TUESDAY 4 APRIL 2000

PROFESSOR PAUL ROGERS, PROFESSOR ROBERT O'NEILL AND PROFESSOR JOHN BAYLIS

  20. The rationale for NMD as I understand it relies very heavily on this concept of rogue states and certainly that is what the Americans were saying when we were over there. Can you first deal with the prime suspect, so to speak, which is North Korea, which the Americans seem extraordinarily exercised about? First of all could I have your assessment on whether you think it actually is a realistic threat against the United States, that both technically and actually they have the intent to threaten the United States, because technically they could just draw a circle round and you could say a single country being limited in size is under threat. It does not mean that the intent to threaten is there. Secondly, given that North Korea is actually getting substantial economic assistance from the US, does not the US have other weapons to discourage North Korea from extending its missile systems than constructing NMD?
  (Professor O'Neill) If I were sitting in the Pentagon doing threat assessment North Korea would be high on my list because it has behaved in a rather unpredictable way in the past. We do not really know what constraints exist on Kim Jong Il, but it is a long way to go from that situation to base a national missile defence programme on the possible unpredictable action of North Korea. Let me make a commonsense point. A country like north Korea has not only a missile programme; it has cargo ships. It can get things around the world. If you erected the most perfect missile defence system in the world whereby nothing can get through, if people really want to cause you harm they can deliver nuclear warheads without putting them on missiles. There is the cargo ship. There is the delivery truck that can go across borders. There is the packing case. How on earth is the United States going to stop all those means of putting pressure on it? Also, if North Korea were really to do something that menaced the United States, the United States is not short of conventional weaponry and it would be much more justified in the eyes of the international community in using precision guided conventional weaponry to respond quickly and hard from one of the aircraft carriers that is not all that far away. It does not really need a missile defence system to achieve that end.

  21. Does anybody else disagree with that?
  (Professor Baylis) No, I tend to agree with that. The North Koreans have a missile capability, the Taep'o-dong one has a range of about 1,500-2,000 miles I think. There is a suggestion that they would upgrade and can upgrade that system to a much longer range system. My own feeling is that that threat has been exaggerated for political reasons in the United States. We see this now as part of a political debate within Congress and the Republicans clearly are using the issue for political ends. The Rumsfeld Commission in 1998 in a sense hyped this issue up quite considerably and put it into the public domain in quite a significant way. There is a concern. I think Professor O'Neill is absolutely right. My own feeling is that it is an exaggerated threat and it has become exaggerated because of the electoral campaign in the United States.
  (Professor Rogers) There has been a certain degree of embarrassment recently in that commercially available satellite reconnaissance photographs have become available of the North Korean missile test site with a one-metre resolution, and independent analysts point out that this missile test site is really crude, to put it very mildly, and it just does not have the capability to be the centrepoint for a major long-range missile programme. Certainly North Korea is a state which behaves sometimes highly erratically and it is a state with massive internal problems, but to erect a national missile defence programme on the basis of that I think is quite extraordinary and most independent analysts would take that view. This is what lends credence in Beijing and Moscow to the idea that the rogue state is really an excuse for something which is much more fundamental. There is one other aspect which is perhaps driving national missile defence. You have research and development of a range of very advanced technologies going into ballistic missile defence. We are just coming into the era of the so-called directed energy weapons and the airborne laser will be the first of those. There is a belief that if you have eight or 10 years of very heavy spending on this range of new military technologies the results are going to be very impressive for many military purposes, not just missile defence. Within the United States defence community there is this belief that this kind of impetus that will ride on the back of the national missile defence programme is going to lead to a wide range of very profitable and very effective military spin-offs.

