IDRISP-RESEARCH INSTITUTE FOR DISARMAMENT DEVELOPMENT AND PEACE

ABSTRACT: Fine that there is the arms race, but what has Italy to do with it? Aren't the U.S. and the Soviet Union the promoters of such race? It is true that the two superpowers are the chief responsibles for the arms race. The chief ones, but not the only ones. Italy has its share of responsibility as well. A smaller share, but not a negligible one. In absolute numbers, Italy's military expenditure in 1985 was the eighth of the world. As regards the number of men at arms, it is among the first fifteen countries. And the Italians are in the first six positions among the world exporters of armaments. The weight of the military sector on the whole of the Italian economy, however, is still rather limited: the expenditure accounts for 2.7% of the gross domestic product; arms represent 2.7% of the wealth produced by the industry, and 2.3% of exports. Moreover, the military threats to the security of Italy are less serious than those which many other international actors have to face - including many of our allie

s. Therefore, Italy is in a situation that offers many opportunities to contain the expenditure, experiment conversions of military productions for civilian uses, and promote a realistic security policy aimed at achieving detente.

Unfortunately, these opportunities are dropped. In fact, there has been a tendency to expansion over the last decade which it is urgent to stop. As of the mid-seventies, Italy has become one of the major exporters of weapons systems, and its military expenditure exceeds the annual growth rates decided at the NATO level. That same period marks the rise of the supporters of a "new military role" for Italy in the Mediterranean. The "White Paper" presented by the Minister of Defense Spadolini in winter 84-85 summarizes and pinpoints these developments, obviously from the point of view of a person who supports them and hopes that they will continue. This book on the contrary highlights the doubts, the questions, the alternative proposals compared to what has been, to this moment, a monologue by the establishment.

("ITALY AND THE ARMS RACE" - A counter-White Paper of defense - edited by Marco De Andreis and Paolo Miggiano - Preface by Roberto Cicciomessere - Franco Angeli Libri, 1987, Milan)

2. THE STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVE

by Marco Carnevale

1. Introduction

This chapter intends to analyse the problem of strategic defense, i.e. the defense of the territory by the superpowers and their allies from enemy nuclear weapons. Such definition of strategic defense is obviously incorrect, and even more arbitrary is the attention that has focused in this field on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) neglecting other, no less lethal nuclear threats. However, we have decided to keep to this definition, albeit incomplete, because it is the one explicitly adopted by the Strategic Defense Initiative of the United States (SDI), the development of which is the primary cause for the recent reprise of the debate on the subject at the international level.

We said "reprise" of the debate because the subject of strategic defense had already been the object of vast political, military and academic debates in the past decades. A historical introduction on these previous debates is therefore necessary. It will be followed by a brief description of the origins of the current U.S. program. After outlining the possible guidelines the Sdi will assume throughout its development, we will explain in detail how a strategic defense system could be organized, and which problems would arise. Lastly, we will attempt an evaluation of the program's prospects for the near future.

2. Historical background

President Reagan announced in a speech on 23 March 1983, that the U.S. would have soon started a research program with the purpose of developing a defense system capable of protecting the United States and its allies from possible missile attacks. In the President's words, this system would have made nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete", thus eliminating the spectre of nuclear devastation (1). The president's ideal objective, which was shared by many experts of various political orientation, is part of a century-old effort of all states that endeavour to protect their survival and integrity from military threats by other states. In particular, at the strictly military level, this is not the first attempt to counter the development of the destructive potential of offensive weapons with defensive weapons capable of reducing or eliminating their effectiveness, and vice versa. The history of military technologies is nothing but a series of periodical cycles in which offensive and defensive weapons have in tur

n prevailed on each other, thus contributing to the trend and the outcome of crises and wars.

In the current age of nuclear weapons and missiles, offensive technologies are obviously predominant. But precisely the introduction of nuclear explosives, which enhances the potential destructiveness of a possible war by one order of magnitude, has prompted the need and the hope to achieve defensive countermeasures capable of resisting effectively.

