It was the second miss in three tries to intercept an incoming missile, and must weigh heavily with President Bill Clinton in his forthcoming decision on deploying a missile shield widely regarded around the world as destabilising. In all logic, the test failure ought to enable Mr Clinton to postpone, at the very least on technical grounds, a deployment decision that was always too serious for a lame-duck president to take. The pro-NMD lobby is minimising the setback. But the supposed advantage of the older booster was that it gave the kill vehicle's sensors more time to detect their target than will its faster replacement. Some right-wing strategists have welcomed the test failure as underlining the need to commit far more resources to NMD than the Clinton administration has been ready to do.
Failure can be a goad to eventual success.
And before NMD's many critics in Russia, China and European capitals break out their second bottles of champagne at the latest development, they should remember the tests will undoubtedly continue. The NMD programme has considerable political and industrial momentum behind it. Technical failure, however, ought to make the US work harder on alternative political means of dealing with the threat posed by the spread of long-range missile technology. It has already had some success. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is also due to visit North Korea soon to urge restraint on it.