald Reagan talked about it back in early 1980s, ’82 and ’83, when he gave his famous speech, and a lot of Americans, even though it was ridiculed at the time, came to the belief that of course if we have enemies around the world who wish to destroy us, we would of course build a missile defense to make sure we’re defended. And we in the Heritage Foundation, and others, did surveys back in the ‘90s and discovered that, by 1997, 76% of the American people believed we were fully defended against a ballistic missile attack when, in fact, we had nothing deployed to defend us.

Failure of Government

Today we have a very rudimentary system, and most Americans would be shocked to learn that we are vulnerable to an Iranian attack or a Chinese attack or, even in the age of terrorism, some rogue group acquiring one of these missiles. And it’s almost a national scandal that we’re not defended today. And much, much more needs to be done to understand that we can’t simply defend ourselves from the most serious threat to our very existence. And why this has been allowed to happen really is a failure of government. And it’s beyond Republican or Democrat. It’s a full-scale failure of government to understand the problem and to build defenses against these weapons.

Jim Carafano: Can I just piggy-back off of something Brian just said? The polling numbers on this, and there has been a fair amount of polling, are really remarkably telling. Routinely, when you poll the American public, 90% of Americans will state that they think a ballistic missile attack is a real incredible threat. Most Americans will state that they want their government to build ballistic missile defenses. Many Americans will state that they think they already have ballistic missile defenses. And actually, a majority of Americans state that they even think you should build ballistic missile defenses when you’re on tough economic times like we have now. So, the American expectation of this threat and what’s needed is actually very, very high and is actually very much in contrast to the way many officials in Washington, the attitude many officials in Washington have about this.

Avi Davis: I want to now pass to the issue of EMPs – electromagnetic pulse. In 2005, the Third Judiciary Sub-Committee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, which is chaired by John Kyle, had a hearing on electromagnetic pulse, or EMP threats. And it found, amongst many other things, that several potential adversaries have or can acquire the capability to attack the United States with a high-altitude nuclear weapon-generated electromagnetic pulse. A determined adversary can achieve the means of attack capability without have a high level of sophistication. And it continues, the EMP is one of a small number of threats that can be held over our society at the risk of catastrophic consequences. EMP will cover the wide geographic region within a wide radius to the nuclear weapon and has the capability to produce significant damage to critical infrastructure. And that’s the very fabric of U.S. society.

Jim, your new movie, “33 Minutes,” which we’ll talk about in a short while, deals with this. I’d like you to explain the consequences, exactly what an EMP attack is, and what are the direct consequences of such an attack.

What is an EMP Attack?

Jim Carafano: Sure. Any nuclear explosion is going to release an enormous amount of energy. Now most often, if you’ve seen documentaries or film clips of a nuclear explosion, they occur at or near the ground and you see a giant mushroom cloud and a fireball. And what happens in that case is most of that energy is dispersed out and the effect you feel is the concussion, the explosion, the blast of heat of the immense over-pressure. You don’t really notice the effects of the radiation that much because everything that would feel that is really burned or fried, or blown away. And a lot of that energy goes straight into the ground. So imagine if you will, instead of detonating that nuclear weapon at or near the surface of the earth, that you went several miles into space and you did the same thing – you detonated that weapon. Well, what happens is exactly the same thing. An enormous amount of energy is released. But it doesn’t go into the ground; it doesn’t burn down buildings. It has to go somewhere, and where it goes is it goes into any particles in space or in the atmosphere and, in a sense, charges them like a giant lightening bolt … think of the most massive lightening bolt you could ever possibly imagine. And so what you have is this wave of super-charged particles that just races along a straight line, because we all know that light goes in a straight line. And so some of that light is going to propagate into space; some of that energy is going to propagate towards the earth. And what happens is that as it propagates toward the earth, anything that has an antenna or a wire or something is going to attract that energy just like lightening would hit a lightening rod or hits a control tower or something. And you’ll get this huge surge of power, and that surge of power will overwhelm the microchips that run everything – that run our electrical systems, our ATMs, even some of the things in our car or computer. And so what will likely happen, anything that’s line of sight, of course, if you had a very big nuclear weapon and you detonated it over the center of the United States, the whole country would be covered – everything would be gone. The electrical grid would burn out, the cell phones wouldn’t work … the cell phones themselves would probably be ok, but the satellites and the towers that supported them wouldn’t work. And America, basically at the speed of light, would be thrust back into the 19th century – before you could use an ATM, before you could get your paycheck, before you could make a phone call. The traffic lights wouldn’t work; nothing would get delivered to the stores because the supply chain would break down. People in hospitals would die because the equipment would fail. Medicine wouldn’t be delivered. It is the one form of nuclear threat where, with one nuclear weapon fired at the right place, you could do more destructive damage than virtually any other possible kind of man-made catastrophe you could possibly imagine.