A vast international debate on the possibility of pursuing such technologies had arisen already in the '60s. With the progress of research, it became increasingly clear that the objective of defending the populations from the threat of a nuclear attack was unattainable. After careful and prolonged technological, economic and operative analyses, the then Defense Secretary Robert McNamara came to believe that even a less ambitious anti-ballistic missile system (ABM) to defend the U.S. missile bases alone from a Soviet attack would have been too costly, not reliable enough and itself very vulnerable. However, for reasons of domestic policy and bureaucratic inertia, the U.S. implemented a limited ABM system ("Safeguard") which was justified (albeit with scarce conviction) in an anti-Chinese function (China disposed of a much smaller missile arsenal than the Soviet Union). In the meanwhile, as of the Glassboro meeting of 1967 with the then prime minister Kossighin, Mc Namara started to talk the Soviets into the p

ossibility of a bilateral treaty to ban all ABM systems. The aim of this treaty would have been avoiding a new escalation in military spending and codifying and stabilizing a situation of mutual vulnerability, whereby neither power would have had any interest in triggering a nuclear war. The Soviets initially opposed the U.S. proposal, judging it "immoral" that a government could sign a treaty banning the protection of its own nation. Such objection - probably the result of an innate skepticism towards a relatively unorthodox proposal coming from the Pentagon - was nonetheless set aside during the negotiations of the following years, and in 1972 the two superpowers signed the Treaty for the limitation of anti-ballistic missiles, which probably the most important result of the entire arms control process. Within a few years, the Americans also convinced themselves of the scarce utility of the "Safeguard" system, both because relations with China had greatly improved and because China would have had excellent

chances of penetrating if it had decided to concentrate an attack on a limited number of objectives. Clearly, China's capacity to hit even one American city was enough to make the effort to defend the others useless. "Safeguard" was thus dismantled in 1974, and this act marked the conclusion of the debate on strategic defense for almost a decade, at least in the West (2).

The Soviets, on the other hand, still maintain a defensive system for Moscow, as they are entitled to do by the Treaty. Such system, however, would be of scarce utility in the event of a nuclear attack, as it is certainly not 100% impenetrable, and even a single thermonuclear warhead that perforated it would achieve the same purpose as the many others that might be intercepted. Moreover, a cautious planning on the part of the U.S. would lead to an overestimation of the system's defensive effectiveness, with a consequent over-allocation of warheads on Moscow, so that the capital would probably absorb more explosions "with" the defensive system surrounding it than "without".

3. Birth of the Strategic Defense Initiative

The debate on strategic defense was reopened in the West in the early '80s as a result of the development of new technologies that could lead to the achievement of state-of-the-art anti-missile systems. Special interest has been devoted to projects for defense-in-space systems capable of intercepting Soviet delivery vehicles during the propulsion stage, immediately after launch. President Reagan's speech has had three main consequences, which could potentially change respectively the structure of the U.S. war apparatus, the international strategic balance and interallied relations within NATO.

The first and immediate consequence was the creation of a section within the Department of Defense called Office for Strategic Defense Initiative (or Sdio, whence Sdi). The task of such office was to co-ordinate the feasibility researches for the creation of the defensive system. Even though the funds so far allocated for the Sdio are but a small fraction of the U.S. defense budget, it is likely that if the preliminary research stage were followed by a stage of advanced development, such share would greatly increase; in an arsenal no longer based exclusively on the deterrent of offensive forces, this would lead either to a redistribution of the resources to the detriment of other missions, or to a consistent increase of the global military expenditure. In view of the unlikelihood of the second hypothesis in the light of the recent legislative restrictions on public expenditure which have come into force in the U.S., the share of funds for the Sdi could lead to a reshaping of other projects, especially in the

sector of non-nuclear forces, which are of fundamental importance for Europe.

The second consequence of the Sdi, if it were completed, would be that of altering the current military-strategic balance based on mutual deterrence. Many - not only in Reagan's staff, but also in many parts of the European left and of international pacifist movements - believe that nuclear deterrence is undesirable because it is based on the "balance of terror"; this is generally presented as a state of affairs in which mutual suspicion and fear prevail, and where the threat of the destruction of civilization looms. I personally share the opinion of two major scholars of this field, who said twenty years ago that the current condition of mutual deterrence, while it is not immune from defects and could be improved, does not justify the above definition in quote marks. Terror necessarily involves fear, and fear originates from 'uncertainty'. Today, on the contrary, each superpower knows 'for sure' that a nuclear attack (and perhaps even a non-nuclear attack) would be followed by a nuclear response by the atta

cked part, with consequences no less devastating that those of the attack itself. The fundamental balance of the current strategic balance is based on this certainty (3).

