National Missile Defence and the politics of US identity: A poststructural critique 9781847792075

Table of contents :
Front matter
Contents
Preface
Introduction: national missile defence (NMD) and IR
Michel Foucault and NMD
Revisiting missile defence
NMD: issues and debates
NMD and foreign policy discourse
NMD and ‘regimes of truth’
NMD and the ‘everyday’
Reflections on NMD and identity
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

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National missile defence and the politics of US identity

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National missile defence and the politics of US identity A poststructural critique

NATALIE BORMANN

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan

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Copyright © Natalie Bormann 2008 The right of Natalie Bormann to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Oxford Road, Manchester M13 9NR, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed exclusively in the USA by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed exclusively in Canada by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN

978 0 7190 7470 7 hardback

First published 2008 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Typeset in 10.5/12.5pt Sabon by Graphicraft Limited, Hong Kong Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

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Contents

Preface Introduction: national missile defence (NMD) and IR

page vii 1

1

Michel Foucault and NMD

13

2

Revisiting missile defence

33

3

NMD: issues and debates

58

4

NMD and foreign policy discourse

77

5

NMD and ‘regimes of truth’

100

6

NMD and the ‘everyday’

112

7

Reflections on NMD and identity

132

Bibliography Index

145 171

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Preface

Why adopt a poststructural lens for the reading of the military strategy of national missile defence (NMD)? No doubt, when contemplating an attack on US territory by intercontinental ballistic missiles, consulting Michel Foucault – and critical international relations theory scholars who draw on Foucault – may not seem the obvious route to take. The answer to this lies in another question: Why choose to deploy an enormously costly, technologically unfeasible (to date), and politically controversial defence project in response to a, much questioned, missile threat? The latest, 2006, Quadrennial Defense Review (a strategic planning pamphlet by the Department of Defense) calls for a 20 per cent increase in funding for the current NMD plan – to 10.4 billion dollars in 2007 – despite the lack of any discernible progress in developing a viable system. Most of us would agree that this does appear equally ambiguous. The conventional arguments for NMD, as will be illustrated in the following chapters, do not ‘add up’. Therefore, the path to understanding the workings behind, and of, missile defence must necessarily take us to unexpected places and beyond conventional inquiry, and this requires unconventional tools for analysis. However, this book is not about theory (neither is it exclusively about Foucault). But it is about positing the validity of an alternative interpretation of the current missile defence project. This book is also not a reformist work as such, insofar as it is neither interested in proposing a more workable or ‘better’ explanation of missile defence, nor in pondering the merits of the defence project per se. But this book is concerned with the terms by which the weapons system circulates in our imagination of security, and in the representations and discourses that dominate the foreign and security debate. It begins with, and indeed is grounded in, the desire to understand a conundrum: why has there been so much interest and continuous investment in NMD deployment when, as will be shown, there is such ambiguity surrounding the status of threat it responds to, controversy over its technological feasibility

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and concern about its cost? Posed in this manner, the question cannot be answered on its own terms – the terms given in most official accounts of NMD that justify the system’s significance on the basis of strategic feasibility studies and conventional threat predictions guided by worst-case scenarios. Instead, in this book I argue that the preferences leading to NMD deployment must be understood as satisfying requirements beyond strategic approaches and issues. Crudely put, the significance of NMD lies elsewhere. In turning towards the interpretative modes of inquiry provided to us by critical social theory and poststructuralism, this book contests the conventional wisdom of, and about, NMD and suggests reading the strategy in terms of US identity. The impetus for doing so derives from the following insight: the articulation of foreign policy threats to national security is a practice that functions to enable and make possible a range of specific identities. It must be clear that no interpretation and representation of an outside threat exists independently of those to whom, on the inside, something/ someone becomes threatening. In this view, the strategy of missile defence, I argue, is constitutive of a mechanism, a ritual, by which knowledge about a ‘threatening other’ is disciplined and affixed. Presented as an analysis of discourses on threats to national security, around which the need for NMD deployment is predominantly framed, this book is an effort to let the two fields of critical international relations theory and US foreign policy address each other directly. It seeks to do so by showing how the concept of identity can be harnessed to an analysis of a contemporary military-strategic practice. This book thus re-works the dominant viewpoints that surround NMD and breaks with the prevailing assumptions of, and taken-for-granted motivations behind, US foreign and security policy: Instead of accepting or denying the validity of a missile threat, the writings here want to trace how the particular articulation of a threatening other with particular ‘foreign’ qualities, as exemplified by the notion of ‘rogue missile states’, has informed and sustained notions of a missile threat to the US. And in place of the more usual deliberations on the system’s technical feasibility and costs, this book seeks to trace the practices and inscriptions that give possibility to NMD’s claims of an ‘appropriate’ and legitimate response to the anticipated threat while excluding other, equally possible, responses. The politics of identity, I argue, is central to a re-reading of NMD as a particular US foreign policy preference. The premise of this book is therefore twofold: first, to uncover the dominant narratives of NMD – the stories told about missiles and those who are said to deploy them – that have traditionally been presented to us as seamless and common-sensical in strategic terms; second, to

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provide an alternative, and arguably more inclusive, mode of interpretation of a strategy that is deeply embedded in social constructions and performances of identity. Taking these points together, what this book therefore offers is an attempt to articulate an understanding of that which makes these policies of NMD possible to begin with. Central to this is the argument that any inquiry into the strategy of missile defence must necessarily begin with the question of its condition of possibility. Such an understanding will, in turn, contribute to our insights into the assumptions and constitutive effects of the terms of US security overall: The complexities of identity politics in the forging of the current defence strategy certainly translate, and are emblematic of, dominant strategic preferences. In other words, the ways in which missile defence becomes a possible strategic preference, while it forecloses others, resonates a practice that pervades contemporary US foreign and security policy overall. Some acknowledgements are in order. Since this book is a revised PhD thesis, I am indebted to my former supervisor David Campbell whose intellectual influence was essential in the direction I have taken in the writings here and elsewhere. This book most definitely bears witness to a one-year visiting appointment at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, US, and I would like to thank especially James Der Derian, alongside with former Director Thomas Biersteker and other ‘Watsonites’, for supporting my stay and thereby aiding the development of this book. I owe a number of key refinements and arguments to an anonymous reviewer, who has been identified as Marc Lacy. Finally, thanks to numerous friends and colleagues for reading the entire manuscript (in most cases not voluntarily), engaging in ongoing conversations and helping in sharpening my thinking.

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Introduction: national missile defence (NMD) and IR

In October 2004, the US began deploying first units of a national missile defence system – the single most expensive US weapons program, designed to protect US territory against attack by intercontinental ballistic missiles.1 While the self-imposed deadline for fielding the completed system has come and gone over the last few years, the Department of Defense, under the auspices of the current administration of President George W. Bush, left no doubt as to its commitment to implementing the defence strategy. During the 2000 Presidential election, George W. Bush signalled, ‘America must build effective missile defences, based on the best available options, at the earliest possible date’ (Bush quoted in Kettle 2000). The yearly spending on missile defence is but one indicator that the defence project has become one of the central features of the current US security outlook. This being so, spending has amounted to about $9 billion per year, with the prospect of doubling this amount to about $19 billion per year by 2013.2 In spite of this evident commitment, some of us might still question the ‘urgency’ of making missile defence the topic of yet another book. After all, the idea of devising such a defence system is by far not new. In fact, efforts to do so have come and gone as a strategic imperative many times since World War Two, the most prominent example being former President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ initiative (more in Chapter 2). However, with the end of the Cold War the missile defence idea has – and some say curiously so – gained momentum: A series of milestones have been firmly laid towards deployment, the most significant of which was the National Missile Defense (NMD) Act of 1999. Introduced by the Clinton Administration at the time, the act uniquely established in law the policies of deploying a missile defence system for the United States and ‘as soon as technologically feasible’ (NMD Act 1999). This was followed by a robust timeline for implementing parts of the defence system, commissioned under Clinton’s predecessor, President George W. Bush, and as we could witness in the placement of interceptor missiles in Alaska (and California). And most controversially,

