The Bush Administration’s decision to go ahead with National and Theater Missile Defense (NMD and TMD) has met with a mixed reception in Asia. While India welcomed the Bush proposal—especially the decision to call for deep cuts in nuclear arsenals—China expressed concern about establishing a national missile shield. The thing to remember about NMD and TMD is that they signal changes in both the international system as well as in the power capabilities of the remaining superpower—the United States.

The decision to go ahead with an N/TMD is not just reflective of a change of administration in the United States. It is also an indication of the profound changes that have taken place in the international system in the decade since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Five of these changes are important for understanding the decision to initiate a missile defense program.

First, the United States, as the remaining superpower, has moved away from a policy of political multilateralism to one of economic globalization. As the hegemon in the post cold war international system the United States’s first objective was to create an international order (the term New World Order was used occasionally) based on multilateral actions under the aegis of the United Nations. This was an old post-World War II ambition that was being rekindled because the end of communism led to the belief that the major powers would no longer have substantive differences and would, instead, work in concert to manage international affairs.

This idealistic vision never came to fruition. Russia, as the successor state to the Soviet Union, was a defeated power and it manifested all the weaknesses of a nation that no longer had the capacity to shape international events. The dramatic collapse of Russian military capability—and the humiliating defeat in the first Chechen war—left a Russia that was unable to militarily contribute to maintaining international order.

The political and economic collapse of the Soviet Union left Russia with the same identity issues that haunted the British and the French after World War II—having the national ego of a great power but the national economic capacity and international influence of a failed power. Britain and France sought to rebuild their aspirations as junior partners of the United States (although the French pulled out of this partnership and instead engaged in a somewhat futile exercise of promoting a French conception of international order). Russian pride did not allow this kind of partnership and America’s continued suspicions about Russian intentions also precluded such an arrangement.

China as the budding challenger to U.S. hegemony had substantive issues come to the fore in both the UN and in its own immediate region with the question of Taiwanese independence. The bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade and the recent seizure of the naval reconnaissance P-3C Orion further contributed to the growing suspicions between the two countries and have prevented the establishment of a concert of nations that would work to create the ground rules for a new international political order.

Thus for the United States the alternative became one of promoting globalization—an American driven advance of technology and wealth that would lead to a standardization of global consumer choices. (aptly named McWorld by the political scientist Benjamin R. Barber). Free markets and the goodies they bring in the form of consumer goods, satellite television, the internet, and a common consumption culture were seen as the less direct but more effective way to create international order. Thus multilateralism gave way to the less responsible process of globalization. Globalization was going to make nations standardize their procedures and behave according to international norms. Forgotten in this debate was the fact that poverty was not decreasing, ethnic tensions continued to flare up through the 1990s, and a new phenomenon, the so-called digital divide, exacerbated economic differences in the nonwestern world. The second phenomenon facilitating the move toward missile defense is the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) that has provided the United States with an overwhelming superiority in military technology. The RMA brought about by high-speed computing, phenomenally improved guidance systems, miniaturization, and the development of communications and space technology has left the United States not only as the remaining superpower but with a military superiority that will not be challenged for a couple of decades.

This military edge now gives the United States a reduced dependence on nuclear weapons. The overwhelming military superiority combined with the accuracy of current weapons systems makes the need to initiate, or even react to, a low-level nuclear strike less compelling. There is a growing school of thought that the accuracy and lethality of conventional weapons means that United States does not have to retaliate in kind to a nuclear strike by a third tier nuclear power like North Korea. This would in fact permit the United States to maintain the moral high ground in a military conflict.

Third, N/TMD is a reaction to gut feelings in the United States about future threats to the continental United States. In part there is a paranoia among certain parts of the United States about evil foreigners blowing up all that the American middle class holds sacred—basically an Oklahoma City type attack but this time done not by alienated whites but by foreign groups. For those groups NMD signals a unilateralism in defense policy that they have long wanted. There is, however, the more serious threat of attacks on U.S. military bases abroad that TMD will have a role in countering.