The deployment of military means that could alter this balance and certainty could bring on two negative consequences. Firstly, it might rekindle the mutual race between offensive and defensive weapons, with ensuing waste of resources. Even if an effective shield against the current offensive weapons were created, it is not obvious that the offensive technology would surpass the progress of the defensive one. On the contrary, the onset of defensive systems would further stimulate the development of offensive systems to penetrate them, and so on (4). Secondly, one or more of the nuclear powers that were to equip themselves with such means could come to believe that it could unleash an attack against a rival power with impunity, because the reaction of the attacked part could be neutralized by the defensive shield. In the event of international tensions or crises, the temptation to trigger a nuclear attack would be great, and would cause instability; the caution suggested by the current mutual vulnerability wo

uld have a much more fragile basis.

The third consequence of the Sdi program concerns NATO interallied relations, both from the political and military standpoint and from the economic one. Let's see why. From a military standpoint, even if the exact configuration of a possible strategic defense system is obviously not yet defined, one of the characteristics that would certainly mark this system is its greater effectiveness in protecting the territory of the U.S. than that of Western Europe. In Europe, the distances and therefore the margins of time for acceptable reactions to intercept offensive missiles are much shorter than at the intercontinental level; therefore, a European system would need to be much more efficient than an intercontinental one. Hence many Europeans' concern that the United States, protected by the anti-missile shield, could resume isolationist positions and eventually even withdraw from the commitments made for the defense of Europe. At the current state of affairs, this is little more than science fiction; however, ther

e are no doubts about the fact that the introduction of defensive systems would contribute more to the defense of the U.S. than to that of Europe, and would therefore enhance Europe's doubts on the credibility of the U.S. deterrent for its own defense.

Economically speaking, the Europeans have shown interest for research funds, the participation in which had been proposed by the Defense Secretary Weinberger in Spring 1985. To date, this is the single aspect on which the allies agree most. The Europeans, urged by the fear of being left out of the "partition" of the $26 billion allocated, seem to be interested in the potential secondary technological developments of the Sdi research more than in its strategic implications.

4. Objectives of the Sdi

The debate during the '60s on the objectives of a strategic defense was reopened with unexpected similarities after the Sdi of 1983. In practice, one front proposed to defend major cities from the danger of nuclear destruction, while another front wanted to defend only those military sites (chiefly the intercontinental missile bases) whose survival would be necessary to ensure an adequate deterrent in the eyes of potential aggressors. Others propose to defend both the missiles and the whole of the population. We will now briefly examine the implications of each of these positions.

The first category is the less interesting one today. Defending a city means denying the enemy the opportunity to strike those which it considers top strategic, economic, industrial and psychological objectives. Not only the populations that are to be defended, but also the collateral war potential which industrial cities incorporate. This is the thesis shared by those who believe that a total defense umbrella is unlikely to be achieved, and think instead of improving traditional, land-based anti-missile defense systems, which would be unable cover the entire territory of the U.S. and even less that of NATO. Even if this thesis is currently not receiving particular attention, the interest for it might awake under bureaucratic pressures, if it were decided that a total defense (see below) is unfeasible. There is a historical precedent: the choice of more moderate goals under the pressure of domestic politics, after having discarded other, more difficult ones, was the primary cause for the deployment of "Safe

guard" in an anti-Chinese function (see above).

The second category of supporters of the Sdi propose instead to defend only the military sites that are vital to ensure deterrence. Such objectives are often incorrectly identified as intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), whose "windows of vulnerability" are attributed responsibilities in destabilizing and prompting an attack which, in the light of the great potential of the other two branches of the strategic triad, I personally have trouble justifying.

Not incidentally, the military are the most convinced supporters of this type of objective for the Sdi, both because the protection of the warmachine is part of their natural way of handling the problem of deterrence, and because their scientific experience with the technical details of the issue makes them skeptic vis-à-vis the presidential dreams of total defense (see below). A defensive system having the sole purpose of protecting a limited number of missiles contained in hardened sites would obviously be easier, technically speaking, than defending cities.

The third school of thought, which the president himself belongs to, proposed to defend both cities and missiles, thus making the latter totally useless. If both superpowers equipped themselves with a system capable of doing this, Ronald Reagan argues, promising that the United States would be ready to give the Soviets the necessary technology as soon as it was developed, the missiles themselves could be dismantled without any of the parts having to fear for their safety (5).