Avi Davis: Avi Schnurr, you’re in a country that is relatively small and is likely the target of an EMP attack if any place is. Do you agree with that and how would it affect the State of Israel?

How Would Israel Deal With an EMP Attack?

Avi Schnurr: Yeah, I think you’re description, Jim, is quite accurate based on my background. I think the curious and dangerous thing about this threat is that it is global in nature. In fact, something that’s interesting here is that, if you look at what has been done around the world, certainly Israel is one of the more developed countries. But if you look at Israel, you look at the United States, you look at Western Europe, what we have all done – all of our societies – we have systematically built into every critical infrastructure that we depend on, these very highly effective electronic systems…  microprocessors … microchips … which now control everything from electricity generation to food production to our water supply system to our sewage to our binarycontrol systems to our communications, and much of our military as well uses similar civilian microchips. So, if you look across the entire network of our societies, basically what we’ve done is we have built in a weakness which is fundamental to absolutely everything that supports our societies. And that’s true of all modern, developed societies. So we’ve created an opportunity and a vulnerability which – if we don’t find a way to deal with it, to both defend ourselves and also to provide some protection against this – provides a very, very dangerous opportunity for our enemies. And that’s certainly true of Israel, it’s true of the United States, it’s true of Western Europe.

Avi Davis: Brian Kennedy, given these vulnerabilities, what can be done to address the threat of an EMP attack, or a ballistic missile attack in general?

How to Prevent Against an EMP Attack?

Brian Kennedy: Well, of course we want to stop the ballistic missile that could release such an EMP weapon against the United States.  And the way to do that, of course, is to build missile defenses to stop a wider range of missiles – conventional nuclear weapons or conventional weapons – conventional nuclear weapons that would simply be meant to kill people. Or a nuclear weapon/nuclear missile that was used in this EMP mode. And one thing that bears saying early on in the EMP discussion is that, in fact, we have a country in Iran that says it would like the destroy the United States. Mr. Ahmadinejad said he can imagine a world without the United States and without Israel. And we might think that’s just small talk by a man who seems like a fanatic over in Iran, but in fact Iran has tested twice in the last eight years the ability to take a missile – and they don’t have the nuclear warhead yet – but they can take the missile and they have simulated this awful EMP-type of attack using a missile launched from a ship in the Caspian Sea. They’ve done that twice. And so, just so that the audience doesn’t think this is some kind of abstraction thought up by people in think tanks, this is actually something we can observe the Iranian military trying to perfect. Now, in the face of them trying to perfect the ability to destroy us, we just as a matter of sensible public policy have been making the argument – we who are for missile defense – that because of this obvious and urgent threat, we ought to be building robust missile defenses. From land, from sea, from space, that could deal with a whole host of threats, be it a nuclear weapon designed just to kill people, or a nuclear weapon designed to be exploded in the high atmosphere and create this electromagnetic pulse. We know that the Iranians are doing this today and we have an option: we can either build missile defenses and prevent and attack, or we can suffer the consequences of an attack and then presumably launch a massive nuclear retaliation against Iran which would of course kill a lot of Iranians. And that may be very satisfying to a lot of people, but we will have still suffered the attack. And so, there is this great debate in America whether we should have missile defenses. Unfortunately, it breaks down along party lines. It shouldn’t – it should be a bi-partisan effort going on to build missile defenses. But sadly, we don’t have missile defense today. We have a great new president, who himself has not been for missile defenses. Maybe he can be persuaded that we need missile defenses. But all of us who care about this issue so much are trying to take it from the level of partisan politics and try to describe to the American people a threat in the hopes that they will say yes, let’s get beyond the partisan wrangling and just get this thing done.

