A worst-case scenario would involve continued fierce Russian opposition to something that it believes could make its own nuclear deterrent obsolete. Key European governments such as Britain and Denmark, where the US would like to upgrade early-warning radars, would remain nervous, or worse. Yet some aspects of the more-robust layered defense system that the president favors aren't yet even in the design stage. Missile defense is not solely a GOP issue. Almost 20 years after Ronald Reagan brought the defenses back to public view with his ambitious Star Wars initiative, Republican and many Democratic lawmakers have struck a consensus that the rapid advance of guidance and targeting technologies has brought effective defense within the realm of possibility.
Differences lie mostly in the avidity with which lawmakers want to pursue such a system.
Clinton officials also were careful to fudge their attitudes toward the 1972 ABM pact, which bans defenses as destabilizing to nuclear deterrence. In the end, President Clinton handed off the decision on whether to push the bounds of the ABM treaty to his successor. And President Bush has made no secret that he considers the treaty a piece of paper from a far-away era that needs to be torn up or radically changed. Last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell noted that he would soon be traveling to Paris to talk with his Russian counterpart, Igor Ivanov, about ABM issues. And we want to see if we can persuade them that that might not be the right answer.