Diary of a Walking Butterfly

from 6 March 2009

Editor: I am reposting this post, as this topic seems to come up continually. This has happened in recent days with discussions around North Korea and the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). It’s just a short post. I might expand it when I publish some reviews of the Quadrennial Defense Review and Nuclear Missile Posture Review from early this year (2010), which I have written about, but have yet to publish on this site.

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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton today invited Russia to join the United States in its deployment of a “Missile Defense Shield”, a continuation of the program the Bush Administration started during his terms in office.

The term “missile defense shield” is a deadly misnomer. Missiles are extremely difficult to shoot down. Defending against a missile attack is, likewise, extremely difficult. Some (or many) of your interceptors will miss. Your enemy may deploy an unknown number of decoy missiles. You may not have enough time to launch your interceptors once an attack is launched. For all these reasons and more, “missile defense shields” are hardly useful, and hardly ever really intended for defense.

More often, and quite logically considering who is constructing them, they are a first strike weapon. That is, you build a defense shield to protect yourself from any remaining missiles that are launched after your first strike attack lands upon your target (in the case of nuclear missiles, killing millions or billions).

The United States has also declared who this (first strike) missile system is aimed at: Iran and countries like it (a.k.a. countries that threaten U.S. hegemony in any way, shape, or form). Progressives in the U.S. and elsewhere should defend against the construction of such offensive weapons. During the intertwined crises of recession and climate chaos, what we need is billions of dollars invested in repowering our future and economy with clean renewable energy and millions of good green jobs.