Avi Davis: Let’s open it up to … sorry, go on, please.

The EMP Commission

Jim Carafano: Before we left EMP I just wanted to get in one last point. Just so folks don’t think it’s just Brian and I saying this … Congress had a commission that studied this, and their findings are on their website, which is just very easy to find: its http://empcommission.org. And all their reports are on there and folks should really just go to the website and just read what scientists say about this.

Avi Davis: Thanks for that. I’m glad you pointed it out that it is available and Congress has grappled with this. But it’s quite perplexing to me why the political establishment hasn’t come to grips with this and what the political obstacles are to understanding that Iran would just threaten the United States with annihilation, threatened Israel, has the capability of hitting Western Europe. Where is the political obstacle here? Why is there such a sense of denial about the threat that is emanating from Iran right now?

Jim Carafano: One, there is a lot of politics, sure. Just a very quick example. Vice President Biden went to Munich, Secretary Clinton had some high-level conversations, some other state officials had some high-level conversations, and the President. And they all said the same thing: “We’re not against missile defense, but we’re concerned about technical issues.” And, of course, what they’re referring to is deployment of missile defenses in Western Europe, radars in the Czech Republic, missiles in Poland that would be capable of shooting down a ballistic missile launch from Iran in either Western Europe or the United States. So, it sounds very reasonable. This is not about politics; this is about technical issues. The Russians are opposed to this. Well, obviously the Russians wouldn’t be opposed to something that is technically unfeasible – why would they care? The Polish Government and the Czech Republic signed up to put these systems in their country. Obviously they recognize that they’re technically feasible, otherwise they wouldn’t agree to that. We’ve already built these systems and put them in California and Alaska and demonstrated they can shoot down missiles. So when the President and the Vice President and Secretary Clinton say that, they know on its face it’s ridiculous because there really isn’t a serious debate about this technology. So it is politics, and it’s not about technical issues, it’s not about whether this can work or not or whether it defies the law of physics, or even whether it’s needed or whether these threats are real. It is about the politics of what people want to do.

Avi Davis: Would you agree with that, Avi Schnurr in Jerusalem? Would you agree with that from the Israeli perspective? Is it also politics that is making it difficult to get a missile defense system – an effective short or medium range missile defense system in place in Israel?

Israeli Missile Defense

Avi Schnurr: Yes, I think I would absolutely agree. I think the technology is there. One of the things that we see in the missile defense world, for example, the Missile Defense Agency in Washington, one of the comments that has been, I think, very on point has been that in the old days people would say, “How are you going to hit a bullet with a bullet?” What has been achieved now, and demonstrated over and over again in testing, is that what we now do is we make decisions on where on the bullet we want to hit with our bullets. Our computers are very fast these days, and the technology is now there. So the issues are political. Israel has a deployed missile defense system, the Arrow System, which is a system that could be used against Iran. There are two other classes of missiles that Israel faces: medium range and short range, against which Israel has not elected to deploy anything in spite of the fact that there are systems that could be available and could be deployed.

Avi Davis: What are those systems? Can you give us a sense of it?

Avi Schnurr: There are different systems available. Probably the most appropriate for this discussion would be the PAC III Missile, which is a U.S. medium range interceptor, which is extensively deployed now off the U.S. Army. Japan made the announcement, I think over last summer, that they’ve completed the deployment of a ring of Patriot missile batteries … the PAC III missile batteries surround Tokyo, so Tokyo is now defended. It is being deployed in an increasing number of countries. Very effective system, but once again when you talk about deploying a major new system, in every case when you deal with things like this, what you’re looking to do is to try to pull decisions out of very large military institutional structures  on the face of such decisions tend to affect other programs, tend to affect pre-existing plans, and making such decisions are very hard. You need to have strong leadership. You need to have a compelling sense for the need and to drive such decisions effectively in order to get them made. And when issues like this become political issues, that becomes quite difficult to do.

Avi Davis: Brian Kennedy, I think I cut you off before. Did you want to add something to this?

