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Ask the Expert • Reading
List |
How viable is the Bush administration’s
proposed missile defense?
It is technologically daunting but probably doable to build a National
Missile Defense (NMD) system that can provide meaningful protection
against the kinds of missile threats that the North Koreas and Iraqs
of the world can generate for the foreseeable future. Enemies would
try to defeat the system (just as we would try to counter those efforts),
but in virtually every scenario, the system would protect more U.S.
cities than are protected now.
The principal value of NMD is that
it would help protect U.S. citizens in the unlikely but catastrophic
eventuality that deterrence against a rogue state fails—and it
would do so without markedly increasing the likelihood of an attack
against the U.S. in the first place. Critics of the program exaggerate
the ease with which rogue states could overcome a layered NMD system.
But the most optimistic backers of the program likewise minimize the
technological challenge of making the system at least minimally effective.
By all accounts, the system will be expensive. It will
seriously constrain other defense spending, impinge upon discretionary
spending on non-defense programs, and (unless the economy rebounds)
may even bump up against the tax cuts in the out years.
But one must at least consider the costs of doing nothing.
If a collapsing North Korea launches a Samson-option strike, would
we be glad that we didn’t “waste” money on an NMD system?
The government has a moral duty to take prudent steps to protect the
population from grave threats. On the other hand, if the NMD program
diverts resources and attention away from other likely threats, including
other threats involving weapons of mass destruction, then we may be
worse off. On balance, NMD only makes sense if it is part of a comprehensive
strategy for meeting global security needs.
Our NATO allies are likely to make the Bush administration
pay a heavy price in exchange for their support. On this issue, European
publics have not moved much from where they were at the height of
the Cold War—they still believe arms-control measures, however
weakly enforced, are the best way to address security threats. The
Russians and especially the Chinese will probably never truly support
it and the costs of getting their tacit acquiescence will be high.
The biggest problem is that these international political costs must
be paid up front while the security benefits are only realized in
the future.
NMD is not going to fundamentally change the arms-race
dynamic with the Chinese. The Chinese have already embarked on a massive
military modernization program aimed at challenging the United States’
position in Asia and nothing we do short of total capitulation and
retreat from the western Pacific is likely to stop it. The same critics
who claim that NMD would compel China to unleash an arms race to preserve
the Chinese deterrent also claim that NMD is not worth doing because
it is easily defeated with cheap, low-tech spoofing techniques that
even the North Koreans can master.
—Peter Feaver is an associate professor of political science
and an expert on American foreign policy and national security |
READING LIST
We asked several administrators to recommend a novel of campus
life.
Kingsley Amis’ Lucky Jim had the luck to get two
mentions. Steve Cohn, director of Duke University Press, says, “Although
it is about a campus in a place and time (the England of forty years
ago) quite removed from ours, I find it far wiser—and also far
funnier and far better written—than any novel about an American
campus that I know.” Dean of the Chapel Will Willimon adds, “Its
portrayal of the perils of being a young professor is unequaled....
I sometimes think that we academics, even we non-English ones, are
too easy prey for satirists.”
Sue Wasiolek ’76, M.H.A. ’78, LL.M. ’93
marked herself as a fan of the enduring but elusive J.D. Salinger,
and particularly of his short-fiction stories collected as Franny
and Zooey. “Although it focuses on the nervous breakdown of a
young woman in college, its real theme is to remind us that everyone
wants to belong and find purpose in life,” she says. “It
truly provides inspiration for me to focus on the simple things in
life and to recognize that I am part of something so much bigger than
myself.”
Kay Singer, associate dean of Trinity College and health
professions adviser, has a triple recommendation: Don DiLillo’s
White Noise (“My favorite passage is the description of a team-taught
seminar in which pop-culture-studies colleagues dissect the relationships
of Hitler and Elvis to their mothers); Francine Prose’s Blue
Angel (“political correctness, sexual harassment, punk students,
and boredom at a small New England college”); and Carl Djerassi’s
Cantor’s Dilemma (“scientific mentoring, intellectual property,
ethics, honesty, and trust”).
University Librarian David Ferriero singles out Michael
Malone’s new novel, First Lady, being released in the fall. The
plot, as he describes it, centers on “a serial killer in the
environs of Haver University, a large private university in North
Carolina’s Piedmont.” Ferriero is drawn to Malone’s
knack for creating “a ‘village’ of interrelationships
both touching and humorous”—not to mention “the Duke
setting in disguise and Inez Boodle, the hot barbecue sauce heiress.”
Favorites for the editor of this magazine include Richard
Russo’s Straight Man, whose main character, the chairman of a
small-college English department, comments about himself and his fellow
faculty: “Anyone who observed us would conclude the purpose of
all academic discussion was to provide the grounds for becoming further
entrenched in our original positions.” He also recommends Philip
Roth’s The Human Stain, in which the Big Issues—the Vietnam
War, the Clinton impeachment, identity politics—impinge in unexpected
ways on individual academic ambitions. |
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