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we saw the US withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002, which finally paved the way for unrestricted testing and deployment on the missile defence front. Besides pointing to the evidence towards implementation, the call for debating missile defence also alludes to another, often blithely made, point: Augmenting the military capacities already available to the US with NMD has led to a defence budget that is already high by historical standards.3 In addition to the costs, the system’s structure has been compared in its level of sophistication to the Manhattan project and in its technological challenge to the efforts of placing a man on the moon. All in all, perhaps no other military system since the last half of the twentieth century has been more contentious in provoking argument over its feasibility, costs and global repercussions (as will be discussed in Chapter 3). To be sure, when confronted with the question ‘why missile defence?’ one could draw on many reasons and explanations (and I will speak to these in more detail in the upcoming chapters). Most certainly there would be mention of a gigantic military and industrial complex, its influence and historically notorious role in shaping US foreign policy.4 In the same breath, one would probably mention the political landscapes and bureaucratic proclivities of our – past and present – times (e.g., a Republican White House), the role of ideology in the shaping of security strategies (e.g., military supremacy), the influence of personalities (e.g., George W. Bush and the primacy of a ‘war president’), and certainly the overall marshalling of military instalments following September 11, 2001, from which the support for NMD could be easily deduced. The validity of these explanations is by now means disputed here; in fact, the aim is not to replace any of them or ‘explain them away’ as a mere discursive imagination. Of course, these traditional reasons may have an impact on certain security practices like missile defence (as much as they may provide some insight to these practices). However, and my intention is to show this, these representations of a certain kind of security milieu must not be assumed to be identical with these practices (or, to reflect ‘reality’).5 For example, and in a nutshell, for the most part the need for this post-Cold War military build-up is justified on the grounds of uncontrollable missile proliferation in the hands of so-called ‘rogue-states’ – or, as recently referred to as an ‘axis of evil’ – comprising in particular Iraq, Iran and North Korea as potentially hostile states to the US. Yet, none of these states currently possess the ability to reach the US with a ballistic missile from their own territory, nor have they expressed the willingness to do so.6 When one considers the possibility of diplomatic efforts, which have in the past successfully halted any further missile proliferation at the testing and development stage (albeit, admittedly, one can speak of a ‘rocky’ road to diplomacy),

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then one thing becomes clear: Neither the claimed threat to the US nor the superiority of a militarised security strategy over a diplomatic one is beyond question. Notwithstanding these challenges, most contributions have pushed the above concerns to the margins and have instead framed the debate predominantly through the technological aspects of a military strategy designed to protect US national security. Overall, the debate has been limited to arguments pertaining to the need for a missile defence system, or lack thereof, and dominated by a delineation of the system’s feasibility and costs, whilst addressing the question of international ramifications for global missile proliferation only speculatively. The question ‘are ballistic missile defences feasible?’ summarises one of the central concerns with respect to judging the project’s legitimacy and purpose amongst policy makers and scholars alike (Miller and Van Evera 1986). At their most challenging, discussions touch on the issue of counter-, or non-proliferation, arms control and global stability. At their most basic and common, however, debates focus on budgets, feasibility studies, weapon technologies and international repercussions at the interstate level. All in all, these terms of debate do not alone sufficiently explain the recent push for NMD, nor do they determine how NMD has been prioritised over possible alternative strategies. The question then remains how we ought to make sense of NMD. I argue that, whilst much has been said about the empirical vindication of its technical and strategic aspects, very little attention has been paid to the underlying assumptions, performances, and constitutive effects that make possible the articulation of NMD as a meaningful strategy to begin with. I want to address this shortcoming by postulating a specific kind of intervention: One that uncovers the ‘identity effects’ of NMD.7 This is not an exercise of simply exchanging the existing scientific explanations for socio-political ones. Instead analysing NMD in terms of identity is a means of showing that the defence strategy, though understood as scientific and military in nature, is also profoundly enmeshed in social constructions and identity performances. Central to this is the claim that security is an integral part of articulations of identity, whereby security is taken to mean that the borders, which it constitutes, are also the point from which identity is constituted. In other words, identity does not exist a priori to the boundaries that need to be secured but is a consequence of this constitution (or securing) as much as it makes possible the notion of ‘what and against whom’ to secure.8 Taking identity seriously It appears that questions of identity9 are becoming increasingly central to the overall study of international relations (IR).10 However, this is

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not necessarily true for all currents of the discipline; most orthodox theories (by which I mean essentially realism, liberalism and their ‘neo’ variants) tend to pay little attention to the questions surrounding identity and take identity as pre-given and fixed. Viewed from this perspective, identity is seen as ‘unproblematic’ and is relegated to the back seat regarding its analytical value for the foreign policy and security realm. This is so precisely because identity (and here I mean national identity in particular) is, more often than not, seen as already constituted and well bounded – in the form of the state. Most conventional literature on the state presupposes that the collective identity of its people (hence, the nation) is given by sanctity of ‘being-in the state’ and is deduced from assumptions of a shared bounded space. Put in those orthodox terms, identity as a concept is merely a fixed determinant on which state interests rest and from which its actions can be legitimately construed.11 The tendency to downplay the significance of identity along these lines, in short, has deep roots: The realist tradition assumes that all units in global politics have only one meaningful identity – that of self-interested states. Examples include John Herz (1951) who codified the notion of (a state’s) identity as exogenous, mostly conveyed as an externallyproduced interest, and determined deductively from the assumption of the anarchic, self-helped system within which states interact. Given the underlying assumption of anarchy and coupled with the believe that states strive at least for survival and at most for dominance, Kenneth Waltz’s (1979) Theory of International Politics describes a structural relationship among states, whereby a state’s interest is primarily driven and regulated by the distribution of material capabilities among states. It is these systemic capabilities (economic, military and political power) that determine if states will survive and if they can compete and dominate in a system of potential and actual threats to the inside order of the state. Subsequently, identity is equated to a fixed national interest that defines the security and survival of a state. Whilst these traditional authors (Waltz et al.) have refined their arguments over time to take account of multiple factors shaping interests, such as economic issues or political pressures (see their neo-variants), there is still a great tendency to deal with interest and identity as though one were dealing with stable determinants rather than with the enormous complexity of ideas, facts and beliefs (Heuser 2000). What escapes this analysis are interpretative processes. Further, even some constructivists12 – while refashioning the realist assumption of a priori interests and fixed identities by proposing that identities are socially constructed, and hence, vary according to social, political, and historical contexts13 – tend to assume that a (state’s)

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identity must first be in place before any political interest can be expressed and political action can be taken.14 This certainly offers a more inclusive understanding of the preferences leading to particular policy choices (as most eloquently captured by the Wendtian notion of ‘anarchy is what states make of it’),15 but it also diminishes identity to its effects and mostly excludes the possibility of providing an adequate account of the processes that expose how identity is in fact constructed and how it performs. Critical social theory and poststructural approaches16 come closest to articulating the complexity of the concept of identity as understood here, in that they not only specify further the performativity of identity but also provide an ontological challenge to the assumptions of identity in its origin.17 In contrast to the realist conception, I contend that identity – while an inescapable condition of being – is neither simply (and already) ‘out there’ nor permanently fixed. The same can be said about its national variant; as opposed to some constructivists’ belief, and as centred mostly on Alexander Wendt’s understanding, that a state’s identity is formed through the process of interstate action, I maintain that national identity emerges – rather than being given – out of a process of representation. Much of this is based on Benedict Anderson’s (1991) effectively phrased notion of the nation as an ‘imagined community’, which exists only through the way it is represented as such within the boundaries of the state. This representation involves, though is not limited to, the use of dichotomised systems of references: Images of the ‘outside’ give meaning to the ‘inside’, the domains of the domestic are constituted through the ones of the foreign, the self through the other, and identity through difference.18 Thus, national identity, although recognised as the underlying dimensions of the meaning of the state, does not exist prior to it, but finds its representation outside the state boundaries. With poststructualists, then, I agree on the next step of analysis: to illustrate how the textual and social practices are connected and to describe the implications of this connection for the way we think and act. There are many spheres in which this illustration can be exposed; one essential discourse is established in the practice of foreign policy and which constitutes a certain structure of knowledge, or axis of references (Foucault 1972), to legitimise security action. Foreign policy and national identity Why ‘identity and foreign policy’? The realist narrative that continues to govern much of our outlook on security debates, sees foreign policy