Brian Kennedy: Yeah, I was just trying to suggest that, when we say its “politics,” we’re saying there’s a political obstacle. But for most of your listeners, they’ll wonder, “Well golly, this sounds very serious. How can someone be against missile defense? Why would they be against missile defense?” And so when Jim rightly points out that politicians say, “We worry about the technical aspects,”  as Clinton and now Obama does, that “we’ll do it just as long as it’s cost effective and technologically feasible.” But of course they won’t put the money into making it either cost effective or technologically feasible. So when we say politics, we wonder, well, why are people against it and you have to have an answer for that. Now, the obvious answer is, well, I guess there’s two.

Mutually Assured Destruction

There’s a certain nihilism that pervades a certain kind of defense thinking. And that nihilism is built on the idea that we’re going to have mutually assured destruction. And that instead of building missile defenses to protect us against these awful weapons, we’re simply going to retaliate using nuclear weapons if we ever get attacked. And the reason that’s problematic is, sure, if Iran attacked us we could launch nuclear weapons against them. But they may not care about being destroyed. Mr. Ahmadinejad believes in a worldwide cataclysm that may bring about the return of the twelfth Imam – a strange religious belief in Islam or Shiite Islam (Shia Islam), that people in the West will find kind of beyond their understanding. Now, you look at Russia or China, sure, maybe they will be deterred by the fact that if they launch nuclear weapons at us, we’ll launch nuclear weapons against them. I mean, in some ways, people have made the argument this argument of mutually assured destruction has worked for a long time. But we’ve entered an age where mutually assured destruction, if it ever worked, may not work against the radical Islamic world. And so when we talk about politics, there are some people who say, “Let’s not build missile defenses, let’s just live under mutually assured destruction.” Well, even if that may have worked in the past, there’s no guarantee that it’s going to work in the future. And I think we even have to question the morality of saying that we’re simply going to remain vulnerable and annihilate some other people who wish to attack us. And so part of the political problem here is getting beyond the idea of mutually assured destruction and simply saying we’re going to build defenses so that no one can destroy Western Civilization. And by Western Civilization we mean the United States, Israel, Western Europe and the free peoples of the world. We’re either going to make that decision or we’re going to run the risk of being destroyed. And for most people, that’s unacceptable.

Avi Davis: I just want to jump in here and say, none of you’ve mentioned yet , what happens in the event Iran does not directly attack the United States but uses surrogates to do it. Is that a possibility?

Iran Using Surrogates to Attack the U.S.

Avi Schnurr: Well sure it is, and of course and that’s one of the reasons why the traditional notion of Cold War deterrents don’t work. For example, almost anybody could buy a Scud missile. These are missiles that were first made in Russia. They’re relatively cheap; they’re widely deployed; they don’t have a long-range. But almost anybody could buy one; almost anybody could buy a commercial freighter. You could put your missile on the freighter; you could sail it almost anywhere in the world. You could launch your nuclear weapon at any land mass you wanted to. Nobody might even …  they might attack the launch but by the time they figured out what the launch platform is, you might be long gone. Or you might just scuttle the ship and send it to the bottom of the ocean. And these things don’t come with a return address label. So you might have an attack on your soil and, even if you wanted to retaliate, you might not know who to retaliate against.

Reasons for Political Opposition

I think Brian’s exactly right – that a lot of the political opposition comes, because not that people are evil and they don’t want to protect you, it’s because they’re still stuck to believing kind of Cold War truisms which, even if they were true during the Cold War, don’t really matter anymore. One of the other ones is people saying, “Well, if you build missile defenses, other people will just build more weapons and you’ll actually create an arms race.” We actually have lots of data that says that actually is not true. As a matter of fact, if you remember when President Reagan in the 1980s first introduced the Strategic Defense Initiative, just the mere threat of building missile defenses forced the Soviets to the negotiating table and they actually forced deep cuts in numbers of strategic systems.  Actually the first time we actually had a strategic arms limitation talk that actually limited arms instead of just slowing the pace at which they grew. I think one of the fundamental arguments about why you want to do this is not that saying we should not have diplomacy, it’s not saying that we shouldn’t negotiate, it’s not saying that we shouldn’t do arms treaties. You can do all those things, and that’s fine. But the point is, if you build missile defenses, you are building another element of dissuasion. The other guy will say, “Why should I build this missile system? Why should I get a nuclear weapon? It won’t do me any good anyway. They’ll just shoot it out of the sky.” So missile defenses, rather than following the conventional wisdom that they’ll create an arms race, missile defenses are actually likely to make ballistic missiles less valued and therefore less of a threat.