  22. Moving on from the North Korean threat, which as I understand you all to say would not justify an NMD and can be dealt with in other ways, they then move on to say, "Ah, but there is also Iraq and Iran who are developing missiles themselves and we need to have a defence against them." My understanding is that, for example, UK participation in NMD is not necessary if all they are doing is defending themselves against North Korea. It becomes necessary if they are also defending themselves against missiles from the Middle East. Could you give your assessment on whether you think those threats are realistic and whether there are other ways of dealing with them?
  (Professor Rogers) Iraq is to a very large extent under a degree of control at present, or at least it was until 18 months ago when the UNSCOM system broke down, but Iraq clearly is some years now from redeveloping a major long range missile programme. If you take countries like Syria and Iran, one has to appreciate from their perspective that the key issue is Israel, not the West. In the case of Iran, you have Iran with Iraq to the west, Pakistan, a missile proliferating nuclear power, to the east, and Russia to the north, and then you would have the problem of Israel as they see it. Israel has a range of ballistic missiles, probably Cruise missiles, and certainly a significant nuclear arsenal and probably a significant biological and chemical weapons arsenal as well, so much of the preoccupation in the Middle Eastern countries that are considered to be a threat is with the region, not with the world as a whole. The idea that you are going to get a substantial ICBM threat, an intercontinental range threat, from Iran towards the United States in the next 10 to 15 years is frankly fanciful.
  (Professor Baylis) I agree with that assessment in terms of intercontinental ballistic missile defence. The key issue however is the issue of theatre protection. Quite clearly if we can envisage situations in which British/American Alliance troops are involved in operations in the Middle East, similar perhaps to the Gulf War, when Scud missiles were quite clearly not only a very significant political threat but also a military threat, the question arises I suppose whether or not there needs to be some sort of theatre protection. One of the American programmes is designed to provide localised regional protection for American and Allied forces. Whether or not that is a reason for engaging in this research alongside the United States, given that these programmes for theatre systems are linked to broader continental systems, is an interesting question but it clearly does raise important questions for countries like Israel, for example. The PAC-3 system, which is the updated Patriot system, clearly for countries like Israel is very important indeed. I would think from the British point of view, if we see our troops engaged in operations in these areas, it might well be important for us in the longer term as well. Hence my argument about being involved in the process.

  23. Can I pick up on that last one? There have been reports recently that the Americans are in Israel at the moment trying to persuade them not to sell something—I cannot remember what it is—on to the Chinese. Is it really feasible to suggest that America might produce theatre protection for Israel if Israel would then just drop it on to the Chinese, which is what they seem to do usually with things from the Americans?
  (Professor Baylis) The Israelis are producing a kind of system themselves, the Homer system, which is based on the Arrow missile, but that obviously has very close technological links with the United States. I would have thought that this would be a great worry to the United States and they would be concerned to make sure that any agreement which they signed with Israel does not involve passing on that kind of technology to third parties which undermines American national security.

  24. One of you mentioned that there would need to be a listening post in Australasia. Who would that be defending the Americans from?
  (Professor Rogers) Essentially the space based infra-red system which gives the earliest warning of missile launches is based on satellites in distant geo-stationary orbits, and because they are more or less located so to speak at one point over the earth's surface at any one time, you have to have three receiving stations round the world to get full global coverage, so you have the major stations in the United States and then one in Britain and one provisionally planned for Australia. I think it is at Pine Gap but I am not absolutely sure about that.

  25. We talked about the Middle East and the fact that the missiles that Iran and Syria may be getting are probably likely to be for regional defence. How far is Israel being pressed to become a party to the NPT, the non-nuclear weapon state?
  (Professor Rogers) Israel will have nothing to do with that kind of arms control at all. It is just not interested in the NPT. It regards its own defence as absolutely paramount. It has never officially admitted that it has nuclear weapons although the Knesset debate recently rather opened things up. Israel is not a player. We tend to forget this in terms of the perception of other Middle East countries.
  (Professor Baylis) I agree with that.
  (Professor O'Neill) I just wanted to touch on the subject of Iran. Iran is in a totally different category from North Korea. Iran has gone through a major process of political moderation. President Khatami has his domestic hard line opponents but he is still the President. I think we can see public opinion shifting and we are going to see a much more normal relationship between the West and Iran in the next 10 years than we have over the past 10 years.