5. The threat: an intercontinental ballistic missile attack

The threat posed by the imposing Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal is what the Sdi wants to defuse. Even if the U.S. administration promises that the other, no less serious threats posed by cruise missiles or short- or intermediate-range ballistic missiles have not been forgotten, ICBMs have nonetheless received more attention. We will therefore briefly describe this threat and its relevant characteristics to organize a defense against them.

The route of an ICMB is divided into four stages: propulsion, post-propulsion, intermediate stage and re-entry into the atmosphere. The first stage, during which the missile is accelerated by the booster rockets, lasts about three minutes, only one of which in the atmosphere. During this stage, the booster rockets emit large quantities of short-wave infrared rays, that would easily be detected by sensors fitted on satellites (including in very high geosynchronous orbits). The advantages of a defense aiming at intercepting the missiles in this stage are obvious: on the one hand there would be relatively "few" targets to hit, as the single warheads (a maximum of 10 on a Soviet ICBM) would still be concentrated on a single target (the missile); on the other hand, the infrared emissions mentioned above would make the missiles clearly visible to the defense's aiming systems. On the other hand, the trajectory of the single warheads would be unknown, and therefore the defense would be unable to "choose" which objec

tives to concentrate the fire on, and would have to attack all indiscriminately. Moreover, there would be very little time available to carry out the attack. During the post-propulsion stage, which lasts about ten minutes, the stages of the missile with the main booster rockets turn off and come loose, while a capsule containing small directional rockets continues the ballistic trajectory by inertia, changing it only by fractions of a degree every now and then in order to direct the various warheads toward their respective objectives. The infrared emissions of the capsule, however, are much less intense than those of the main rockets. Also, they are long-wave rays, more difficult to detect in space. All this would further complicate the defense's task. During the mid-route stage, which lasts about 15 minutes, the single warheads have been released by the capsule and continue by pure inertia toward their targets. The infrared emissions at this stage are very small and practically invisible from space. Moreove

r, the defense's objectives would be multiplied in number because the capsule would also contain other material apt to confuse the defense's radar sensors (e.g. fake warheads called "decoys", generally consisting of self-inflating aluminium balloons).

During the terminal stage, which lasts between 30 and 90 seconds, the warheads overheat because of the friction with the atmosphere in which they re-enter, and infrared emissions can be detected by land-based sensors; moreover, the warheads are visible on radar. The task of the defense is also simplified by the fact that on the one hand the fake warheads, which must be very light in order not to overburden the missile, disintegrate with the atmospheric friction; and on the other hand, the trajectory of the real warheads is predictable at that point, and therefore the defense can concentrate its forces on the protection of those objectives it considers most important. However, another difficulty is the fact that the time margins are very limited.

6. Missions and architecture

In each of the above described hypothetical stages, a strategic defense system should comprise various missions, conceptually equivalent, the components and the architecture of which would nonetheless change completely according to the stage in which the system itself would be required to function. The following overview will focus on the architecture of a possible defense system for the propulsion stage, because this is by far the possibility that has raised the greatest technological and military interest. A number of technologies for terminal-stage defense have also raised great interest, but the debate has not revealed new points of particular interest with respect to the '60s. The first mission of defense is reconnaissance. Geosynchronous satellites should detect the launch of the Soviet missiles in real time and activate the rest of the defense system. Satellites of this type already exist, and there are excellent chances that this first function of the system could be successfully completed because on

the one hand they are reliable and because they would station in very high orbits which could hardly be attained by anti-satellite weapons.

The second mission is acquisition. The system should be capable of locating exactly the trajectories of the single missiles in flight. This calls for high-resolution satellites at lower orbits (closer to the missiles themselves). This mission is more difficult to complete because it is much more complex. While reconnaissance consisted simply of recording the launching of any given number of missiles, acquisition must deal in detail with the number of missiles, their speed and trajectories, and those of the warheads (real or fake) which they might send through independent trajectories. Moreover, the satellites fitted with sensors that orbit on relatively low orbits, would be more vulnerable to being attacked themselves by the offence's anti-satellite systems (ASAT).

The next task is that of distinguishing, among the targets acquired, the real ones from possible "decoys". While this would be relatively simple for the propulsion stage (given the probably low number of "decoy" missiles that could be launched) the problem of distinguishing real nuclear warheads from fake ones and from the other devices which the capsules would scatter along their trajectory to confuse the defense's sensors, would be more complex.

