The future of ballistic missile defence in Europe

We can say that there are three reasons that explain this proliferation :

 The technical one. The progress of technology is a natural evolution. There are technological discoveries in each sector, which are at first controlled by a single country or a small group of countries. Eventually, however, everybody gains control of the new technology even if there is non-proliferation regime ; the only way to forbid a weapon is to sign a ban treaty.
 The operational one. Today we see that the development of Short Range Ballistic Missiles (SRBM) and Medium Range Ballistic Missiles (MRBM) is a way for many countries to compensate for the weakness of their combat air fleet. Development of these weapons is cheaper and more effective, since we have only just begun to develop shields against ballistic missiles.
 The political one. It is obvious that a “real” proliferation exists when you have “the global scope” of proliferation of ballistic missiles, one linked with that of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In this case, the proliferator countries try to acquire technology to build Long Range Ballistic Missiles (LRBM), since they are looking for political deterrence capabilities on both regional and international levels. Today only North Korea and Iran, and perhaps Syria, have entered into this third classification of proliferation.

We can conclude that if there is a direct link between the two first causes of ballistic proliferation (technical and operational), the third cause, which is political and involves both ballistic and nuclear proliferation, is clearly de-coupled with the two other. The response to the political proliferation is a political one : it mixes initiatives for greater regional stability and re-affirmation of deterrence or extensive deterrence by the countries that possess nuclear weapons as defined by the NTP and disarmament initiatives.

In contrast, the response to the “technological and operational” proliferation is military, and requires ballistic missile defence against SRBM and MRBM.

In this sense, one must approve of Barack Obama’s decision to reshape the United States’ ballistic missile defence. First, as all the commentators have said, the new project is well-adapted to the existing threat and not to a hypothetical future one. Second, countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean now share a clear common idea of the threats and the ways to counter these threats. Now we can discuss the future of ballistic defence in Europe in a concrete way.
NATO, with its Active Layered Theatre Ballistic Missile Defence, is now the natural framework in which to define the architecture of a transatlantic ballistic missile defence against short range and medium range ballistic missiles. European countries and European industry can offer technologies and assets to build NATO’s capability. Two rules must govern this process.
First, a transatlantic ballistic missile defence system requires real burden and industrial sharing between The Unites States and European countries. This includes burden sharing for the costs, but also an industrial sharing of the assets contributed to the global systems.
Second, more and more weapons systems are linked together and require C2 integrated architecture. In addition, it is necessary that, at any time, the C2 architecture and the way in which we decide to engage the missile defence system is compatible with the security interests of all the NATO countries. We must scrutinise the possible link between offensive and defensive assets in the C2 architecture, the command chain and the level at which the North Atlantic Council will be involved in the decisions.
NATO is a 28-member organization that makes decisions on a basis of consensus. This makes some decisions difficult, and we may have to adjust this rule under the future NATO strategic concept in order to have more efficiency. But this consensus is the counterpart of another rule : the indivisibility of the alliance. If we interpret the rule of consensus decisions too liberally, we will see the weakening of shared links between the members and the loss of indivisibility. In this situation, we must avoid bilateral talks if possible on the question of ballistic missile, as was the case with the former American administration, and favour multilateral talks inside NATO.

At the technological and operational level, it is clear that the development of more and more integrated weapons systems leads to the question of the links between political and military decisions. Perhaps we need a general study on this question, dedicated not only to the question of ballistic missile defence but to more global concerns, a study that could be a job for ACT.