December 11, 2018— Whatever Happened to Bush-41’s SDI Vision of the Future?

“George H.W. Bush was America’s closer. Called in to pitch the final innings of the Cold War, Bush 41 presided masterfully over the fall of the Berlin Wall, the unification of Germany, the liberation of 100 million Eastern Europeans and the dissolution of the Soviet Union into 15 independent nations. History’s assignment complete, Bush 41 was retired. And what happened to the world he left behind?” ~Patrick Buchannan, December 6, 2018

Click here for Patrick Buchanan’s interesting Newsmax article, tellingly entitled “Who Lost the World Bush Left Behind?” He reviewed the above achievements, listing examples of how President Bush’s desired “New World Order” morphed into the current “New World Disorder,” and asking how things ran amok.

But missing from his list was the important vision of a U.S.-Russia cooperative effort to build a joint global defense to protect the world community from ballistic missile attack — a then U.S.-Russia agreed objective passed to the Clinton administration that muffed it in short order. Actually, this was our stated objective in the Defense and Space Talks during the Reagan and Bush-41 administrations — and Russia’s first President Boris Yeltsin said yes in response to our Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) effort during my watch as Director of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

Click here for my December 3, 2018 Newsmax article emphasizing that President George H.W. Bush has received much less credit than he is due for directing the SDI program to be refocused on GPALS, which in turn led to most if not all the ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems we have deployed today. I also applauded his personal support for Brilliant Pebbles, the most cost-effective product of the SDI era (1983-93), subsequently dismantled by the Clinton administration and never renewed — at least to the present time.

Click here for last week’s message that gave a more detailed recounting of this important history and expressed hope that President Trump will correct the errors of the past quarter century during which both political parties have ignored the potential of truly effective space-based BMD systems, which were President Reagan’s top priority — as he demonstrated by walking out of the 1986 Reykjavik Summit when Gorbachev demanded we limit our demonstration efforts to the laboratory.

And last week’s message also dovetails with Pat Buchannan’s potent question above, and also the subject of this week’s message — what did happen to the Bush-41 SDI initiatives?

First a brief recap of my involvement during the Bush-41 administration. I began as Chief Negotiator for the Defense and Space Talks in Geneva with instructions to continue the agenda we had pursued under President Reagan, seeking deep reductions in offensive strategic nuclear forces while advocating joint ways to deploy effective BMD systems.

Shortly after attending a September 1989 Jackson Hole, WY ministerial (led by Secretary of State James A. Baker and Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze) that further reinforced these instructions, I passed the baton in Geneva to Ambassador Dave Smith and undertook a special study to recommend to Defense Secretary Dick Cheney and President Bush how best to refocus the SDI program to fit these same objectives, while hopefully gaining greater support from the Democrat controlled congress that seemed intent on cutting the SDI budget.

By late 1989, SDI Director USAF Lt. General George Monahan had successfully advocated the Brilliant Pebbles efforts before the Pentagon’s full Defense Acquisition Board, and it entered a fully approved formal Demonstration and Validation (DemVal) effort. In my independent review, I adapted the approved effort for inclusion in my recommendations to Defense Secretary Cheney and the President.

They accepted my March 30, 1990 recommendations to pursue GPALS and invited me to become the third SDI Director and “make it happen.” GPALS included overseas Theater Missile Defense (TMD) systems in addition to the ongoing ground based National Missile Defense (NMD) homeland defense system and a space-based interceptor(SBI) system, specifically a Brilliant Pebbles system to defend against ballistic missiles launched from anywhere toward anywhere else more than a few hundred miles away.

GPALS gained congressional support at least in part because it adopted proposals by the Chairmen of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) and Representative Les Aspin (D-WI) to pursue a limited defense against accidental and unauthorized ballistic missile launches. They had both written articles supporting limited ground-based defenses, but they both continued to be skeptical of space-based defenses. They initially went along with my proposal, but eventually they turned against it. .