Brian Kennedy: This is Brian, by the way. Can I just add one thing to that? That is, by the way, we’re not the only ones who talk about missile defense. The Russians have a primitive missile defense which would defend Moscow in a very effective way. China is working on missile defenses, including space-based missile defenses. India is working on missile defenses. Anybody who has any kind of conception of national defense is working on missile defenses. So this is not some unilateral action by the United States that we’re proposing. You know, we’re probably behind … we’re certainly behind in the missiles defenses that other countries are deploying. So if we have a missile defense we’re not going to be doing anything different than the Russians or Chinese or the Indians when it comes to defending our own people. And who can be against the conception that we’re going to defend the American people.

Avi Davis:  I interrupted Avi Schnurr. He wanted to make a comment and I wanted to come back to you.

The Missile Capabilities of Terrorist Organizations

Avi Schnurr: I just wanted to comment that if we talk about the capability of some of these terrorists groups that might end up receiving nuclear warheads from one country or another, it’s not even that they have to go out and procure Scuds. If we look at Hezbollah, which is one of the big terrorist organizations that is arrayed against Israel, they have a variety of missiles that could be used for attack either on Israel or U.S. soil from this concept of a freighter or a fishing vessel. Probably the missile they would use is something called  110. It has a 300km range, it has a warhead capability of about 600kg – more than adequate to do this kind of thing. They already have the missile. Something else that’s probably, particularly here in Israel, is seen as a concern if anything greater than Iran, and that is Pakistan. Pakistan has 50 nuclear warheads. They’re under control, at the moment, of the government, but Pakistan is increasingly being seen as an ungovernable country. With Islamist terrorists taking over and encroaching greater and greater portions of the country, the central government actually at this point only controls a fairly small region. And Pakistan was in the news here in Israel just over the last several days when it was announced that the central government has once again given in to some of the terrorists in some of the outlying areas and also offered them, basically conceded to them, some of these new areas. This, combined with, I think that you mentioned earlier, Avi, the fact that Khan is now a free man – he’s been released from house arrest – suggests that those 50 warheads are out there and potentially may make their way to terrorists at some point.

Missiles As The Terrorists’ Weapon of Choice

Jim Carafano: This is Jim Carafano again, and I wanted to add just one point to that. Another reason why people often dismiss missile defense, they say, “Well, if somebody has a nuclear weapon, whether it’s a terrorist or some state group, they’ll just smuggle it in  a shipping container and explode it that way so all your missile defense is worth nothing.” And it’s an interesting criticism and it’s worth discussing for a second. First of all, the likelihood of anybody just putting a nuclear weapon in a shipping container is almost zero. These things are lost, stolen, misdirected, crushed, fall overboard; no self-respecting terrorist or any group would take a nuclear weapon and not send it somewhere out of their positive control. So if you wanted to smuggle a nuclear weapon, you’d have to have a network to do that. That would mean all kinds of opportunities for people to detect it, find out about it … so that’s chancy business. And if people found out you were trying to do this, well, they might take offense to that. That’s one of the attractions of a missile is you have positive control over that missile until you punch a button and then virtual guarantee it’s going to hit its target. So as a delivery system it is infinitely preferable even for a non-state group. And the other point is, if you were a group and you really did wanted to attack a country – you didn’t care about retaliation, you didn’t care about getting caught or whatever else – you just wanted to kill people … the difference between smuggling a nuclear weapon and firing a nuclear weapon on a missile is so profound that it’s worth mentioning. If I took a nuclear weapon and I put it in a truck and I drove it into the middle of New York City and I detonated it in the middle of the day, on a good day (if you’ll excuse the word), you might kill 40,000 people. If I took that exact same nuclear weapon and I detonated it in the air from a missile, I would kill hundreds of thousands, and I might have a million casualties. And the difference is when you detonate a weapon close the ground, most of the energy goes into the ground. When you detonate it at a low altitude, a few thousand feet in the air, from say an airplane or a missile, all that energy goes onto the surface of the ground, the buildings and the people and everything else. If you detonate it high in the sky you create the EMP effect, and you further grow the cone of destruction. So there is such a fundamental difference in the scale of the threat between somebody trying to smuggle and nuclear weapon and somebody trying to shoot a missile that it’s ridiculous to say I should have to make a Hobson’s choice and only worry about that and forget about this other threat which is much more grave, infinitely practical and for any real serious enemy it would infinitely be the desirable choice.