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as converging around a ‘state’s efforts to ward off threats from abroad and procure the wherewithal from the global community necessary to the realisation of goals’ (Rosenau 1987, 1). Most traditional scholarship has been content with seeing foreign policy explained as a state-centred phenomenon in which there is an internally recognised and articulated response to an externally formed military or economic threat. It follows, then, that conventional approaches to foreign policy are generally concerned with explaining why particular decisions, resulting in specific courses of action, were made. This is done to show that a certain policy decision was predictable and calculable given a particular set of circumstances. The outcome is an attempt to identify those circumstances so as to predict certain events with as much probability as possible (Little 1991). As Gustavsson (1999, 75) puts it, foreign policy can be understood as a ‘set of goals, directives or intentions, formulated by persons in official or authoritative positions, directed at some actor or condition in the environment beyond the sovereign nation state, for the purpose of affecting the target in the manner desired by the policy-makers’. Contrary to this, I argue here that foreign policy cannot, and must not, be seen as a result of a pre-given understanding of an outside existing threat; making such predictions ignores the fact that the identified foreign policy events or problems are always performative (political) acts – not facts.19 In other words, the question must not by one that pertains to ‘why’ but rather ‘how’. In this book, I side with those who pursue a theorisation of foreign policy as a political practice, and here, one that is informed by identity – and vice versa – in the following two ways: first, by emphasising that identity must be understood as a representational practice through which certain articulations of foreign policies are made possible to begin with (read: performances of self and other), and second, by determining how that which is represented through certain policies (read: the missile threat as other) simultaneously re-assures the identity at stake (read: defender as self). Understood in such a way, the practice of foreign policy needs to be seen as an elementary part of the identity/state nexus, since it articulates what is viewed as threatening to national security – without which the meaning of an identity of the community inside cannot be articulated. In its most obvious terms, foreign policy can be viewed as a practice that inscribes what is foreign, a process that determines something as foreign and, thus, different from the domestic. This practice of narrating the foreign is articulated through stories told about an event that inherits a particular idea about the other.20 Examples abound and constitute narratives about the East, the Orient, Communism in its codification as an ‘evil empire’ and most recently the foreignness of rogue

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states, the axis of evil and religious fanatics. What it sustains leads subsequently to a system of security aimed at containing these narrated stories, for they provide the positive identity of the West, the familiar, democracy and Christianity. Portraying foreign policy as an identityproducing practice means recognising it as a political performance as opposed to simply a response mechanism to an assumed outside threat. It is political in the ways in which the writing of foreign policy, and the representation of identity it entails, is a process of recreating certain, dominant knowledge: Knowledge about the events and places that become a foreign policy concern – and those that clearly do not. Seeing identity as political through its relationship to foreign policy has implications for the security framework that institutionalises the articulation of a foreign policy threat. The particular story about threat accordingly legitimises a certain type of security, whilst rejecting other means as less effective and not acceptable against that particular other (Turnbull 1996). Applied to the strategy of defence, NMD is intrinsically linked to certain knowledge claims made about the uncertain nature of a threat and its hostile actors (as will be discussed in Chapter 4). As to the question of ‘why identity’, then, the answer is simple: Foreign policy can be seen as an action intrinsic to a state’s national identity, for it enables the state to identify threats to its existence and defend its boundaries against an outside other.21 This being so, foreign policy is not understood here as a kind of external orientation of an existant identity, but rather as a practice that reproduces boundaries which cannot be separated from the production and reproduction of a particular US identity (Campbell 1993b). Chapter outline In the chapters that follow, I sketch a different response to NMD; one that invokes its discursive practices and places them vis-à-vis the logic of identity. Some thoughts as to what this entails are in order: First, I provide an overview of the predominant arguments (the ‘facts’) of the US missile defence plan. This includes both the claims about the nature of threat that is said to be the reason for the interest in such a system and the claims of the specific scientific-technological attributes of missile defence itself that are said to be essential for meeting that threat. The former claim is articulated in its perception of a particular change in threat to US national security. Now, so the arguments go, rogue states and hostile regimes have become key adversaries and display characteristics that demand a new security structure. Such perception is linked to the latter notion of technology, in which the

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scientific sophistication of missile defence is said to adequately protect against worldwide, uncontrollable missile technology and its acquisition by unpredictable actors on the global stage. The documents that reveal the notions of threat and demand protective technologies and that provides the basis for further analysis, are official reports, such as the Rumsfeld Report of 1998, The National Intelligence Estimates, the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 and Clinton’s Bottom-Up Review. Additionally, documents published by the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO, now the Missile Defense Agency (MDA)) are used. Furthermore, the controversies surrounding NMD are highlighted with regard to its ramifications for international diplomacy, arms control and related strategic concerns such as, for instance, the ‘weaponisation of space’ as a burgeoning worry. Second, I take steps to juxtapose these arguments and expose the conundrum of NMD by drawing on alternative views on the threat to US security. This involves looking at both the states that have been labelled as a rogue states threat and the missile technology that is said to be the means of delivering that threat. It is not to argue that missiles may not pose a risk, but rather an attempt to render the interpretation of threat with regard to missile technologies ambiguous, to prepare for an analysis aimed at questioning the ways in which some discourses have become more powerful and ‘real’ than others, and to investigate how they have been prioritised. To do so shifts the missile defence focus from its traditional concept as a response mechanism to ‘facts out there’ to seeing this security strategy as an integral part of the process that gives meaning to the need for response to a perceived threat (and therewith moving from a focus on the subject to one on subjectivity). The attention, thus, is on the various discursive representations that have contributed to rendering missile defence meaningful. Consideration of the discursive construction of threat in the security realm is led by the assumption that nothing in the entire strategic intelligence assessment, even those statements concerning the military capabilities, is non-discursive.22 It is here, and third, that the concept of identity comes into play and as a concept that is constitutive of these discursive representations. The complexity of identity is key in this: Not only does the logic of identity (the interplay of self and other) inform foreign policy discourses and provide a map for negotiating threats, but it does, in turn, re-affirm the identity in whose name it speaks and, thus, always winds up in the prevalent modes of thinking about self and other. I argue that NMD must be seen as a category, a trope, of constructed knowledge (and here I draw on Foucault) about US self and threatening other. Seen from this perspective, two questions naturally

