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Former US Pentagon Officials Call for Delay of NMD Deployment
Three former U.S. Defense Department officials have called on the Clinton administration to delay deployment of the National Missile Defense (NMD) system to shield the Untied States against long-range missiles.
John Deutch and John White, both deputy defense secretaries under President Bill Clinton, and Harold Brown, Jimmy Carter's defense secretary, said the NMD was "not mature enough to make a confident deployment decision this year." They made their argument in the summer issue of the journal Foreign Policy.
Instead, the three proposed steps toward placing ships with advanced interceptor missiles of the Theater Missile Defense (TMD) system off the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), Iran or other countries.
The TMD would be cheaper and easier to make work than the NMD, they said, in addition to curbing the diplomatic backlash.
Clinton is expected to decide this year whether to break ground next spring to start building a powerful radar station in Alaska in the first phase of an NMD shield to be operational by 2005.
The international community has opposed the NMD, which would either breach or require major changes to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty between the United States and the then Soviet Union, a cornerstone of arms control.
Arms control experts said the U.S. plan to set up the NMD and TMD systems runs against the trend of the times and will have a major adverse impact on global and regional strategic balances and stability.
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