Avi Davis: I want to devote the last twenty minutes of this discussion to solutions. Both Brian and Jim mentioned the SDI, Strategic Defense Initiative, which was proposed and actually received it’s inception under Ronald Reagan. But SDI was cancelled, I believe, by the Clinton Administration. Why was it canceled? And was it politics once again or was it regarded as just a relic of the Cold War and no longer necessary? I now direct that to Brian, if you’d answer please.

Strategic Defense Initiative

Brian Kennedy: The Clinton Administration really did have almost this religious view that mutually assured destruction was preferable to building missile defenses. And again,  I’ll say this without sounding too accusatory toward Democrats or Bill Clinton or what have you, but there is this strange mindset that anything we do to make our military more effective is likely to lead us to use the military. I think Clinton possesses that view; I think Carl Levin possesses that view. And I say that again, not in a partisan way, just merely reiterating what they themselves believe. And so military capability, defensive capabilities – they may embolden you to be more provocative in the world, whereas a certain state of vulnerability will lead us to be more diplomatic or more inclined not to use force. And I think during the ‘90s there was this very powerful view that we ought not to build missile defenses – that we ought to scale back whatever Ronald Reagan was talking about and we should basically defer that until sometime in the future. And I think it was only because of a lot of pressure by various people in the national security community, as well as the fact that the North Koreans started testing weapons, and this amazing thing that happened back in the ‘90s during the Clinton administration where a Chinese colonel told an American diplomat that, in effect, we would not trade Los Angeles for Taipei, that Americans started waking up to the fact that there are still nuclear weapons in the world, that we’ve not eradicated evil from men’s souls, right? So the end of history, as it was called, had not actually occurred and that, the world being a dangerous place, missile defenses may be necessary. And so, late in the Clinton administration there was a whole bunch of effort going on to talk about the need for missile defenses again. It was under Bill Clinton, remember, that the first talk of building the site in Alaska took place. And really, under the kind of political pressure that I think Bill Clinton didn’t want to fight, he started proposing missile defense systems in Alaska so long as they could be viable. And so even though it was scaled back – the Reagan plan, the Strategic Defense Initiative – was scaled back, it never completely died because there were still people, like on this phone right now, who cared about this, were willing to talk about it and I think serious policy makers wondered, what do you do in the future if mutually assured destruction doesn’t work?

Avi Davis: Avi Schnurr, you’ve offered some ideas and opinions on how to build alliances to put pressure on political establishments around the world to recognize the threat. Could you give us some idea about that?

Building Alliances

Avi Schnurr: Yeah, I think first of all to put it in context, it’s true that although its been scaled back, the missile defense agency at this point is still doing good things – it’s still developing weapons in Israel. There is both the Iron Dome system and there are future developments which are now in progress. So there are things being done. The problem is that if we look at the threats that we’re facing and we compare what’s being done to what could be done, what needs to be done, unfortunately it leaves an enormous amount to be desired. What we should be doing is treating this as a critical, very, very urgent priority in both countries. And it’s not being given that kind of attention. Now in terms of what could be done in terms of international alliances, and including non-governmental organizations like those that are now represented on this radio show, I think there may be some very interesting opportunities here. And I think it flows from an underlying problem. And the underlying problem, I think, that cannot be ignored here is simply the fact that even when people decide that they want to get involved – that they want to do more, that they want to accelerate the rate at which missile defenses are being implemented – it’s very, very difficult for big military institutions or the Pentagon to undertake major new programs.

Involvement of Non-Governmental Organizations

Very difficult, limited budget … any major new program threatens other existing programs. It simply takes a long time even when the will is there. So, something that can be done to help in this area is to get non-government organizations involved. Whereas huge government institutions move slowly, non-government organizations can move very quickly. And I think that there is potential to begin putting together coalitions, alliances of interested non-government organizations, both non-profit and for profit, companies around the world who are interested in this, would like to help, would like to get involved, and to begin building plans, ideas, holding conferences, looking at this from a perspective which will be international in nature. And ultimately could partner with government institutions, both national institutions and international institutions, like the U.N., NATO, to begin looking at other ways to begin getting energized in this area.