Alternately, the defense could attack all possible targets (i.e. real ones and "decoys"), but this hypothesis would multiply the size of the defensive system in an unacceptably complicated and costly way.

After having discriminated its target, the defense should address its weapons systems against them. Doing this requires aiming systems capable of constantly correcting the aim in order to follow the targets along their orbit. This requires highly sensitive, reliable and not easily destructible sensors, as well as communications sites among the sensor satellites and the weapons systems that should then carry out the interception.

The next mission is that of the actual destruction, whereby the defense systems act directly on those of the offense to neutralize the attack. The destruction of ICBMs or of their warheads can be of one or more types: thermic, mechanic or functional.

Thermic destruction consists in concentrating high doses of energy produced by chemical lasers on the targets' surface, so as to burn their shell and damage the contents. The sources of the lasers would be heavy and big, so that they would need to be based on land and project the lasers toward mirror-satellites that would address them toward the objectives indicated by the sensor satellites.

Mechanical destruction can be of two kinds: direct or indirect. The direct one consists in damaging the targets through the impact of projectiles launched against them by oriented kinetic energy-powered weapons (e.g. electromagnetic guns). The indirect one consists in concentrating on the surface of the target's shell a quantity of energy such as to cause the violent gasification and consequent explosion of the surface itself, which would thus send a strong blast wave towards the core of the missile (or warhead), damaging the delicate internal mechanisms to the point of neutralizing the attack. The energy for the indirect mechanical destruction would come either from land-based lasers, or by X-ray lasers produced by nuclear explosions on board satellites, whose energy would be addressed according to the information which the satellite itself would receive from the sensor satellites. The functional destruction consists in attacking the offense system's interior electronic components without necessarily damagi

ng it physically. This could be achieved either by using neutral particle beams (charged ones are easily deviated by the terrestrial magnetic field, and therefore difficult to aim at). The biggest problem with this kind of defense is that neutral particles do not spread into the atmosphere, and the defense would therefore need to wait for the offensive missiles to have come out of it. This would considerably restrict the operative margins necessary to carry out the attack. Moreover, it would be difficult for the defense to predict the outcome of an attack, as the target would probably bear no signs of damage from the outside.

Lastly, a defensive system would need to be capable of estimating the result of its actions against the forces of the offense in order to provide the political and military command on land with information useful to understand and monitor the progress of the battle against the forces of the offense as a whole, and therefore to reorganize the defense as a consequence (6).

7. Problems

The problems of the Sdi can be divided into three categories: economic, technological and strategic, in growing order of importance.

Economic problems: the economic difficulties may be analytically divided into two subcategories: absolute costs and costs in relation to those of possible offensive counter-measures. We will first explain each in detail, and then explain why both the economic arguments against the Sdi are scarcely convincing.

The estimated monetary cost of the Sdi program is exorbitant and unpredictable. The requests for the initial research and development stage alone amount to $26 billion in five years. However, this amount is vague because national security is by definition an inestimable asset. In theory therefore, if it were proven that the United States and the West need to be given a strategic defense in order to defend security, such defense would need to be organized regardless of the costs. Moreover, even if ot had to bear these these costs, the U.S. military spending would in any case be far more contained than in past years (in terms of percent of GNP) and the national economy would be able to sustain it. In practice, however, by conflicting with the current trend of reducing the federal deficit, the economic burden of an Sdi program would meet strong criticism and resistance in Congress.

Only partly more convincing is the argument according to which the Sdi is not economically convenient because the counter-measures would be less expensive, and the offense could therefore easily remain one step higher on the scale of military effectiveness, whereas the defense would be spending money uselessly. We must be realistic: the potential "offense" is not an abstract entity on which to build theories. In its most alarming form it is represented by the U.S.S.R. The GNP of the Soviet Union is about half that of the U.S., and Moscow is already spending in percentage double than Washington for defense (in absolute terms the two levels of spending are very similar). We can logically argue, therefore, that the Sdi would force the Soviets to spend for further counter-measures funds that would have to be subtracted from the civilian economy, thus weakening the Soviet economic power as a whole. Even if the U.S. spent even higher sums in nominal terms, in relative terms the burden on its economy would be more

reduced, and this would lead to a widening of the economic, technological and - in time - military gap between the two superpowers. Therefore, the fact that the counter-measures are less expensive in absolute terms is not necessarily relevant.

