Calculating the 'Rumsfeld Effect'

Robert Kagan
The Washington Post
January 19, 2001

A first crack in what until now had been the solid wall of European opposition to American missile defense plans opened last Friday. In London, the leader of the Conservative opposition in Parliament, William Hague, threw his party's support behind President-elect Bush's declared intention to go forward with the missile shield. Hague probably won't defeat Prime Minister Tony Blair in elections this spring, but he has already forced a nervous Blair closer to Bush's position. Top British officials have loudly hinted that Blair will not say "no" to a U.S. request for support.

Last Saturday, a respected French defense intellectual, Francois Heisbourg, writing in the International Herald Tribune, advised Europeans not to throw themselves in front of the American missile defense locomotive. They should "refrain from giving the impression that they are denying the U.S. population its right to defend itself against missiles." American dreams might be "unrealistic and destabilizing," but Heisbourg warned Europeans not to waste "inordinate amounts of political capital" fighting them. Europe, he insists, has no compelling interest in mounting "a crusade against U.S. missile defense." Another crack in the wall.

Just five months ago, French intellectuals were denouncing missile defense, and top British officials were praising Bill Clinton for deciding not to proceed with deployment. Why is European resistance to American missile defense plans now suddenly showing signs of crumbling, even before George W. Bush takes the oath of office? It helps that Bush officials have promised to include Europeans under any proposed missile shield, something the Clinton administration foolishly neglected to do. But there is also another dynamic at work.

Call it the "Rumsfeld effect." Bush's pick for secretary of defense -- described in European headlines as a "hawkish missile advocate" -- has gone a long way toward convincing the Europeans that Bush, unlike Clinton, is serious about going forward with an ambitious missile shield. Missile defense hard-liners and astute American diplomats have long argued that creating an aura of inevitability is the key to winning European and eventually Russian acquiescence in a program they now think they hate. As Rumsfeld puts it, "once the Russians understand that the United States is serious about this and intends to deploy . . . they will find a way . . . to accept that reality." Apparently, this acceptance has already begun in London and some other European capitals, and perhaps even in Moscow.

Now the only question is: Has it begun in Washington? Despite external appearances, convincing enough to foreign observers, the incoming Bush administration is not of one mind on missile defense. Rumsfeld is exactly as the Europeans portray him, a missile defense hawk, and so is his top deputy, Paul Wolfowitz. But Secretary of State-designate Colin Powell is a longtime skeptic. His preferred choice for the defense post, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, voted to slash Ronald Reagan's missile defense budget in the 1980s. Most of the American press routinely interprets Powell's comments on the subject as hard-nosed and aggressive. But more careful observers on both sides of the missile defense debate see a consistent plea to go slow and not ruffle European, Russian or even Chinese feathers. Opponents of national missile defense, such as the Carnegie Endowment's Joseph Cirincione, think Powell may even "prove to be a refreshingly circumspect nuclear dove" in direct conflict with Rumsfeld. At Powell's confirmation hearing this week, Sen. Joseph Biden (D-Del.), another missile defense critic, was delighted to find Powell much more "nuanced" on this subject than the incoming president. Meanwhile National Security Adviser-designate Condoleezza Rice may also be on the dovish side. Her views on foreign policy frequently reflect the influence of her former boss and mentor, Brent Scowcroft, whom Frances Fitzgerald in her tome "Way Out There in the Blue" lauded as a "major critic" of the old Reagan plan. Rice was in charge last summer when Bush supporters killed efforts to insert a clause in the Republican platform saying Bush as president would give "prompt notice" that the United States planned to withdraw from the ABM Treaty.

Whether the hawks or the doves prevail depends on the president, of course, but the president's judgment will depend on whom he's listening to. So far Bush's missile defense briefings would seem to have come exclusively from the doves. In his interview with the New York Times on Sunday, Bush was not entirely coherent in his discussion of missile defense. But some sentence fragments were revealing. Bush said China and Russia need not be concerned about an American missile shield because, for the "foreseeable future," no system will be capable of knocking out more than one or two missiles. That reflects the consensus view of missile defense skeptics, not missile defense boosters. Even top Clinton officials, such as the Pentagon's Walter Slocombe, insist that the United States will be capable of defending against the launch "of a few tens of warheads" by the end of this decade. Candidate Bush scorned Clinton's plan as dangerously inadequate. Does President-elect Bush now think it overly ambitious? Perhaps just as revealing was Bush's offhanded declaration that "national missile defense is going to be an assignment of the secretary of state." One wonders what the secretary of defense thinks of that.

It may be that the "Rumsfeld effect" has not worked its way through the system yet. Rumsfeld, after all, is a latecomer to Team Bush. He had little time with the president-elect, and no chance to flex his vaunted bureaucratic muscles. Then there is the question of Dick Cheney, the man responsible for blocking Powell's Pentagon choice and bringing Rumsfeld on board. Whether Rumsfeld jumps quickly into the fight, and whether Cheney backs him in the coming struggle, may determine whether the Europeans are right to believe that missile defense is unstoppable.

The writer, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, writes a monthly column for The Post.