Effective Missile Defense Essential to Arms Reductions Treaties

Jim Carafano: Just one quick point. I think that is such an important point, I think it’s worth re-emphasizing. It’s not really about just protecting the United States, or protecting the United States and its allies or protecting Israel. This is something that is for the cause of all mankind. This is about firstly, eliminating one of the great scourges of the 21st century, which is the proliferation of ballistic missiles. And secondly, it’s the first step toward achieving the vision that President Reagan had to begin with, which is a world without nuclear weapons. You’re never going to have a world without nuclear weapons by just signing treaties or just inspecting people. You have to create the insurances that people can be protected. So missile defense, if you’re really serious about ending nuclear proliferation, if you’re really serious about having nations band together in common interest, then missile defense is almost an essential first step. Actually, if you do the kinds of things that Brian advocates, which I totally degree with, build comprehensive missile defense systems, essentially that becomes a global shield that prevents anybody from taking advantage of anybody else.

Avi Davis: Jim, I wanted to talk about what the Heritage Foundation is doing and particularly about your new documentary “33 Minutes,” which I’ve had the privilege to see. It’s a really superb production. What was behind the production of the movie, and can you tell us … you have a number of major political figures appearing in that, Jim, and I’d like to know how they’ve reacted to the threat of an EMP attack or an intercontinental ballistic missile attack.

33 Minutes

Jim Carafano: That’s a lot of questions. So, probably the easiest thing for people to do to find out about the film …  there’s a terrific website, it has a blog, it has a trailer of the film, it has all kinds of information … it also enables people, if they want to, to sign up to show a screening of the film. And the website’s very easy to find. You just type in the numbers “33” and then the word “minutes.com.” So just go to 33minutes.com and you can find out all about the film. The reason why we made this film is for the reasons Brian addressed at the very beginning, which is Americans think that we already have missile defense. Another group of Americans think that the physics don’t work; its impractical, and we can’t have it, and another group of Americans are kind of ignorant as to even what the threat is. And so we made a film to speak to Americans in a very common sense way about what the threats are, how does the technology work, do missile defenses make the world more safe or less safe, and it’s a very accessible film for lots of people and we’ve shown it to all kinds of audiences. We’ve shown it to scientists; they got it. We showed it to men and women who don’t know anything about national defense or the issues; they understand it. We’ve shown it to members of Congress on the Hill; they understand it. It’s really meant to be a film not even to convince you. It’s meant to give people an opportunity to understand the issue, and then to discuss it and go forth and make up their own opinion.

Avi Davis: If you could just address the other question I asked about the political figures that you have represented in the film. I can’t remember all of them, but there are a significant number of high-profile individuals. Why aren’t their voices being heard more often on this subject?

Jim Carafano: Well that’s a great question. When we started to make the film I really didn’t want to have any “talking heads,” which is somebody sitting in chair kind of giving their opinion. And I said, “You know,  if we’re going to make a film for ordinary people, we should have ordinary people explain this. And so we actually started out with just kind of ‘man on the street,’ asking them, “What do you think it is?” and having discussions with them about it. But we actually found that, generally, average Americans don’t know enough to really carry a conversation. So we added in a couple of things. One is we have some historical perspective. We have Lady Thatcher, who of course was a contemporary of President Reagan, and Ed Meese, who in the Reagan White House was Attorney-General and participated in the creation of SDI, and Bill Graham who is actually Reagan’s chief scientist. So they give kind of the historical perspective of where did this idea come from, why is it important, what was the vision of a world without nuclear weapons. Why was this so important that we began down this road? Then we have some folks in there who’ve been in government in recent years, including Kim Holmes, who was an Assistant Secretary of State, and Bob Joseph, who was Under Secretary of State, who talked about what was done during the Bush years to withdraw from the ABM treaty, why that was important – why people debate this issue today. And then we’ve got some technical experts in there: Bill Graham, who I mentioned was Reagan’s chief scientist and was also the chairman of the EMP commission. And another key individual in there was Ken Alibek, one of the chief engineers in the Soviet Union who helped build the Soviet weapons of mass destruction program. Since immigrating to the United States, no one better understands, (he’s kind of the anti- Khan), nobody better understands how these things proliferate and their danger than Dr. Alibek, who lived building these systems. So it’s a mix of contemporary folks and historical folks, and just kind of men and women on the street. And I think most interesting about the film, we directly go into the issue of will this actually work, and there have been dozens of successful tests that have been done since 2004 in missile defense. And we’ve got a lot of footage in the film that’s never been seen before, outside of the government, of missile defense tests and how they work and what they accomplish. And probably one of the key folks in this film is General Obering, who is the head of the Missile Defense Agency the last couple of years, who worked with many of these developments. And then we have the Czech Ambassador to the United States, Peter Kohler, who does a great job of really kind of talking about why this is really not just about the United States; what the importance of this is for not only for Europeans, but for folks in Asia that live under the missile threat, and other folks in the Middle East and other folks as well. We really tried to give the issue a fair hearing and let folks know what the threat is, why missile defense will help, what the state of technology actually is, what’s keeping us from moving forward and what they can do about it.