  26. Do you think Israel will become a player in these negotiations if certain Middle Eastern countries would recognise it?
  (Professor Rogers) It is possible that relations might ease somewhat. I think we have the specific problem in the Middle East of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction by a number of states and some way has to be found of bringing those states together to begin a regional process of arms control, but it is going to be formidably difficult in the absence of a lasting settlement between the Israelis and the Palestinians. That is really at the core of it. If you can get some kind of post-Oslo agreement which works, and that is the operative word, then from that one could begin to build some sort of arms control regime in the Middle East. Surrounding Arab states however are not going to entertain that kind of involvement until there is a stable peace agreement and we are not there yet.

  27. If Israel and Palestine got an agreement you think flowing from that would be recognition by Syria, recognition by Iran, even recognition by Iraq? The key is Israel/Palestine?
  (Professor Rogers) The key is Israel/Palestine at present. The whole Arab/Israeli conflict has returned to what it was 55 years ago with the Israelis and the Palestinians. Everything else over the past 55 years has been to some extent a side show. That is what the conflict is about in essence. If that can be resolved then it is possible—I will not put it stronger than that—that we can move into an era of a general improvement in relations between Israel and the Arab state, including progress on arms control and ultimately bringing in Iran as well.

  28. You made the point about what are now called the two listening sites in Yorkshire. I know Fylingdales but I have forgotten the name of the other one.
  (Professor Rogers) Menwith Hill.

  29. You are saying that if we could hold back the NMD programme, if we said to the Americans, "We are sorry, we are not prepared to make technological changes, we are not prepared to use these", would that completely stymie the Americans for 10 years?
  (Professor Rogers) It would make it very much more difficult. they would immediately look for other partners. There is in fact an interesting court case developing at present. Some of these peace activists are trying to get an injunction on the Government to stop this listening post being built at Menwith Hill on the grounds that it could contribute to the loss of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and therefore there are very good reasons for national security for Britain not going along with that. It is certainly true that if the SBIRs, the space based infra-red system ground receiving station at Menwith Hill, was halted, that would be a major problem for the United States in developing the national missile defence programme. Even more significant would be the refusal of Britain to go along with the necessary upgrade of Fylingdales.

  30. Do you think Russia and China are relaxed about North Korea as a state? As Dr Starkey said, we heard a lot about North Korea when we were in America, about them being a rogue state. Do you not think the Russians and the Chinese are pretty nervy too about North Korea?
  (Professor O'Neill) I agree. I think the Chinese particularly, because the Chinese after all had most to do with them. I go to Beijing from time to time. I have talked to a lot of Chinese over the past 20 years about North Korea because they have much more access than we do and they are frequently puzzled, embarrassed, deeply worried by what is going on there. They have recently swung back to being a little more protective of North Korea in terms of their own diplomatic stance and that reflects their growing tensions with the United States and that again is largely related to Taiwan. I think there is still an important common interest between the United States and China in trying to manage north Korea as quietly and peacefully as possible through a major state transformation. The Russians also have a lot of concern about North Korea. It is just over the border. If things go wrong there it is bound to have some side effects for Russia, particularly in an area where the Russians are hoping to make some money out of oil and gas exports.

  31. You mentioned how close Russia is to the North Korean border. Would it help if the Russians and the Americans would agree to have some sort of listening device as close to the North Korean border on Russian territory as is possible?
  (Professor O'Neill) The Americans are not short of listening devices.

  32. So they would not need that?
  (Professor O'Neill) No. In effect they have got plenty at sea, plenty of satellite coverage, and if they do want to—

  33. It would bring the Russians in and in my view it would be a basis for negotiations with the Russians if the Russians are nervy towards North Korea. If they had a jointly managed listening station close to the North Korean border, from the diplomatic point of view it could have advantages.
  (Professor O'Neill) I take that point but I think it would require there to be a general increase int he warmth of relations between Moscow and Washington.

