Last week we had some discussion about Charles Krauthammer’s article criticizing the linkage between offensive and defensive weaponry coming out of the U.S.-Russia Summit.  Here Peter Scoblic of the New Republic tees off in disagreement.

It’s true, as Krauthammer notes, that U.S. missile defense technology
is superior to Russian missile defense technology, but I have no idea
what he means when he writes that missile defenses will be the decisive
strategic weapons of the 21st century vis-?-vis Russia. Everything we
learned during the cold war demonstrates that there is no such thing as strategic decisiveness
when it comes to nuclear weapons–there is balance; and there is
danger. If we were ever to build missile defenses that actually
threatened Russia’s deterrent capability–say, by deploying a system
with hundreds, instead of tens, of interceptors–Russia would simply
build more nuclear weapons. If we tried to counter that increase with
more defenses, Russia would counter with more offenses. And even if we
“got ahead” in this offense-defense race, there would never be a point
at which we had a 100 percent effective defense, meaning that if there
were a nuclear exchange, the United States would quickly cease to be.
Defenses would never be strategically decisive, but it’s always
possible that Russia might fear they were–which would just
destabilize our relationship. Does this sound familiar? It was exactly
the problem we faced during the cold war, and frankly I’m not sure why
we should have the discussion again.

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