Bush Cabinet lines up behind missile defence system

The designated secretary of defence, Donald Rumsfeld, headed a bipartisan "Commission To Assesses the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States", which came to the conclusion that the possibility of an Iranian or North Korean missile threat to the United States was greater than previously thought by government intelligence analysts. The upshot of the Bush campaign was that the commission's findings made it more imperative to move quickly toward creating a national missile defence, despite repeated failures of tests of the system.

At the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leaders have warned the United States that they see such a missile defence as a threat. They simply don't believe American claims that the limited potential of such a system would not protect the United States against Chinese or Russian intercontinental ballistic missiles. They have said they believe such a system that could shoot down a North Korean missile could also be upgraded to shoot down other missiles and then the United States would be invulnerable and thus tempted to become a global bully. Much the same kind of warning has come from the European Union nations, among others. The most pointed warnings have been from the scientists in the United States who said that the estimated cost of 60 billion dollars for a limited missile defence is ludicrous and politically deceptive because nobody can know what problems lie ahead and what they could cost. In Pentagon parlance, the problems are "unk unks", or unknown unknowns, that are so far down the road that they can't be identified - much less quantified.

The other known members of the Bush national security team - secretary of state-designate Colin Powell and national security adviser Condoleeza Rice - had already signed on to back the system, which apparently was one of the basic loyalty tests that Bush had set for anybody in his new administration who will be involved with foreign policy. What has not been emphasized so far is that the unknown cost of a missile defence will certainly take funds away from Bush's other national security imperative: building up conventional armed forces and keeping members of the armed services happy - and better paid. The Bush appointments so far - including his choice of Dick Cheney as vice president - suggest a man who is a true conservative, choosing seasoned experience and loyalty over flamboyance or brilliance. So far, most of his major appointments had served in his father's administration or the earlier Ford or Nixon Republican regimes. Thus, the early clues to a George W. Bush administration are that it will be predictable - no bomb throwers in the crowd of grey beards so far. But, the stress on heavy spending for defence, while at the same time pushing a 1.3-trillion-dollar tax cut, suggests that the first major crisis in the next administration will be fiscal - a failure to choose between contradictory goals.

(dpa)