Technological problems: the technological problems the Sdi intends to overcome are huge, and provide far more convincing arguments to the program's opposers than the economic ones do. We will divide this category in four sub-categories.

The first difficulty lies in the fact that a strategic defense system could never be tested as a whole. Clearly, the single technologies could be accurately tested in a laboratory, and even on the field, but the probable reaction of the whole system to an attack of thousands of Soviet missiles remains a conjecture. The defensive system would come into function only at the first and single opportunity in which it were called to operate on the field.

The most alarming expression of the problem would be visible in the system's computerized aspect, the co-ordination of which would call for an apparatus of unprecedented size and degree of sophistication to process the millions of data that would be produced and transmitted. The most frightening aspect is not so much the difficulty related to the hardware or software, but the fact that such a delicate and complex system would need to function at the first attempt. A programmer normally spends more than half his time correcting errors that are not immediately visible once he has finished writing a new program, and that become evident when the program is tested. Obviously there are correcting programs that detect part of the errors in the original draft, but the programmer still needs to intervene to correct the remaining errors. There is no reasons to believe that the program that would control the Sdi, greater in size than any other existing program (around ten million instructions) would be immune from such

problems.

The second technological difficulty is given by the fact that it would not only be necessary to build a system that carries out an 'x' mission in abstract, but it would also be necessary to take into account an enemy intelligence that would function to prevent 'x' from being completed. Major technological enterprises in recent history (the landing on the moon is often cited as evidence of the potentials of technology if sufficient resources are allocated for a given purpose) did not need to concern themselves with this: it is not at all evident that the conquest of the moon would have been achieved in such a short time and with so few problems had there had been anti-aircraft batteries set up by hypothetical lunatics functioning to prevent it.

The third difficulty is that even if it were possible to achieve a system capable of effectively defeating the Soviet missile forces in their current technological configuration, it is clearly over-ambitious to think of foreseeing today the technologies to be defeated tomorrow, and anticipate them with more advanced defensive systems. There are no reasons to think that if the defensive technologies progressed so much, the offensive ones would be more advanced. If anything, the contrary has been true to date.

Lastly, even if the present and future ballistic missiles were really to become "impotent and obsolete", other, no less lethal nuclear systems, such as bombers and cruise missiles, would remain more or less unaffected by the Sdi. The prospects for an effective defense against the latter, in particular, are even more remote than those of the anti-ballistic defense.

Strategic desirability (7). The last and perhaps more delicate problem raised by the Sdi concerns the desirability of a strategic defense in the event it were technologically and economically feasible. Many experts of various political orientation believe that "if feasible", a defense capable of eliminating the spectre of nuclear destruction would be desirable. We believe instead that despite the fact that it is not totally solved and perhaps not solvable, the problem should be seen in wider terms. In other words, it is necessary to define the problems of the current general strategic situation, nuclear and non-nuclear and then to analyse the alternatives that could replace it; lastly, weigh the consequences of a hypothetical change towards one of them (we said "towards" instead of "into" because the stage of transition from a strategic situation to another one would raise problems of its own that could not be neglected). The fundamental philosophy behind the Sdi is that the world is currently living in the

fear of nuclear devastation, where the balance of mutual terror between blocks prevails (it is ironical that this vision is very similar to that of many pacifist and left-wing groups worldwide). Nonetheless, this interpretation of the strategic situation distorts the reality. Terror implies fear, and fear implies an uncertainty about the possibility of an undesable event occurring for some reason. On the contrary, the various nuclear powers and chiefly the superpowers, know for sure that a nuclear (and possibly even a non-nuclear) attack on their part would cause a more or less equally devastating one on the part of the offense, and this is the basis of the stability of deterrence.

This is not to say that the world is living in an ideal condition. There remains the slight possibility of an accidental war or of irrational actions on the part of one of the actors that could unleash a nuclear holocaust on the planet. Obviously, it is desirable to endeavour to limit the possibilities of such an event. Much remains to be done in the field of the command and control of the nuclear forces.

However, trying to build a shield in front (or above) the Soviet ICBMs could have the opposite effect. Let's examine the (not unlikely) possibility that a partially effective anti-ballistic shield were built by one or more nuclear power (leaving out other nuclear systems for reasons of simplicity).