Avi Davs: Avi Schnurr in Israel, you have also tried to penetrate the political process and have gathered together a very distinguished group of individuals, mostly drawn from the military, who are concerned about this issue. How effective have you been in influencing the opinion of  the political process within Israel?

Progress in Israel

Avi Schnuur: I think one of the critical parts of this process is to create alliances. And in this case, creating alliances with people who have been in the government who are seen as major, senior political or military figures who are interested in this is critical. It has provided access and has given us an opportunity to start a conversation, which I think in the end is going to be critical if Israel is going to start dealing with this subject in a critical way. You know, Israel is working on this; there is progress. There are some long-term programs. The issue really for Israel is that, in the near term, there is a limited amount of available interceptors, there is limited systems which could be used before eventually some of these long-term systems come on line. That’s a problem that could be corrected and corrected quickly. But I think the issue, in terms of taking this as seriously as it needs to be taken, is as both Jim and Brian have said, is becoming an international issue and a global issue – not just and issue for Israel; not just an issue for the United States. And I think it’s worth realizing that we’re racing against the clock at this point. We have, with the rapid increase and proliferation of both of ballistic missiles and the fact that we are approaching the point where nuclear warheads may start becoming come available both to rogue countries and to terrorists, we’re running out of time. And we’re heading into a period in which the dangers of the use of some of these destabilizing weapons – weapons of mass destruction – will be increasing substantially. So, if we have an opportunity now, if we get very serious about this globally in Israel and the United States and around the world, we have an opportunity to begin doing some very good things that can reverse that process. But if we wait and if we’re still having this conversation some years from now, and the process hasn’t begun, the dangers will be vastly greater than they are today.

Avi Davis: In the last few minutes, I’d like to address the final question to Brian. It has been suggested that a major international conference, bringing together the leaders, defense ministers, defense journalists, security analysis of countries, of Western countries, to address this is absolutely vital. What do you think about that?

An International Conference and Defense of the West

Brian Kennedy: I think that would be very useful and I would echo what both Jim and Avi have said. Getting people in a room to understand both the threat and the solution, and to actually debate whether or not we’re going to remain vulnerable or whether we’re going to build defenses, seems to me a real starting point. And I think we should do so, an international conference, without the preconception that this is, as I’ve said before, some partisan issue. That it really has been the failure of government by both Republicans and Democrats. That we can get beyond that, and maybe an Obama Administration could, as was suggested by some. He could be like Nixon going to China. Even though its not been a pillar of the Democratic defense platform up to now, maybe an Obama recognizing this threat that both Avi and Jim have described, would say, “Hey, let’s put politics behind us. Let’s start building missile defenses. Let’s come to a time where Iran, or any other of these rogue nations or rogue groups, don’t have the ability to destroy the West.” Because, as it turns out, if Iran is genuinely serious, and I believe they are, about destroying the West – and America’s destroyed – then the free world will essentially be over with. Without the United States, Israel will find it very difficult to defend itself. Western Europe will find it difficult to defend itself. The worldwide economy will completely collapse, even more than it is today. We’re really talking about the defense of the West. And we’re either going to remain vulnerable or we’re going to build missile defenses.

Avi Davis: I’m going to have to hold you there. We’re about to go off the air. I want to thank all three of you for your help today. Please stay on for a few more seconds. Next week we come back with a discussion about intelligent design. Join us then.