My GPALS concept included a smaller constellation of Brilliant Pebbles — as I recall, it was reduced from 4600 to 1000 Brilliant Pebbles. Our objective was to achieve real protection against a limited attack, rather than deterrence of a much larger attack as had been the previous SDI objective.

In particular, Brilliant Pebbles was designed to provide high confidence in intercepting all of up to 200 attacking reentry vehicles launched from anywhere to attack the United States. I chose 200 reentry vehicles because that was the number that could be under the control of a single Soviet submarine commander — a variant of Tom Clancy’s “Hunt for the Red October” scenario.

Unlike other BMD systems we were then considering, Brilliant Pebbles could intercept attacking ballistic missiles in their boost phase, which their rockets are burning brightly as they rise from their launchers. We still don’t have such a boost-phase intercept capability today.

Notably, Chairmen Nunn and Aspin supported my recommendation to begin a serious sea-based BMD system that would empower a serious global TMD role, given that most of the earth’s surface is water. (It was then necessary to limit such sea-based BMD systems to a TMD role because the ABM Treaty then would have prevented its testing, development and deployment if it were given a mission to defend the U.S. homeland. Not so today.)

By August, we were making good progress in gaining support on the GPALS concept, including from congress and our overseas allies.

British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who was always a great SDI partner, was visiting us in Colorado Springs on August 2, 1990 — when Saddam Hussain invaded Kuwait, and she left immediately to join President Bush in nearby Aspen, Colorado to discuss next steps.

Fortunately, Hussain did not immediately press his advantage, giving us months to prepare for Desert Shield and Desert Storm, which ended Hussain’s occupation of Kuwait in only 100 hours.

Early during that recess, I received a request for help from the Air Force Space Command Chief Scientist, and we supported the extension of the Defense Support Program to provide warning to our Patriot Batteries engaging the Scud attacks. (Communications provided by Ma Bell’s long-distance systems enabled the needed warning to the Patriot batteries and to support Israeli civil defense activities.)

U.S. Space Command provided warning of every Scud launched during the later Gulf War, and our calculations of those recorded trajectories indicated that every one of those Scuds could have been intercepted from space by the then Brilliant Pebbles designed concept.

Not only was the important role of BMD highlighted by the Scud-Patriot duels seen by all via TV reporting, but the role of space systems became apparent to all. Many, including USAF Chief General Tony McPeak, referred to the Desert Storm as the “first space war.” And all that helped us achieve a major SDI funding increase for 1991.

Concurrent with his Desert Storm success, President Bush officially announced his support for GPALS:

“… Looking forward, I have directed the SDI program be refocused on providing protection from limited ballistic missile strikes, whatever their source. Let us pursue an SDI program that can deal with any future threat to the United States, to our forces, overseas and to our friends and allies.” ~ President George H.W. Bush, January 29, 1991.

Click here for the February 12, 1991 Pentagon press briefing given by then Assistant Secretary for International Security Policy Stephen Hadley and me, to elaborate on President Bush’s direction. Note the transcript of our briefing and our exchange with the press, describing the various system components of GPALS — land based, sea-based and space-based. Later we also added unpiloted air-based defenses to shoot down ballistic missiles in their boost phase while they rise from their launch pads.

As reported last week, the Pentagon’s Defense Acquisition Board approved cost estimates for Brilliant Pebbles’ research, development, deployment and operations for 20 years was $10 billion in 1988 dollars — about $20 billion in today’s dollars. And with today’s more advanced technology the cost should be less for an even more capable space based interceptor system.

Meanwhile momentous changes were occurring in the Soviet Union — as it dissolved and its leadership changed, while our negotiations continued and our SDI efforts gathered momentum.

Boris Yeltsin had been removed earlier from the Politburo after criticizing Gorbachev because of his slow movement as these changes were occurring. He then was elected as the first President of the Russian Republic in June 1991; and following the August 1991 attempted coup against Gorbachev and as the Soviet Union further dissolved, he and the Presidents of Ukraine and Belarus declared the death of the Soviet Union on December 8, 1991.