This would create a strategic situation in which it would no longer be clear as it is today that none of the parts would remain immune from the threat of a total destruction in the event of a nuclear war. One or more of the parts could believe rightly or wrongly that is sufficiently protected to attack an opponent. This would be a highly unstable condition, especially in the case of international crises, that would obviously enhance all the parts' tendency to use nuclear weapons: on the one hand, a country that had made itself almost invulnerable or thought to be such would be obviously less motivated to renounce the use of nuclear weapons. On the other hand, a country that feared an imminent attack by a partially protected enemy would be more motivated to use its own weapons as soon as possible in order to exploit its advantages before it was too late, especially if it also believed to have an at least partially efficient defensive system. In other words, in a situation of partial defense, the conflicting p

arts are induced to act first in order to reduce the force which the enemy could launch in response, and which could penetrate its defense.

The instability of such a situation would be even more dangerous if the parts had reduced their respective arsenals (through treaties or unilaterally) at much lower levels. In that case, it would perhaps be possible for one or more of the parts to attack first and thus reduce the enemy arsenal to nominal levels of remaining weapons which, once launched, could be neutralized by a defense system of limited capacity. In any case, a situation os this kind is highly unlikely. It is far more likely that the development of strategic defenses, especially if only partially effective, would be followed by an increase instead of a diminution of offensive weapons, as each of the parts would try to achieve a capacity of response capable of penetrating the enemy defenses and of denying such capacity to all potential enemies.

Let us now examine the possibility of building a 100% safe strategic defense system, i.e. a total defense which could effectively make current nuclear weapons "impotent and obsolete", according to Reagan's wishes. Would this be a desirable development? In many people's eyes, it would. How can a purely defensive system capable of making the most lethal existing weapons useless not be welcome?

However, there are two reasons to believe the contrary: the first pertains to the relation between nuclear weapons and non-nuclear warfare, and the second to the stage of transition from the current prevalence of offense to a possible future prevalence of defense.

It is widely held that the presence of nuclear weapons has encouraged the maintenance of peace among the blocks, avoiding the outbreak of nuclear or conventional warfare in Europe in the last forty years. This belief has been discussed in thousands of books, articles and conferences, but obviously it is impossible to prove whether it is true or false. It is possible that there would have been peace in any case.

One thing that might be argued is that the presence of nuclear weapons introduces in the blocks' strategic and military calculations the possibility of their use and the possibility that such use is uncontrollable and could degenerate into a generalized nuclear war, where there would be no "victors" and "defeated", but nothing but radioactive ashes. In other words, regardless of the existence or not of situations in the last forty tears in which nuclear weapons have contributed to maintaining peace, it is clearly possible to hypothesize such situation for the future. It is therefore in the interest of peace that the leaders of the nuclear powers never envisage triggering a conventional war without incurring the risk of unleashing a nuclear holocaust on the planet. This is particularly important for Europe, because a conventional war among blocks would be fought chiefly and perhaps exclusively in Europe. The second reasons to oppose a strategic defense system, even if a perfect one, is that it would be imposs

ible to develop such system in a short period of time. It would certainly take a long transition stage. Such transition would probably be asymmetric and dangerous.

It would be asymmetric because the various powers would develop their own technologies at different rhythms, and obviously one power would manage to complete the system before the others. It would be dangerous because it would alter the current balance of forces and the temptation of the power that has made itself invulnerable to prevail on the others would be strong.

Moreover, as we already said, there are no reasons to believe that the achievement of an effective defense system against the offensive systems would not be followed by further technological developments that would rekindle the constant race between offense and defense. Therefore, the asymmetry and dangeruosness explained above would be destined to reappear forever, in parallel with cycles in the development of military technologies. This clearly conflicts with the interests of all nations.

8. Prospects

Over three years have elapsed since Reagan's speech, but the future of the Sdi is still uncertain. Let us analyse the most probable alternatives for the following years as far as the subsequent stages of the program are concerned, i.e. research development and implementation.

The basic research will most probably continue, for various reasons. Firstly, it has never been banned by any treaty, including the 1972 treaty between U.S. and USSR that bans the deployment of anti-ballistic defenses.