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guide the subsequent chapters; the one that asks for the ways in which identity is at play in the forging of US foreign policy and the one that asks for its condition of possibility. Thus, the places ‘where’ we can map identity is at the heart of my analysis here. For instance, this book shows that the NMD debate signifies a particular identity-producing discourse in terms of missile technology, its experts and its produced knowledge about what is considered as threatening in the proliferation context. Technological sophistication can be used to make distinctions between those who possess a certain scientific standard and those who do not; those who use it defensively and those who do so offensively. It is a way of mapping the world and making sense of its actors in terms of technological capabilities. Coined as ‘technostrategic discourse’, it is also a way of making sense of the strategy itself – to make it strategic and to remove it from other, perhaps more contested, spheres. Yet, the performativity of identity permeates all spheres of society and another way of revealing the identity producing practice of NMD is by investigating how it connects to the ‘everyday’. This means to suggest that the logic of identity, the depiction of self and other in the security imagery, can be expressed through experiences and articulation in popular culture, film, fiction or sports. I begin by sketching briefly how the poststructural approach presents a useful ontological and epistemological engagement with identity, the way we think of ourselves and others in the world, and how and where we have come to understand the self in relation to the other. This, and the Foucauldian lead adopted in this book, is outlined in Chapter 1. Chapter 2 gives an account of what missile defence is by showing how the system is located within overall US thinking of security. Embedded in a deterrence/defence framework, it will become clear that much of the ambivalence in the debates over the need for missile defence can be pinned down to the tensions about whether ‘deterrence may still hold’ against the US view of a new type of ‘rogue’ threat. Having placed missile defence in a historical context, Chapter 3 casts a critical eye at predominant issues in the contemporary missile defence debate and highlights the tensions around costs, feasibility, and most of all, the question of arms control and non-proliferation. My aim is here to stage a confrontation between the ‘logic’ of NMD and its incongruities, before Chapter 4 revisits the key arguments in favour of NMD and reexamines the (enduring) assumptions about the character of threat and security. Chapter 5 and 6 offer an alternative reading of NMD by pulling together the links between foreign policy discourse and identity. Two crucial arguments are made here, the first concerning the interpretation of NMD as a Foucauldian regime of truth, the second examining NMD’s

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condition of possibility as informed by practices of the ‘everyday’. The final Chapter 7 offers as much a summary conclusion as an outlook on future NMD practices. While I do not attempt to indulge in speculations about what the future for NMD holds, it is certainly possible to dispatch some, cautionary, suggestions about the analytical approaches to emerging strategies closely related to NMD. Notes 1

2 3 4

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Reference is being made to the deployment of interceptor missiles in Ft. Greely, Alaska. Six of such interceptors were placed in October 2004; a further one was emplaced in Alaska a year later. Two further interceptors are stationed at the Vandenberg Air Force Base in California (Missile Defense Agency 2005). Interceptor missiles are tasked with colliding with and thus destroying incoming, enemy missiles. The 2006 Budget reached $9.5 billion. See Samson (2006b) for a view on budget requests. To date, the US has spent over $100 billion for a variety of missile defence systems since its earliest conception (Council for a Livable World 2002). The enormous defence contracts awarded over the course of the last years certainly speak for this argument; as Jeremy Springer (2005) writes poignantly, ‘defence and aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., is trying to drum up US government interest in a system that would defend American territory against missiles launched from ships lurking offshore’. Michael Williams (1999) speaks in more detail about the common (mis)conception that realism must equal reality. While he concedes that realist theory, as any theory, may provide us with insights to certain practices, it must not be confused with being identical with these practices. In this sense, critical theories that challenge the realist perspective do by no means deny the realist parameters; rather, they seek an approach to certain practices that is conceived as broader than the one provided when remaining within the realist confines (e.g., by including a more fluid and critical engagement with the concept of identity, as done in the writings here). At the time of writing, North Korea is testing a long-range missile that is said to eventually have the capability of reaching the US mainland. However, this does not weaken the efforts of telling a different story about NMD as envisioned here: NMD is not just a response to ‘one’ reality ‘out there’ – as most traditional theories would have it – but the prioritisation of NMD above other strategies is based on a set of intersubjective processes (depicting one interpretation of reality). We are of course also reminded of the issue of WMDs in Iraq – or lack thereof. Consulting identity when contemplating a military ‘issue’ has been done elsewhere; Jutta Weldes (1999a), for example, has very successfully exposed

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how the Cuban Missile Crisis has come to be understood as a foreign policy crisis to the US based on her reading of the practices of US self and Soviet other. As David Campbell (1998a, 199) argues, ‘just as foreign policy works to constitute the identity in whose name it operates, security functions to instantiate the subjectivity it purports to serve’. Identity is understood here as a product of the relation between self and other. Belonging to a broad Western political tradition, Carl Schmitt (1963) acknowledged the concept of identity in order to eulogise the practice of sovereign power: in distinguishing between us and them, he argued, the state as an entity comes to define itself by delineating the world into the categories of Feinde and Freunde (enemies and friends). On the basis of this distinction, the sovereign state would formulate its actions against, or with, the other. In a different context, Jean-Paul Sartre’s (1957) spoke of identity as existential in its role for the condition of the self, whereby the concept of an other is the condition of possibility for the self to recognise its meaning and, therefore, come into being. And finally, Julia Kristeva (1991) goes as far as to propose that if there were no other, the self could not be distinguished. See Marysia Zalewski and Cynthia Enloe (1995), Richard Ashley and Rob Walker (1990), Jens Bartelson (1995), Judith Butler and Joan Scott (1992), William Connolly (1991), James Der Derian (1987), Iver Neuman (1999), Michael Shapiro (1989) and Alexander Wendt (1992); see also David Campbell (1998a, 1998b), Roxanne Doty (1993), Hugh Gusterson (1996), Peter Katzenstein (1996), Bradley Klein (1998), Yosef Lapid and Friedrich Kratochwil (1996), Michael Shapiro (1987), Ole Waever et al. (1993), Cynthia Weber (1994) and Jutta Weldes (1999a). See Waltz (1979), Wight (1978). Needless to say, constructivists make up a large family, and there have been many attempts to categorise the rather diverse developments within constructivism, such as the distinction between soft and hard, systemic and holistic, modern and postmodern (see Palan 2000; Price and Reus-Smit 1998). While keeping in mind that, ‘no single account of the constructivist research program is likely to satisfy all constructivists’ (Farrell 2002, 15), I personally find that Ted Hopf’s (1998) distinction between conventional and critical constructivists deserves attention. This quote by Alex Wendt poignantly summarises the constructivist understanding that state identities are not solely responding to the international system structure (e.g., anarchy), but also to the collective meaning that this structure, other actors or objects have for them (Wendt 1992, 395). See also Thomas Biersteker and Cynthia Weber (1996), Iver Neumann (1996) and Elizabeth Kier (1997). See Judith Butler (1999) on the insights of the theorisation of the subject. Some of these constructivist contributions include Audie Klotz (1995), Alex Wendt (1992), Peter Katzenstein (1996) and Erik Ringmar (1996).

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16 The term poststructuralism has become associated with a variety of approaches, mostly derivative of contributions by Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault. 17 With regard to making the ontological dimension of identity more palpable, Campbell’s (1998a, 9–10) use of Judith Butler’s concept of the gendered body strikes one as very useful at this point. Butler proposes that our gendered identity into the categories of male/female is not a pre-given dimension of the body but is instead discursively constructed for the purposes of disciplining sexuality. Similarly, the territorial state (analogously to the bodily sphere) has no existence or meaning as an entity in itself but gains its meaning through a series of discursive acts for the purpose of establishing institutions and procedures that render its actions as legitimate. Whereas the body serves as an agency onto which the discourse on gender can be placed, the bounded territory of the state serves to locate the meaning of state action. The opposition between male and female further reproduces and contains the gendered body, in the same way as the difference between what is inside the state and what is outside re-invents the meaning of the state. In drawing this analogy, Campbell (1998a) concludes that the performative constitution of gender and the body fittingly amplifies the performative constitution of the state; both body and the state have no ontological status apart from the acts, which constitutes their reality. 18 I rely heavily on William Connolly’s (1991, 9) assertion of identity and difference whereby ‘the definition of difference is a requirement built into the logic of identity’. 19 Much of this goes back to Doty’s (1993) seminal work about foreign policy as a social construction. The author notes, what foreign policy is need not (in fact, must not) be limited either to the actual making of specific decisions or to the analysis of events. 20 Arguments along these lines have been fashioned in particular by Shapiro (1988) and Campbell (1998a). 21 As Campbell (1998a) poignantly asserts, the constant articulation of danger through foreign policy is not a threat to a state’s identity or existence, but is its condition of possibility. 22 As Bradley Klein (1994, 116) aptly points out, ‘nothing speaks for itself, not even a missile silo’.

