The Economist - USA (2020-11-21)

24 United States The EconomistNovember 21st 2020

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lot Republicans benefited from the high

turnout among Mr Trump’s supporters,

probably keeping control of the Senate and

eroding the Democratic majority in the

House. They also wiped out Democrats in

state elections, bringing power over gerry-

mandering. “They think the ducking and

accommodating of Trump without quite

sounding like Trump—that worked fine,”

says Bill Kristol, a conservative writer long

opposed to the president.

Most prominent Republicans still in of-

fice have continued to humour the presi-

dent. “All legal ballots must be counted.

Any illegal ballots must not be counted,”

said Mitch McConnell, the Republican

leader in the Senate. The implication that

there may be sufficient fraudulent ballots

to alter the election’s outcome has so far

proven to be baseless. Only a few excep-

tional Republicans, like Mitt Romney and

Susan Collins, have acknowledged the re-

sults and congratulated Mr Biden.

Others have gone even further than Mr

McConnell’s careful statement. Brad Raf-

fensperger, the Republican in charge of ad-

ministering elections in Georgia, which Mr

Biden narrowly won, has come under with-

ering criticism from members of his own

party for refusing to tilt the result in Mr

Trump’s favour. Kelly Loeffler and David

Perdue, the Republican senators who face

run-offs in January that will determine

control of the Senate, issued a joint state-

ment calling for his resignation. Lindsey

Graham, an especially Trumpist senator,

personally called Mr Raffensperger to dis-

pute the absentee ballots cast in the race.

At some point, reality will intervene.

The remaining lawsuits will fizzle. States

have started to certify their election re-

sults. The electoral college will formally

vote on December 14th to make Mr Biden

the next president. More and more Repub-

licans are telegraphing that they under-

stand this by, for example, saying that Mr

Biden probably ought to be receiving clas-

sified intelligence briefings after all.

Yet the equivocations now portend a

Republican Party that remains firmly un-

der the grips of post-truth Trumpism. This

may be a rational strategy in the short term

to ensure the president campaigns in the

coming, critical Senate run-offs in Georgia.

But it will probably last beyond that. Mr

Trump will relish his role as kingmaker

who anoints the winner of Republican

primary contests by tweet. The president

has reportedly also been talking of running

in 2024, which would effectively freeze the

next generation of Republicans in place.

Hyperpartisanship has wreaked havoc

on American politics, but at least most vot-

ers could agree that the other side won fair-

ly and squarely. That no longer appears to

be the case. According to our latest poll

from YouGov, 88% of those who voted for

Mr Trump think that the election result is

illegitimate.Therearealwayssomegripes

afterhotlycontestedraces.Butthescale

thistime—likeMrTrump’srefusaltoac-

knowledgetheresults—isbreathtaking.

During the much-closer election in

2000,where 537 votesinFloridaseparated

winnerfromloser,36%ofMrGore’svoters

thoughttheresultwasillegitimate.Simi-

larly,23%ofsupportersofHillaryClinton

feltfleecedafterherelectionlossin2016.

Perhapsastheweekswearon,andMrBi-

den inches closer to inauguration, the

numberofRepublicanswhoseehimasil-

legitimate will shrink. But Mr Trump

seemsunlikelytoeverconcede,andwould

ratherestablishthemythofhisstolenelec-

tionasa newlostcauseamonghissuppor-

ters.If thathappens,it wouldadda danger-

ousstraintoAmerica’sfactionalism—one

thatcannotbeeasilycontained. 7

T

he intercontinental ballisticmis-

sile (icbm) took off from Kwajalein Atoll

in the middle of the Pacific Ocean on No-

vember 17th. American satellites spotted

its bright plume at once. They alerted

Schriever Air Force Base in Colorado which

in turn informed the ussJohn Finn, an Ar-

leigh Burke-class destroyer poised north-

east of Hawaii. A hatch on the deck flipped

open and spewed out a torrent of flames as

ansm-3BlockIIainterceptorshotupand

out. High above the Earth, it collided with

the descending icbm.

It was the first time an interceptor fired

from a warship had shot down a (mock)

icbmin space. “Politically this test is a big

deal,” says James Acton of the Carnegie En-

dowment for International Peace, a think-

tank. Russia and China have always com-

plained that American missile defences

undermine their own deterrents. America

has always batted away those concerns.

When the sm-3 was developed, America

first said it would protect aircraft-carriers,

and later that it would shield Europe from

Iranian medium-range missiles. In fact,

only a software tweak was needed to make

it work against longer-range ones. Now

that the system has been demonstrated

against an icbm, both Russia and China

will claim vindication.

America already has a missile shield for

its homeland, comprising 44 ground-

based interceptors (gbis) in Alaska and

California. These were previously the only

ones to have shot down an icbm. Yet these

are staggeringly expensive, relatively few

in number and unreliable in tests. The

ship-based system, known as Aegis Ballis-

tic Missile Defense (bmd), has several ad-

vantages. It can be rolled out more quickly,

moved where needed and allows America

to field many more interceptors.

Currently, 44 destroyers and cruisers

are equipped with Aegis bmd. Each has 90-

plus launch tubes, so several thousand in-

terceptors could theoretically be put to sea

(in practice, the tubes also carry other

weapons, like Tomahawk cruise missiles).

The navy plans to fit Aegis to 65 ships, 11 of

which would be allocated for the protec-

tion of the continental United States. Just

three to four ships deployed off America’s

coast could cover its whole landmass,

notes George Lewis, a missile-defence ex-

pert who recently retired from Cornell Uni-

versity. The idea is that if gbis failed to take

out a missile, Aegis could mop it up at a

lower altitude—though sm-3 IIas can still

reach three times higher than the Interna-

tional Space Station.

In practice, notes Mr Acton, intercept-

ing an incoming icbmwould still be for-

biddingly difficult. They would travel a lon-

ger distance and therefore arrive at greater

speed than in the test, armed with counter-

measures to trick the interceptor and po-

tentially in sufficient numbers to over-

whelm defences. “sm-3 IIas can’t funda-

mentally undermine China’s or Russia’s

nuclear deterrents, or even frankly North

Korea’s,” he says. But that is not how those

countries are likely to see the matter.

Russia has long held that arms-control

talks ought to include not just offensive

systems, like bombers and missiles, but

also defensive ones which might neuter

them. It has been especially irked by land-

based Aegis systems built in Romania and

An American ship takes out an

icbm—and opens a can of worms

Missile defence

De profundis ad

astra

Something daring, incontinental