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Not Just A Technical Failure
Even before the Pentagon's rocket scientists begin missile defence tests, US military officials have figured out what to do if the test succeeds.
Defence Secretary William Cohen is reportedly to recommend to US President Bill Clinton that he start a phased building plan that would ready the missile defence system for use by December 2005, pending results of the US$10 million test.
Clinton would risk international condemnation if he proceeded with a new radar, in the state of Alaska, for a limited missile defence.
But wait.
These one-sided hopes were dashed as the US Government announced that its attempt to intercept and destroy a target warhead in space failed. Technical failure is not the only problem with the defence system, called NMD.
The interceptor launched from Kwajalein Atoll in the Pacific Ocean, failed to discern the mock warhead, which took off 200 kilometres north of Los Angeles to simulate an attack from a "pariah state" such as Iran or the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
It was the second failure in three tries. The first, conducted last October, succeeded. The second, in January, failed. Saturday's test was delayed more than two months to fix the problem that doomed January's test. White House spokesman P. J. Crowley said before the test that "a hit doesn't automatically suggest success, nor does a failure automatically come with a miss tonight."
But last Saturday's glitch shows it is impossible to create an impenetrable anti-missile shield.
Washington's plan to develop its National Missile Defence - the would-be shield that prompted the tests - can only encourage potential enemies to design a better one, sparking a new race for military supremacy and causing world instability.
The lesson we learned from the Cold War is that the race is hard to stop.
The tit-for-tat underground nuclear weapons tests in India and Pakistan in 1998 is also a worthy lesson.
No country likes to lag behind and does not fear being bullied by the United States, which was the first country to advance the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty but may be last to ratify it.
Even Europe, a traditional US ally, fears that nuclear arms control could unravel and a new arms race begin if the United States builds the system, violating the cornerstone 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
The Kosovo crisis led many countries to believe that a weak country is vulnerable to attack.
This notion is sad but true.
Washington once said that the United States is developing NMD to protect itself from attacks from what it called "rogue states." But this pretext no longer looks convincing.
Now the threat from the DPRK is fast vanishing, given its recent rapprochement with the Republic of Korea.
Iran cannot counter US military might in the wake of the UN's long-term economic sanctions against it.
Although Russia still has differences with the United States, it seems that every rift can be settled by political dialogue.
If it is true, as political analysts say, that Clinton wants to leave NMD as a diplomatic legacy upon leaving office next year, the cost is oppressively high.
It is a waste of taxpayers' money.
Cost estimates range from the Pentagon's US$36 billion to the General Accounting Office's US$60 billion.
Clinton's NMD might end up like that of former US President Ronald Reagan's Star Wars nuclear umbrella scheme, which drained the US economy, leaving millions of people jobless.
Also at stake is average Americans' confidence, which is sapping now following the failure of last Saturday's test.
On Thursday, 50 Nobel Prize-winning American scientists wrote a letter to Clinton warning that the system would "offer little protection" and "inevitably lose in an arms race of improvements to offensive missiles."
It seems that Clinton indeed left a legacy: a reminder of his greed and short-sightedness.
His successor will have to take pains to complete this huge project, which is doomed to draw criticism rather than applause.
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