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When proposing to analyse the discursive articulations of foreign policy threats, two notions stand out as significant. First, discursive practices are constitutive of that which determines the meaning of foreign policy phenomena to begin with. These practices are sites, or platforms, where the politics of identity performs in its reconstruction of boundaries – along the lines of foreign and domestic, inside and outside, self and other. Second, the foreign policy/identity interrelationship is embedded in a system of knowledge about the other as well as in the formation of rules of how to respond to the other. It is here that NMD as a military strategy is rendered as one acceptable means to protect the US against a certain, identified other. Following this, and taking both points together, forms the key assumption in this book: The threats to US security are neither objective nor obvious, so that – and this should be clear – the plans for missile defence can be understood as having meaning for the US beyond the conventional strategic explanations. This argument pursues some themes suggested by the works of Michel Foucault, and in the following I want to be explicit regarding my journey from NMD, to discourse and identity, and back. It is fair to say that Foucault has increasingly been invoked in analyses on security discourses in which his work is used to invite us to think about the connection between the constitution of identities and certain (disciplinary) practices.1 Through his exploration of medical, psychiatric and punitive strategies, Foucault questions how discourses of a certain trope establish the confines in which the subject, the self, is constructed and operates.2 While the construction of the self encompasses an array of practices, the main idea, in short, is this: representations that give meaning to the self are to be found outside the self; the notion of ‘normality’, for instance, becomes meaningful through that which it is not – ‘abnormality’. In other words, the boundaries drawn around ‘abnormal’ behaviour are also the ones from which the meaning of ‘normality’ is deduced. Some of these binary oppositions are not only

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distinct from each other, but are always subject to a certain hierarchical order (Derrida 1978). One term of the dichotomy is always considered as the negative and undesirable version of the first one, which leaves the other term as privileged and positive. In this sense, the articulation of the other as mad, for instance, is not only required to come to understand the self as normal, but it furthermore manifests a hierarchical and undesirable meaning of otherness upon which policies of implementation are formulated, legitimised and institutionalised (the disciplining part). In other words, the other as mad is excluded, contained and affixed through medical institutions, laws and rules, which simultaneously protects and fixes the normality of the self (Connolly 1991). Thus, fixing an account of madness involves constructing knowledge into categories of normality and deviance (e.g., through medical practices). Foucault’s insight invites the opening of a reading of discourse activities along the following lines: In its most basic assumption, the ‘rogue’ state discourse derives from a similar notion of boundary-producing practice. The ‘rogue’ image gives meaning to the ‘orderly’ one, the ‘evil’ state to the ‘benign community’, and vice versa. Leaping from this categorised schema of the world, it is not so hard to imagine how disciplinary interventions and military-strategic mechanisms are enabled and appear well suited; the rogue state stands for the undeveloped, irrational and backward other whose essence demands an ‘appropriate’ military action. While, in turn, military practices and rituals constitute a practice that accumulates and reproduces categories of meaning of ‘a security concern’, which the military strategy then purports to counter. Assuming this boundary-inscribing process as a means of creating meaning in negative and exclusionary terms, makes identity a very complex political practice which exhibits a certain system of dominance, or a process, through which some statements have come to occupy the positive part of the binary opposition, leaving other statements to be forever more excluded as negative associations. There is a shift, then, from the focus on statements and representations to what in fact makes them possible. In Foucault’s terms, the knowledge about self and other is inexorably related to power in that it mobilises procedures and rules to assert particular boundaries through the construction of knowledge about the other.3 As the author argues, ‘it is a question of what governs statements, and the way in which they govern each other so as to constitute a set of propositions which are scientifically acceptable, and hence capable of being verified or falsified by scientific procedures’ (Foucault 1980, 112). In his analysis of criminality and the prison (Foucault 1979), he proposes that certain (institutionalised) practices of discipline come prior to the essence of the ‘criminal’ as a meaningful

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category. The prison (as the epitomised ‘place’ of discipline) is a site that accumulates knowledge about criminality while similarly reinstating that knowledge through its disciplining actions. Foucault shows that a set of discursive practices produces subjects (the ‘normal’), as opposed to treating them as though they existed prior to that discourse. Hence, what is important about discursive practice and its meaninggiving of the subject is this: Foucault’s account of the enabling condition of the self – that which makes possible a range of specific social identities – begins, at least for this book, with an abandonment on the focus on one particular agency, actor or unit in favour of a look towards processes and performances.4 It is not the sovereign subject (e.g., the self) or the object (e.g., the other) that ought to be scrutinised exclusively, but rather the historical and linguistic practices in which both subjects and objects are constructed (George 1994). Drawing on Foucault for whom the individual author or agent – and thus intentionality – counts for very little, this suggests that subjects who institute actions (see intentionality) are themselves instituted effects of prior actions. In his article ‘What is an author?’, Foucault (1991, 119) critically suspends the idea of an a priori existence of a subject. Instead, he proposes to query ‘under what conditions, and in what forms can something like a subject appear in the order of discourse’ and argues: The author is not an indefinite source of signification which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses . . . One can say that the author is an ideological product, since we represent him as the opposite of his historically real function. (Foucault 1991, 119–120)

Let me emphasise this further: If identity is asserted through a series of performances or practices, and yet, is never fixed but continues to perform through a variety of discourses then the question of a subject or an agency cannot be answered through assumptions about an existing identity prior to those performances. Judith Butler and Joan Scott (1992, 9) poignantly stress that ‘no subject is its own point of departure’ and, thus, agency is only a political prerogative and as such, requires attention to an inquiry into the agency’s condition of possibility. Butler and Scott (1992, 13) explain, there ‘need not be a doer behind the deed but the doer is variably constructed through the deed’. As a result, the enabling conditions for an assertion of identity are provided by a series of performances, discourses and rules that regulate the invocation of that identity as well as practices that establish the very terms of its intelligibility by which that identity can mediate.5 As Campbell (1998a, 222) summarises, ‘the identity assumptions of poststructuralism constitute a

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problematisation of sovereign accounts of politics common to the mainstream by shifting from a concern with the a priori assumptions of agency and pre-given subjects to the problematic of subjectivity and its political constitution’. As argued so far, identity and difference are not given, but produced. This implies that the practice of exclusion into spheres of difference (and otherness) cannot be bound to a particular event or actor, since their essence does not exist prior to the categories that give meaning to them. Therefore, the process of inscribing boundaries of meaning between self and other has to be seen as a historically constructed system, in which certain knowledge becomes a dominant practice (Bleiker 1997). In other words, in order to expose how present strategies of securing self against other and inside against an outside are arbitrarily constructed, one needs to reveal the way differences have been produced and stories told in the past. NMD, I argue in this book, constitutes a site that contains knowledge about self and other. As such, NMD is not only informed by discursive articulations in the past – a thinking of security, or security culture, that makes possible a context within which one can relate foreign policy problems (e.g., ‘deterrence worked in the past but rogues cannot be deterred’). It furthermore mobilises this knowledge into disciplining action (e.g., ‘forward leaning defence works against rogues’), which in turn verifies and reproduces knowledge about the other, an event, or a place in the world that NMD then purports to counter. We should be able to begin seeing how the US identity/NMD nexus intersects in this specific case. When we speak of ‘America’, or the American self, we need to think of a community which is ‘devoid of ontological being’, apart from the many practices that constitute that which has become understood as the ‘American’ self (Campbell 1998a, 91). As has been argued, there is no a priori identity to the state. Thus, what is understood to be the United States of America in terms of its being ‘American’ has no meaning as such in itself. Therefore, America is dependent on representational practices to construe what constitutes an American identity.6 To argue that NMD is one of a set of such practices means to locate it within a series of past performances. Hannah Arendt (1973) offers a valuable perspective on the ‘origin’ of US identity in relation to the state (if we understand ‘origin’ to mean the moment at which the process of discursive articulation is most determining). For Arendt, an investigation into US identity must inexorably begin with the invention of America itself. It is at this historical juncture of the founding by the first settlers that laid the basis of a particular way of arrangement for the US self. More precisely, in an important example Arendt proposes that the fabrication of what has become known as