  34. One final question on the way the NMD programme is developing. It is 40 years since President Eisenhower warned about the military/industrial complex getting out of control in the United States. He did that just before he stepped down as President. Are we close to that happening now in NMD? There is so much industry tied up in it.
  (Professor Rogers) I think `pork barrel' politics has a great deal to do with the NMD programme. There is potentially a great deal of money in it for many constituencies across the United States. In an era in which defence budgets have been cut somewhat in the United States over the last 10 years within defence industries, this is seen as a real winner in terms of new finance. Without wishing to be cynical, it is surprising how many studies of the threat from rogue states turn out to have financial aid from various arms companies.
  (Professor Baylis) I support that. The whole notion of the military/industrial complex is a much more complex issue. I think the pork barrel nature of the politics is the key aspect of this. It has been driven in a sense by close links between political groups and various industrial complexes in the Untied States. That link in political terms is very important.
  (Professor O'Neill) Just to go to the nub of your question, I do not think the military/industrial complex is out of control. It does have to come to the administration and to the Congress for money. The control is really in the hands of political leaders in Washington but, as my two colleagues have said, they have a lot of domestic incentives for giving plenty of resources to the defence industry in order to maintain their current economic progress.

  35. Pork barrel politics is so influential with Congressmen, it has got so powerful as a lobby that it is pushing stuff on.
  (Professor O'Neill) It has. They have a lot of enemies too.

  36. Professor O'Neill, can I just come back to this key issue of the relationship between NMD and Start III? If I took down your words correctly, I think earlier on you said words to the effect that NMD will scupper any long term reduction in nuclear weapons between the USA and Russia. That is a view which is contrary to the view put to us in the State Department in Washington a fortnight ago where State Department officials were really very sanguine that they would be able to combine a deal with Russia on a modification of the ABM Treaty with progress towards Start III. Do you think this is a complete illusion as far as the State Department is concerned, and if you do think that is an illusion, why do you believe that an agreed amendment—and this is very important—of the ABM Treaty between the United States and Russia, not a unilateral renunciation of the ABM Treaty by the United States, might be prejudicial to progress on Start III?
  (Professor O'Neill) I think the State Department is indulging in wishful thinking. They know what the administration wants and they are not likely to go round talking to foreign delegations saying, "Oh, by the way, there is no basis in Russian expert opinion for what my President is trying to do." They will put as helpful a spin on what they hear coming out of the debate in Moscow as they can, but all I can say is that they must talk to different Russians than the Russians I speak to who come from the think-tank community and the Foreign Ministry and the armed services, and they are very apprehensive about the impact of scrapping of the ABM agreement unilaterally or—

  37. We are not talking about scrapping the ABM agreement. We are talking about an agreed modification between Russia and the United States. That is the fundamental premise behind my question.
  (Professor O'Neill) I do not think that is likely.

  38. Really?
  (Professor O'Neill) Yes.
  (Professor Baylis) I actually disagree with that view. I think both my colleagues will take the same position. My own view is that it is possible for there to be an agreement between the United States and the Russians on the demarcation agreement basis which is linked to Start III, particularly with a new presidency in Russia. That does not say that the problems are resolved. I think there are apprehensions in Russia, there is no doubt about that, about this programme, but I think it is possible that we will see an agreement between the Americans and the Russians on this issue. If there is a negotiated solution to this problem, amendment of the ABM Treaty, which is linked with the Start III programme which suits the concerns of the Russian Duma, the linkage of those two things may well become possible in the future. There are wider issues of course which are of concern but I would not rule that out.
  (Professor Rogers) I think the problem is that if there was to be some sort of agreement which was attempted to be negotiated by Washington with Moscow which involved progress on Start III, that would probably not be ratified in Congress. I think the mood in the United States, because of the way in which arms control has really receded, is that you would be very unlikely to get a Start III treaty agreed on the Hill.

  39. That would have to be part of a package as a result of which the Russian Federation agreed to limited NMD?
  (Professor Rogers) We have seen this with the CTBT. Coming back to that, it was a very important loss. The mood by and large is that Russia is not going to be allowed to dictate to us what we do on NMD and on strategic offensive forces. We have to remember at the same time there are major new warhead design developments taking place in the United States, as is true of all the major nuclear powers. We are not out of the era of the development of new kinds of nuclear weapons. There is this very strong feeling that "We are not going to be told by anybody what we do on the nuclear side."