membership includes most of the moderate socialist andsocial democratic
parties in Europe and elsewhere, such as the BritishLabour Party.
Son of Star Wars
Son of Star Wars is a nickname which has been widely accepted for something
the USA originally called the National Missile Defence Programme, and now
simply calls the Missile Defence Programme (MDP). The name change
demonstrates part of the problem—the word ‘national’ indicated too clearly
the extent to which this amounted to a ‘go-it-alone’ policy on the part of the
USA, one of the principal causes of the intense international objections. The
MDP is called the Son of Star Wars because it is the second generation of an
attempt by the USA to put up an anti-ballistic missile shield. In scope it is far
more modest than President Reagan’s famous Star Wars programme (techni-
cally the Strategic Defence Initiative). Son of Star Wars proposes radar and
communication systems, some based in the United Kingdom and Greenland,
in combination with satellites in space, which would provide early warnings of
a nuclear attack. The first plan involved space-based interceptor systems, and it
was intended to protect the USA from a full-scale strategic attack by the Soviet
Union. The attempt by the USA to overcome international opposition to
MDP involves proposing a multi-national defence system covering the terri-
tory of countries wishing to take part. Inevitably, the larger the area to be
defended, the greater the technical challenge. The system is primarily being
designed to defend the USA from small-scale attacks by countries such as the
Democratic People’s Repbulic of Korea (North Korea), Iran, and so-called
‘rogue states’ elsewhere in the world. The technologies are still highly
imprecise, and several tests have already failed or been delayed. Russia’s initial
complete opposition to the amendment of the ruling 1972Anti-Ballistic
Missile (ABM) Treatymeant that the US policy would require an outright
breach of a treaty obligation and thus, a defiance of international law. However,
the treaty reducing strategic nuclear capability signed by the US and Russian
presidents in May 2002 was perceived to supersede the ABM Treaty.
Whether the plan is really plausible is difficult to say. Certainly any ‘rogue
state’ that launched an attack on the USA would effectively be committing
suicide, but strategic planners have long contemplated such a threat where a
country feels itself pushed to an extreme limit. In the past, Israel has been seen
as possibly capable of such action, but it is unclear how most countries,
however radically disenchanted by American world power, could be persuaded
to launch such a strike. The probability than any highly reliable scheme can be
developed, at least at a cost that even the USA can easily pay, must be remote.
Even under a distinctly right-wing administration, the USA was already
trimming its defence expenditure and redefining its strategic goals in 2001,
Son of Star Wars