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‘America’ emanates predominantly from the collision of European habits of thought and action that the author sees as leading to an American identity of ‘exceptionalism’. She argues that this kind of understanding of the self is rooted in a particular sense of freedom; a feeling of selfdetermination, which is always experienced in relation to an other that has been left behind by the European settlers. More to the point, this suggests that the notion of an American self originates from an opposition to a, here, European other.7 America as the ‘New England’ is deployed against the fundamental trope of an old Europe that has been repudiated for a different vision of life. In fact, the very founding text of ‘America’, the Declaration of Independence, is a signifier par excellence for the practices of identity thereafter. It is here that the project ‘America’ is most exclusively conceived as a struggle against the other, a fight against, as it reads, ‘sufferance’, ‘injuries and usurpations’ and ‘absolute tyranny’ through the British Crown (Declaration of Independence 1998). In this sense, America has come into being through a process of imagining the absent, the elusive and that which it is not. More importantly, it has done so on a level that concerns the structures of society: assuming this process means in effect that America must be seen less as a fixed territory but more as a project – a memory, a tale, a making, an invention and a distinctive American tradition that is constitutive of a certain vision of the ‘city on the hill’ and the ‘new frontier’. At the same time though, narrating the American nation via the identity story, as carried out in the Declaration of Independence, must not be reduced to some ‘ideological expressions, oriented towards supporting a particular apparatus of state power’ (Shapiro 1999, 47). It must not be limited to seeing the past stories as a reason that induces current politics in the name of a particular set of values, norms and ideas. Instead, these mythical identity stories can be conceived as a framework of meaning and language that provides interpretative contentions between a historical trajectory and present (in)coherence within society. In other words, what constitutes the boundaries to and of ‘America’ is neither a physical geographic landmark nor an assumed pre-existing set of ‘American’ ideologies but first and foremost a discursive space in which both the American territory and the American self are depicted and come into being. This existence is achieved through the way in which the American self is always seen as distinct from an outside other. It is, and as I have referenced before, an ‘imagined community’ (Anderson 1991). America today is, thus, as understood by Weldes (1999a), born out of both the exploration of the new world by the old one and the search for space in which this liberty of exploration can be reproduced.

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Thus, not only is the condition of the American self anchored in a self/ other dichotomy, it is furthermore characterised by projecting this ‘founding act’ in continuing re-articulations of an other in manifold ways. Assuming such perpetuity makes the notion of US identity inherently problematic. If, ‘what America is’ is innately fluid, then ‘being American’ can only be fixed by a continued differentiation of those who are the subject of that performativity of American self. Seen in this grid of identity performance, the strategy of NMD does not only reflect a projection of an American self in the way that Hannah Arendt has deduced from the very founding act of America, but it also makes the defence project an important performative space in which the American self can be further explored and reassured. These performances are very apparent and historically contingent: Ronald Reagan, for instance, spoke of his Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI, a forerunner of the current NMD project) as an example of the creative promise of what he termed the ‘second American revolution’ and a ‘bold vision’ of Western pioneers (Reagan quoted in Linenthal 1989, 9). His Brilliant Pebbles Program, which was to become the space-based component of the missile defence project, was seen as emblematic of a national purpose that ‘equated technological pre-eminence with military, ideological, and cultural supremacy’ (Linenthal 1989, 45). Some even argue that SDI implied ‘the American desire to return to the years of American superiority from 1945 to 1950’. Others go so far as to draw an analogy with the vision of the first settlers, seeing especially the inherent potential for the exploration of space as a similarity to the American wish for self-reliance and freedom (Linenthal 1989, 77–78). There are even apparent parallels between Reagan’s SDI and the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, in the sense of defending the values of Western civilisation. The Monroe Doctrine had originated in an opposition against the Old World as part of the founding act and was carried out in a US civilisation that was pitted against the ‘savage, native Americans’ or the ‘backward’ Latin Americans (Ryan 2000, 14).8 The doctrine stated that any European intervention in the Western Hemisphere would be regarded as an unfriendly act (Dobson and Marsh 2001). As a performance that Edward Said (1979) understood as ‘Orientalism’ in its tendency to discursively establish a world of East and West, the Monroe Doctrine provided a clear bipolar division in that it warned the Old World against any intentions to colonise the Western Hemisphere. This division of worlds has repeatedly contributed to a US sense of exceptionalism as introduced here by Arendt, because of an assumption that the Old World was based on differing moral grounds – diverse religions, beliefs and lifestyles (Ryan 2000). Furthermore, Reagan much advertised the defensive component

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of his military project, recalling not only the myth of America as the innocent and benign, but also envisioning his defence initiative as a benevolent creation designed for the good of the world, or, as written in the Monroe doctrine, for the good of the Western Hemisphere. The defence plan was portrayed as non-aggressive and former Representative Ken Kramer even referred to SDI as the ‘Manhattan Project for Peace’ (Kramer quoted in Pressler 1986, 67). From there, it was not far to link the rhetoric of missile defence to the disseminated characteristics of democratic principles (Caspar Weinberger in Linenthal 1989, 66) – so it was propagated that missile defence would adhere to, and even be constitutive of, the principles of US democracy in its responsibility laid under the American oath to preserve, protect and defend the US. The pervasive practices of self and other are epitomised in the National Security Council document number 68 of 1950 (NSC-68). Whilst this key security document fundamentally singles out disorder and anarchy – in the form of Communism – as a threat against the US and all Western societies, it furthermore establishes how to contain this opposite, Soviet system. Therefore, NSC-68 identifies both location and character of the threat that renders national security necessary. Once the dichotomy between a desirable system, such as the free, democratic and liberaleconomic US society, and the opposing, negative Soviet system was marked, it determined an implicit legitimacy, or self-fulfilling prophecy for the US to protect its higher-valued community. The Reagan initiative constituted an equal vehicle to formulate a Soviet otherness. Although the Soviet Union had begun to research and develop on similar defence mechanisms (indeed, the Soviet Union had already in place a functioning antiballistic missile system), its efforts were not seen as adhering to comparable principles at all. Instead, it provided a possibility to denounce the Soviet attempt, and therewith the Soviets, as ‘Dark Star’, or ‘Red Star Wars’ (Linenthal 1989, 51). But let me say more about the intersection of identity and security, before re-assembling the positions of NMD and identity. National identity/national security Once more: the argument has been that identity, although recognised as an inescapable dimension of being (Campbell 1998a), is not pre-given; rather, it must be understood in terms of its interrelation to difference, exposed through representations of dichotomised categories (of good/ evil or mad/sane), and made possible through practices that precede the essence of identity. In this sense, the constitution of ‘identity as a boundary-producing practice’ can have manifold meanings, ranging from

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the necessity of the other to give meaning to the self, to the demarcation of an inside community against the outside and the domestic against the foreign.9 From this perspective, national security – like identity – is not so much an ontological given, with a stable and fixed meaning, as a site of a continuous political struggle. All efforts to define, redefine and reconstruct security therefore engage in a wider political practice to stabilize the concept’s definition and purpose. Security therefore now has, in Jean Baudrillard’s (1994) words, an ‘alibi function’; it tries to assert the realness of the state and its components and tries to reaffirm and discursively frame and read that which it is supposed to signify in the first place.10 Let us remind ourselves that realist models in international relations theory have been built on the assumptions of rigid boundary distinctions between inside and outside, anarchy and order. The outside is portrayed in terms of dangerous spaces where violence occurs unsanctioned. This threat of violence must be guarded against, contained and controlled if security inside the state is to prevail. Seeing this process of securing as the prevalent goal, it has been argued that most accounts take the existence of a state’s national identity for granted. It is often claimed that this pre-given identity provides the state with a knowledge about its interests to survive and, hence its actions and legitimacy. Put in those orthodox terms, the state occupies the role of a sovereign that bases its action of securing the inside on the presumed existence of a collective (inside) national identity. Yet, following the propositions made so far that the nation need not be assumed to be equal to the state and that national identity is thus not given by sanctity of ‘being-in the state’ but is constituted through difference, the concept of the state in its understanding as a legitimate sovereign becomes illusive. This is particularly so when one considers that the concept of the sovereign state is traditionally perceived as that of state power, the legitimacy of state violence and security in an unquestioned attempt to protect the interests of the people (nation) within the state boundaries (hence, national interest). In denying a pre-given national identity, Laura Neack and Roger Knudson (1996) are critical of the relationship between the sovereign state and the inside community. The authors argue instead that it is the terms of state sovereignty that fixes an account of where sovereign state politics occur by the very process of identifying the boundaries of the political community that needs to be secured under the state umbrella. Moreover, the concept of the state defines the terms of securing against that which it claims to have knowledge of on the outside. Accordingly, the meaning of state sovereignty is given through a process that makes