Secondly, having knowledge on how a strategic defense system could work provides a guarantee in the event that the USSR (which opposes the Sdi but has been carrying out its own program with similar purposes) decided to equip itself with such system in the future, because the West could more easily adopt counter-measures to defeat it.

Thirdly, the Sdi research program has been started, and will continue by inertia and will not easily stop. Fourth: it is almost impossible to control the signatories' respect of an agreement that bans research, because each of the parts should guarantee access to the others in the laboratories where the most important State secrets, military or non, are kept. It is inconceivable that this type of agreement can be reached in the near future.

As far as the actual implementation of a system is concerned, it is instead likely that there will be a repetition of the series of events that characterized the decline and discontinuance of the "Safeguard" system in the early '70s, and more or less for the same reasons, i.e. the impossibility of achieving a perfect defense and the dubious desirability of an imperfect defense.

The Reagan administration has had two positions of principle that point to this, even if this is not openly declared. First, in November 1985 Reagan declared that the deployment of the Sdi would have taken place only after the two superpowers had totally eliminated offensive missiles. In view of the extreme unlikelihood of such event, we can think that the Administration chose this formula to postpone the commitment to equip the country with a defense whose difficulties are proving more insurmountable than was expected three years ago to a remote and unconceivable future, without admitting so.

The second stance taken by the U.S. that points to the unlikelihood of the implementation is the constant promise to provide the Soviet Union with a similar defense system as soon as it is completed. If Washington continues to promise this as it has in the past three years, it will be more and more difficult to deny it: this promise has certainly contributed to the Sdi's public image, but denying it would severely damage it. However, if we assume, as it is reasonable to do, that the U.S. would never provide the U.S.S.R. with the most sophisticated technologies, and that the promise is pure propaganda, then we must conclude that the administration believes that the moment to keep its promise will not come in the predictable future, i.e. that there will be no implementation. A vast grey area of experimentation lays between the research stage and the implementation. In particular, the dividing line between experimentation and research is not clearly defined. One of the ensuing problems is the fact that unlike r

esearch, experimentation is banned by the anti-ballistic treaty of 1972, which the U.S. also want to maintain, and the violation of which could perhaps irreparably damage the arms control process which has been underway for over twenty years. Considering the unlikelihood of an implementation, and the probable continuation of the basic research, negotiations will focus on the grey area of experimentation, and this is where a reasonable compromise could perhaps be reached, starting with a clearer definition of the limit between research and experimentation.

At the moment, strategic defense, whether based in space or on earth, on new or old technologies, is neither desirable nor probable. The prevalence of offense on defense will continue in the atomic era, and though the current one is not a perfectly stable and reassuring strategic balance, the prospect opened up by the Sdi are certainly no better.

NOTES

1. Text in "Survival", May-June 1983, pp. 129-130.

2. For a more complete outline of the history of anti-ballistic defense, Cf. SCHWARZ D. N., ``Past and Present: the Historical Legacy'' in SCHAWARTZ D. N. and CARTER A. B. (edited by), "Ballistic Missile Defense", Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., 1984, pp. 330-350.

3. Cf. SCHELLING T.C. and HALPERIN M. H., "Strategy and Arms Control", The Twentieth Century Fund, New York, 1961, p. 58.

4. Cf. GLASER C. L., ``Why Even Good Defenses May Be Bad'', in "International Security", vol. 9 n. 2, p. 92.

5. For an excellent explanation of the problem of the mission of defense and of the prospects of a more or less perfect defense, Cf. CARTER A. B., "Directed Energy Missile Defense in Space", Background paper prepared for the Office of Technology Assessment, United States Congress, April 1984, pp. 65-81.

6. For an exhaustive essay on the technological and architectural problems of defense, Cf. OFFICE OF TECHNOLOGY ASSESSMENT, "Ballistic Missile Defence Technologies", United States Congress, Sept. 1985, pp. 139-197.

7. The various strategic aspects of the Sdi are dealt with in countless specialized papers. Cf. among others, "Ballistic Missile Defence Technologies, op. cit.", pp. 119-139; and DRELL S. D., FARLEY P. J., HOLLOWAY D., "The Reagan Strategic Defence Initiative", Ballinger Publishing Company, Cambridge (Ma), pp. 7-39. For a paper in support of the U.S. Administration on the Sdi, Cf. JASTROW R., "How to Make Nuclear Weapons Obsolete", Little, Brown Co., Boston, 1985.