The former states of the Soviet Union formed the Commonwealth of Independent States to replace the Soviet Union; and Yeltsin became its leader on December 25, 1991. A month later, Yeltsin addressed the United Nation’s General Assembly and proposed that the SDI program take advantage of Russian technology and that we together work to provide a Joint Global Defense to protect the World Community.

As reported in the above January 30, 1992 Washington Post article, he basically said yes to the position I had advocated for five years in Geneva and was then still being pursued by Dave Smith. Note, he made this proposal while joining our agenda to seek further deep reductions in offensive strategic arms — the START I Treaty had been signed by President Bush and Soviet General Secretary Michael Gorbachev on May 23, 1991.

Thus as shown by the headline, Yeltsin was also signaling that additional reductions in nuclear arms were possible while moving ahead with truly effective defenses — Ronald Reagan’s vision that we had advocated in Geneva since March 1986.

Regrettably, we did not conclude an agreement before the end of 1992 — and the end of the Bush administration.

Click here for my September 16, 1992 discussion at the Heritage Foundation of what was occurring during that period and our hopes for the future — hopes of success that was not to be, from the ongoing negotiations that could have ended in agreement within months.

But President Bush lost the election in November 1992. Nevertheless, he co-signed the START II Treaty with Boris Yeltsin on January 13, 1993. And the Clinton administration began a week later on January 20, 1993 — the effective date of my resignation as SDI Director and the end of the SDI era.

Shortly thereafter, the Clinton administration regressed to the Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of the Cold War and the idea that the ABM Treaty was the “cornerstone of strategic stability.” That view was contrary to the Reagan-Bush-41 view, that was then expressed in Yeltsin’s U.N. proposal, that we should seek even greater reduction in strategic offensive forces while joining forces to build a joint global defense for the world community.

And that ended any hope for Ronald Reagan’s vision for the indefinite future.

The Clinton administration also gutted the SDI program of all its cutting edge technology efforts and deeply cut its budget — even for TMD systems that it claimed were a top priority. No administration since has sought to re-establish those important programs — especially for the most cost-effective defenses.

President George W. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty making it legal to build the most cost-effective defenses that were pioneered by the Reagan-Bush-41 administrations. But neither he nor a successor has chosen to do so. Rather, we have invested most of our money in the most expensive, least effective BMD systems.

It’s no wonder that our military leaders have been concerned that we cannot afford to keep up with building more such defenses that must keep up with the offensive forces built by a growing number of potential adversaries.

But I digress; a story for another day.

The significant opportunity we missed was demonstrated in the first meeting between Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin in Vancouver in early April 1993. I understand Yeltin proposed continuing negotiations to build joint global defenses for the world community; and reportedly no one with President Clinton even understood what our previous negotiations had achieved — and they weren’t interested anyway. They preferred the Cold War’s mutual vulnerability arrangements anyway.

Imagine what the world would be like today had Russia and the United States worked together for several years to protect the world community against ballistic missiles for several years before Vladimir Putin became Russia’s President in 1999. Wouldn’t that have been better that a mutual suicide pact like that of the Cold War?

No successor administration of either party has reversed that failure — and the Obama administration did worse than the others, particularly with its now apparent poor arms control stewardship.

Bottom Lines.

In any case, until President Donald J. Trump, no president since President George H.W. Bush has sought to build the most cost-effective BMD systems — namely space-based defenses, particularly a modern Brilliant Pebbles system.

Vladimir Putin unsurprisingly has little if anything in common with Gorbachev’s and Yeltsin’s positions — indeed he reportedly years ago observed that that “the breakup of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20 century.“ He is trying to return to as much of the status quo ante as is possible.

The Trump administration has a significant problem in countering his opposition — not to mention threats from China, North Korea, Iran and perhaps others.

Whatever diplomatic role President Trump pursues, he should return to Reagan’s approach of seeking “Peace Through Strength;” and he should return to Reagan’s vision of seeking to build truly effective space-based defenses.

Such consideration should be included in his efforts to establish a separate Space Force.

What can you do?

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