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it possible to demarcate what is occurring within the spatial boundaries of the state. Going back to the notions raised about identity/difference on the state level, articulations of an anarchic world ‘out there’ have provided the image of an opposition on the outside, a threatening difference that gives identity to the sovereign state and its community within. Following Derrida’s claims about the formulation of a series of hierarchical understandings by imagining dual principles, sovereignty stands opposed to its anarchy counterpart in that it comes to be thought of as something that can be assimilated and that belongs to us, whereas the second principles (i.e., outside anarchy) is essentially threatening and without foundation. This understanding is then further manifested through assumptions of a lack of authority to contain this anarchic condition, which provides reason and legitimacy of the state to take on its role as the protector. Assuming this anarchic status that is not governed or controlled, the sovereign state has secured its own meaning: by placing it into a status of threat in perpetual conflict with the inside community (George 1994). It is this latter aspect of perpetual conflict surrounding the state that is vital in constituting the very existence of the state by defining its purpose through the practice of providing security. It is the same aspect that formulates the possibility of a potential crisis of the representation of the state in those terms. As Richard Ashley (1984) recognises, the state in the contemporary realist view through the sovereignty/anarchy equation, in which the sovereign is posited against anarchy outside its boundaries, is not privileged as it once was. Rather, the state is now projected as one sovereign actor amongst a multiplicity of actors. Those actors have come to be placed on the outside of the sovereign paradigm through developments known under the category of globalisation. The clear line of the sovereign/anarchy distinction has been blurred by factors such as the breakdown of state regimes in the former communist countries and, most recently, the emergence of non-state actors. Accordingly, there is uncertainty as to whether those actors are essentially sovereign, rational subjects. In turn, this uncertainty about who could challenge state sovereignty undermines the elements of security and legitimate action and even the structure of what has become understood as the state itself (Cronin 2002). How can the state be represented if that which is outside the state boundaries becomes ambiguous? Having argued that one key function of the sovereign state is embedded in the provision of security, such ambiguity constitutes a questioning of the state’s meaning. In a similar fashion, William Connolly (1991) argues that in the late-modern state, the military dimension of life becomes pervasive and ubiquitous. He maintains:

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Since the state is the pre-eminent provider of security against foreign attack and since its security is in perpetual jeopardy, it is in a continual state of military preparedness . . . It enters into the identity of the state as the central bearer of the power and sovereignty of a people. The national security state registers itself as the ultimate agent of power, security, and freedom. (Connolly 1991, 202)

Thus, in an attempt to fix the unsettled outside other, the state has moved towards making sense of its meaning by invoking an increased security concern. Simon Dalby (1990) agrees that the performance of the sovereign state has become increasingly challenging. He argues that there has been a rapid growth of state functions in capitalist states since the Second World War, both in terms of their increased role in national and international economic management and in provisions of the welfare state, as well as the growth of what is called the security state and its perpetual military mobilisation. As Dalby (1990) elaborates, the highest political objective of the state is now phrased in terms of the maintenance of ‘national security’ – a security usually defined in negative terms as the exclusion of a threatening, external other. The concept of discourse and systems of knowledge What should be clear by now is this: Identity is not ‘out there’ to be discovered, but is fabricated. The same is true for foreign policy ‘issues’; treating them as calculable facts presupposes a particular subjectivity, a fixed background of social practices and meanings that make it possible to recognise something as a foreign policy problem. I want to suggest instead that a foreign policy analysis must consider how meanings are produced and how events have come to be understood as a problem.11 This leads to an approach that focuses on an inquiry of how meanings have become attached to various subjects or objects such that they constitute particular ‘interpretive dispositions’ which create certain possibilities and preclude others (Campbell 1993b, 298). In addressing the concern of a changed mode of inquiry, this book proposes a discursive ‘how’ approach to foreign policy and identity. Discourse theory has to do with understanding and interpreting those taken-for-granted, produced meanings – here, of NMD. Applied to the following passages, it is seen as a form of inquiry that attempts to illuminate the ways in which the politics of identity are performed within US foreign policy that interprets events, places and people as danger to its existence. This performance results in a security framework that is sought to meet the identified security challenge. More importantly, this particular security strategy says something about the terms that

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constitute a threat as well as about in whose name it speaks (i.e., who is threatened). Considering this, two questions guide my proposed reading of NMD: one that is concerned with the discursive practice by which foreign policy both exposes and reassures US identity, and one that depicts how this practice is made possible through an existent system of discourses that manifests itself in a particular security framework. I want to begin, however, by putting discourse theory in a clarifying context. Whilst outlining both the structuralist and poststructuralist notions of discourse, I focus on the distinctive approach of Michel Foucault that provides much of the basis for the subsequent analysis of US foreign policy and the US plans for a national missile defence system. To begin with, the nature of reality is a state of flux – changeable, fluid and unstable. This means that reality cannot be grasped by ‘rationalscientific answers’ (George 1994, 140).12 Claims to know the world and its reality are nothing but a narrative fiction. These narratives consist of stories told in one specific way so as to provide certainty about a specific assumption and locate meaning within a specific context. By repeating the terms of these stories, a set of dominant discourses has emerged as a way of making sense, with the task of reducing that flux of existence and creating a strategic framework of coherence and stability. Drawing on this view, discourse theory does not attempt to find these uncertain foundations, or to re-invent another fixed existence, but instead it focuses on the process of giving meaning to that flux. It questions how a certain set of statements about reality has become the dominant way of understanding it. Thus, to engage in a discourse means to engage in the (re)making of the meaning of existence. It offers to rethink how we get to know about the world. Having argued that there are no categories which in themselves can explain certain political processes a priori, a discourse generates the categories of meaning by which that reality can be understood and explained (George 1994). As such: [To] be engaged in a discourse is to be engaged in the making and remaking of meaningful conditions of existence. A discourse, then, is not a way of learning ‘about’ something out there in the ‘real word’; it is rather, a way of producing that something as real, as identifiable, classifiable, knowable, and therefore, meaningful. Discourse creates the conditions of knowing. (Klein quoted in. George 1994, 30)

As the above quotation highlights, discourse does not look to individual or collective subjects as the loci of meaning, but instead turns to a complex web of possible meanings that are interrelated (Doty 1993). The analytic form that follows this approach is a process of looking at certain signifying practices as discursive forms. In this sense, a discourse

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is a system of statements that creates a framework in which individual statements make sense. Using the idea of statements, however, does not mean that discourse is merely synonymous with language; discourse theorists do not claim that things are created simply by uttering words. Clearly, language does not create entities, yet, reality is mostly accessible through the descriptions made in language. And those descriptions have to be located in some signifying practice. Thus, discursive statements refer to a ‘broader matrix of social practices that gives meaning to the way in which people understand themselves and their behaviour’ (George 1994, 29). A discourse can be seen as providing discursive space, i.e., concepts, categories and metaphors by which meaning is created (Doty 1993). This means that discourse analysts treat a wide range of linguistic and non-linguistic material – such as speeches, reports, manifestos, historical events, interviews, policies and ideas – as ‘texts’ that enable subjects to experience the world of objects, words and practices. As David Howarth (2000, 10) explains: It allows discourse theorists to draw upon and develop a number of concepts and methods in linguistic and literary theory commensurate with its ontological assumptions. These include Derrida’s ‘method’ of deconstruction, Foucault’s archaeological and genealogical approaches to discourse analysis, the theory of rhetoric and tropes, Saussure’s linguistic distinctions . . . and Laclau and Mouffe’s logics of equivalence and difference.

