Secrecy in Iran and deciphering Obama's Missile Defense policy

There exists no reason to conclude that Iran cannot be deterred even if it did have nuclear warheads. The problem that Iranian strategic capabilities would represent is that they would be a powerful "anti-access/area denial" capability. The issue is not that Iranian nuclear warheads could be used for a first strike against Europe or the US, but rather that they could deter the US from engaging in military intervention in the critical Middle East region.

That's a big difference.

The present BMD system first emerged during the Clinton administration. Clinton grudgingly accepted BMD following the GOP's capture of Congress during his period in office. He was not a warm supporter of the idea and largely left the final decision on BMD to his successor. However, the Clinton plan was a capped plan. The idea was to have a system built under a limited and sealed capability. Clinton did this in order to try and mollify domestic BMD supporters without scrapping the 1972 Anti Ballistic Missile Treaty, the cornerstone of strategic arms control.

Under Bush this policy was changed to an "open architecture policy." As NSPD-23 states, "the Defense Department plans to employ an evolutionary approach to the development and deployment of missile defenses to improve our defenses over time. The United States will not have a final, fixed missile defense architecture. Rather, we will deploy an initial set of capabilities that will evolve to meet the changing threat and to take advantage of technological developments."

The Obama decision, and comments accompanying it, demonstrate that the open architecture provision of NSPD-23 will remain. Although the nature of Obama's approach to European BMD might not preclude a nuclear arms control agreement with Russia based on the agreed Obama-Medvedev parameters, open architecture BMD will remain a barrier for strategic arms control directed towards deep cuts let alone disarmament.

In so far as strategic concepts go it thereby follows that the Obama approach is consistent with the Bush approach. When Gates and Co inform us that the Obama decision rationalises rather than scraps the Bush era policy they are correct.

However, when they tell us that their system is based on an existing threat to Europe and, what's more, is purely based on technical considerations they are taking us for a ride.