Fourth, N/TMD is both a diplomatic strategy and a technological imperative. It is a diplomatic strategy because it can be used to make Russia and China come to the table on both nuclear issues as well as on broader political agendas. If the Russians and the Chinese see their nuclear arsenals becoming obsolescent—because of the development of a nuclear shield over the United States—they will have to come to the bargaining table to salvage what they can from negotiations with the United States. In this context the recent formation of a Chinese-Russian strategic alliance to counter the United States’s strategic superiority and its plans for missile defense is more symbolic than a significant political or military challenge to the United States. Neither Russia nor China can do without U.S. investments and economic support. The technological imperative cannot be overstated because missile defense will pour more money into precisely those areas where the United States enjoys a lead over other countries.

Fifth, missile defense also includes theater missile defense and that has important implications for regional nuclear forces. One of the arguments I have made elsewhere is that regional powers will have to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because they lack the technological capabilities and financial resources to build state of the art conventional weaponry. WMDs could compensate for the lack of this technological capability because they would not become easily obsolescent. And with a WMD capability regional powers, as Zbigniew Brzezinski has argued would be able to deter superpower military intervention. Brzezinski argues that the American public would be unlikely to tolerate the high casualties associated with a nuclear strike especially if it took place in a region of the developing world.

With the creation of a theater based missile defense, regional nuclear forces will become less effective as deterrents against U.S. military intervention. The other side of the argument is that this would encourage the covert deployment of nuclear and other weapons—for example the regime of the Outstanding Leader Kim Jong-il would have to place WMDs on South Korean soil in order to neutralize TMD. NMD, therefore, has both significant political and military implications for the international system. It signals the ability and willingness of the United States to pursue unilateralism in the international system—both because of its capabilities and because of the perceived intransigence of the other major powers in helping to maintain international order.

Implications for Asia

With the rollback of nuclear programs in Latin America, South Africa, and the former Soviet Union, it is the Asian continent that is most effected by N/TMD and for the purposes of this discussion I am focusing primarily on South and East Asia. N/TMD is a threat to non-status quo states in the international system while it will provide an advantage to status quo states.

Nuclear weapons states in Asia have developed weapons for security, prestige, and regime maintenance. States like Pakistan and North Korea have used the threat of nuclear weapons to gain economic assistance and political recognition for themselves and thus helped consolidate their domestic regimes. The use of nuclear weapons to provide security has led to a divide between status quo states that do not believe in initiating the use of nuclear weapons and non status quo states that may use them in war fighting. India falls in the first category because its draft nuclear doctrine (which Indian officials are at pains to stress in a draft) precludes the first use of nuclear weapons. Pakistan and China both see the use of nuclear weapons in warfighting. And if and when North Korea develops nuclear weapons it too will have a nuclear warfighting doctrine. Pakistan believes this is the one way to counter India’s conventional advantage while China’s military would have to resort to nuclear weapons against Taiwan because Taipei has the capacity to hurt a Chinese conventional attack—especially if it is assisted by U.S. forces. Similarly, the conventionally inferior North Korean forces would have to resort to nuclear weapons to stop an attack from the south.

For nations with offensive nuclear doctrines, therefore, N/TMD will is a threat that will be difficult to counter. That is why China has voiced its vehement opposition of the Bush Administration’s plan. Pakistan too is concerned because if India were to acquire a TMD capability either directly from the United States or through Israel it would reverse the deterrent capability that the Pakistanis believe they have acquired since going public with their bomb in 1998. Pakistanis now worry that their strategy of promoting cross border terrorism in India, assured in the knowledge that the Indians will not cross the border, may come unstuck because armed with a TMD capability India would weaken Pakistan’s nuclear deterrent.

On the other hand, countries willing to pursue a status quo approach with nuclear weapons are the ones that will benefit the most from the provision of TMD. Accepting the American conception of world order and the fact that the use and spread of nuclear weapons must be restricted, means not only access to TMD technology but entering into a long term security partnership with the United States. The benefits of the latter are important. Being part of a security framework will eventually lead to the transfers of technology and investments that nonwestern countries require. This will be particularly important in the Indian case because New Delhi now sees high technology as helping it leap frog the disadvantages of being a late industrializer.

N/TMD, therefore, are going to be defense technologies that not only shift the focus in warfare but also create new sets of political arrangements. Those Asian countries that are pursuing policies that support the development of a peaceful and stable international order are likely to benefit from them.