CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - With the Bush administration poised to announce activation of its missile-defense system by the end of this year, the European community is eyeing the program with equal doses of interest and skepticism, according to Julian Palmore, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor who specializes in international security issues.
The latest debate over the merits of the United States' ambitious, multipronged missile-defense plan boiled over last week - especially among the British - as media reports surfaced, alleging that British Prime Minister Tony Blair had reached a confidential agreement with the United States to install missile interceptors at the Fylingdales Royal Air Force base in North Yorkshire. Palmore said possible closed-door deals aren't the only sources of concern for Europeans, many of whom have broader reservations about the wisdom of forging missile-defense pacts with the United States.
"There is a perception that the U.S. concern over ICBM attack is overblown," said the professor, who has dual faculty appointments in the U. of I. mathematics department and the campus's Program in Arms Control, Disarmament and International Security. Palmore's assessment of the European perspective on the proposed, multibillion-dollar U.S. missile defense - which initially includes deployment of interceptors in Alaska and California - is scheduled for publication in the December issue of the journal Defense & Security Analysis, in an article titled "Missile Defense and Europe: WMD and Terrorism."
Many of Palmore's conclusions are based on his participation in a conference organized by the U.S. State Department in the United Kingdom last May.
The conference was convened at Wilton Park, Steyning, West Sussex, he said, to gain a European perspective on the U.S. missile-defense program and to gauge interest in possible future cooperation and collaboration with the United States. Participants included officials from governmental and nongovernmental agencies and international commissions, representatives of private industry, and academics.
In his journal article, Palmore presents a historical overview of U.S. and European concerns about threats posed by terrorists and so-called rogue nations armed with conventional and unconventional weapons. He also outlines the Bush administration's motivations and plans for the rapid deployment of a defensive program aimed at shielding the nation from a potential nuclear attack.
"The missile-defense systems proposed by the United States in 2004 are of interest worldwide," Palmore wrote. "European interest in these U.S. systems takes two forms: One form is informed skepticism to the development of national missile defense systems; the other is curiosity and a willingness to investigate the extent to which other nations can join the United States in the development and deployment of missile defenses both as regional defenses and for U.S. national missile defense."
At the conference in England, Europeans expressed a number of concerns about the U.S. program.
"Principally, they seem to view missile defense as a black hole for money and they remain to be convinced that there is anything being offered in return for their participation, collaboration and cooperation in a joint venture," Palmore said. Europeans generally view the likelihood of being targeted by a missile launch as less likely than an attack by terrorists using conventional weapons, such as explosives delivered by a suicide bomber, he said.
A second major reason for European skepticism regarding opportunities for collaboration is the substantial obstacle posed by highly restrictive U.S. export controls.
"The United States is extremely sensitive about technology transfer," Palmore said.
"These export controls limit technology transfer to the extent that a lot of time has to pass before permission is given to companies or agencies to share relevant information on the U.S. missile-defense systems with European allies' governments and companies," he said.
Other issues of concern among the Europeans involve the geographic placement of interceptors and the logistics of coordinating command-and-control procedures.
An even more basic, unresolved problem for all parties concerned, Palmore said, is "the issue of the effectiveness of a ground-based missile defense against a sophisticated attacker using ICBMs with warheads and decoys."
"This initial objection was raised by the Union of Concerned Scientists and others in a study over the effectiveness of the ground-based interceptor plan for national missile defense," he said. "The use of countermeasures to missile defenses put by an attacker on board intercontinental ballistic missiles is a formidable obstacle to overcome."
