July 16, 1998

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: The Rumsfeld Commission and Ballistic Missile Defense

Yesterday, the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, chaired by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, issued its final report.* Key among the commission’s findings is that the nation cannot count on U.S. intelligence to give American policymakers sufficient, timely warning of the development and deployment of new ballistic missile threats to the United States and its interests abroad. As the report argues, a combination of strategic motives on the part of current and potential adversaries, widely-available technological know-how and material, global trade, foreign assistance, and the increased ability of countries to conceal their weapons programs by denial and deception has produced a ballistic missile threat “more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the Intelligence Community.” Although left unstated, the clear implication of the commission’s findings is that the Clinton Administration’s use of Intelligence Community estimates on the threat posed by the proliferation of ballistic missiles around the world to guide U.S. decisions on the development and deployment of its own missile defenses is misguided -- and leaves this nation and its allies dangerously vulnerable.

The Commission’s findings are emphatically not the product of a “worst-case” report. While the Clinton Administration has been delaying deployment of effective missile defenses based on Intelligence Community assurances that “the threat” was somewhere down the road, North Korea has deployed, and Iran will soon deploy, medium range missiles capable, respectively, of threatening Japan and U.S. forces in Northeast Asia and targets throughout the Middle East. The U.S. has no system in place or, for that matter, even close to deployment that is able to defend its troops or allies against these weapons. The Clinton Administration has made a point of designating the U.S. as the world’s “indispensable nation.” But, as the findings of the Rumsfeld Commission suggest, when it comes to missile defenses, the administration is pursuing a policy which will inevitably undermine the country’s capacity to exercise that leadership by leaving it, its forces, and its friends unprotected against attacks by ballistic missiles and the deadly warheads they carry.

* In addition to Chairman Rumsfeld, the commission included the following members: Dr. Barry M. Blechman, Gen. Lee Butler (USAF, Ret.), Dr. Richard L. Garwin, Dr. William R. Graham, Dr. William Schneider, Jr., Gen. Larry D. Welch (USAF, Ret.), Dr. Paul Wolfowitz, and Hon. R. James Woolsey. Dr. Stephen A. Cambone was the commission’s staff director.