The conceptualisation of discourse, and more precisely identity in discourse theory, has been closely associated with the theory of language from which structural and poststructural forms emerged. It is the work of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure from which many of the notions of identity and discourse have emanated based on the author’s dictum that all identities are negative and relational. The concept of language does not treat language as simply a transparent tool or a substance, but as a ‘form’ that encourages an analysis of both the linguistic practices within which various phenomena are embedded and the rhetorical dimension of representation – a particular kind of knowledge about the world. Saussure’s structuralism has made an important contribution not only to the understanding of language, but, moreover, to that of social systems.13 It has highlighted the role of meaning and signification in structuring human life more generally and has been used as a starting point for further research within other disciplines. Howarth (2000), for instance, has extended Saussure’s linguistic model to wider sets of social relationships, arguing that society is less the outcome, or product, of a given individual or assumed underlying laws but rather stands in relationship to the changing set of signs and codes that make possible different social practices.

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However thoroughly Saussure developed his structural approach to discourse, he has been criticised on the grounds that he treats the identity of signs as static: Saussure fixes the meaning of signs by arguing that the identity of the sign is a product of the overall system of linguistic values. Thus, while he stresses the relational meaning of signs to one another, he depicts the overall linguistic system as closed and complete (Howarth 2000). Language has thereafter become a product, rather than a process of production. The work of Michel Foucault is particular pertinent with regard to shifting the concept of discourse towards an analysis, in which discourse is not only viewed in its productivity for an existing structure, but also in its meaning of being a product of existing performances itself. Foucault argues that discourses which generate understandings are not simply linguistic performances – they are procedures to assert a particular imaginary of meaning through the construction of knowledge within these procedures. Distancing himself from the outlined structuralist-linguistic analysis, Foucault does not take the rules according to which particular statements can be made in the present as a point of departure. Instead, Foucault (1972) aims to unearth those ‘rules of formation’ that structure the production of discursive statements. In his view, discourses are made up of a number of statements for which a set of conditions of existence can be defined. The author is concerned, hence, with the system of statements, which he sees as located within a whole field of discursive articulations. In The Order of Things, Foucault (1973, xiv) states his intention to explore discourse ‘not from the point of view of the formal structures of what they are saying, but from the point of view of the rules that come into play in the very existence of such discourse’. These statements, however, are not only the product of discursive practices that are governed by historically contingent rules of formation, but similarly reinstate those rules. Consequently, Foucault avoids defining, or unifying, discursive formations around a set of objects, or concepts and themes, seeing them as part of a complex interrelationship to their discursive existence. He argues that objects, in this case, are never given by a world of facts, but are constructed through a series of practices. To use the author’s words, discourses are thus ‘practices that systematically form the objects of which we speak’ (Foucault 1972, 49). Approached in this way, Foucault’s discussion of discourses dispenses with the accounts of positivist, realist and objectivist notions that reduce discourses to a pre-existing reality (Howarth 2000). In contrast, Foucault seeks to account for the creation of objects and statements within discourse by relating them to the set of rules that enable them to form as objects and statements. This is significant in that he stresses the constitutive

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role of discursive practices in forming and determining objects and statements, rather than the opposite. In relation to identity this means that if meaning is constructed and there is no pre-existing objective reality before discursive signification, there are also no pre-given identities before meaning. Foucault does not assert that there are no entities prior to statements (there is a physical existence to a subject), but that the identity of subjects/objects is given by statements made about them.14 I began the previous section by saying that neither reality nor identity pre-exist. The underlying notion here is that the material world does not convey any meaning in itself, but is given such meaning through systems of signs (language, imageries, texts and so forth). I want to extend this notion by adding that discourses do neither just exist ‘out there’ in the world. Rather, they constitute a system of statements, practices, codes and rules that are articulated in their regular use in certain discursive modes of signification. Discourses (re)produce knowledge about the things defined by discourse already, as much as a discursive statement is made meaningful through such an existing system of discursive knowledge. As such, Foucault suggests that discourses must not be treated as autonomous scientific statements, but are part of a historical system of knowledge. This relationship is of a circular nature, in which the constitutive role of discursive practices is both an effect and a reinstatement of knowledge that is already established (Foucault 1972). For Foucault, the crucial part of a discourse analysis is therefore to trace the ways in which past formation of statements constitute present premises. It is this notion of meaning-giving and the processes leading to concepts of accepted knowledge which are captured in Foucault’s genealogical analysis (Brown 1998). A genealogy is an analysis that lays bare the discursive practices by which contemporary subjects and objects have been constituted in terms of dominant knowledge in a unified, single meaning (Foucault 1980). Given Foucault’s focus on the process in which statements are rendered meaningful and emerge as the dominant understanding of reality, genealogy is in this sense first and foremost concerned with the ways in which certain discourses have come to be prioritised (Howarth 2000). Foucault writes, ‘the genealogical side of discourse . . . deals with series of effective formation of discourse: it attempts to grasp it in its power of affirmation, by which I do not mean a power opposed to that of negation, but the power of constituting domains of objects, in relation to which one can affirm or deny true or false propositions’ (Foucault 1972, 234). Nothing in this genealogical approach is given; rather, objects and subjects of history are discursively constructed via a logocentric process

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of framing real meaning (George 1994). An ample example of such a process is given by Foucault (1979) in particular in his writings about power, regulation and control in Discipline and Punish. In this work, Foucault investigates the historical processes that have mobilised techniques of discipline and punitive rules in order to reassert a particular meaning of the ‘delinquent’ and ‘pervert’ within these rules and procedures. Foucault himself understands his analysis to be ‘a genealogy of the present scientificolegal complex from which the power to punish derives its bases, justifications and rules’ (1979, 77).15 As Foucault (1980, 83) further elaborates, genealogies are the stories of ‘[local], discontinuous, disqualified, illegitimate knowledges against the claims of a unitary body of theory which would filter, hierarchise, and order . . . in the name of some true knowledge and some arbitrary idea of what constitutes a science and its objects’. What this means is an investigation into the play of dominating statements that single out the meaning of the phenomenon accepted as ‘true knowledge’. In this play, discursive practices indicate a process in which some statements are excluded through the power that governs other statements as more ‘acceptable’ in the creation of the phenomenon.16 In one clarifying illustration, Foucault uses the example of the sciences and their claim of new empirical and verifiable forms of knowledge. The author proposes that scientific discoveries do not necessarily bear new knowledge, but can be understood as a change of dominance in the statements that determine which knowledge is to become most acceptable and true in the claim for new discoveries. In other words, those affirmed scientific evidences are not an alteration of the content in scientific knowledge as such but they represent a modification in the rules of formation of statements, which are accepted as scientifically true. In revealing the process of how the premises for such transformation are replicated to privilege a particular discursive constitution of the self, genealogies trace ‘continual yet discontinuous histories, histories without direction yet also without end, histories of varied and protean systems of subjection’ (Brown 1998, 37). In conclusion, to say that a study is ‘genealogical’ means that it applies a historical method. Yet, genealogy is not understood as a history of the past in its meaning of tracing origins, but one of the present in terms of the past. It attempts to show how the past exists only by virtue of being reproduced from the present, but similarly, how this present itself is contingent upon that very past. It is not a history of causal explanation, but one of logical spaces and their implications over time. James Der Derian’s (1987) account of diplomacy, as well as Jens Bartelson’s (1995) writing on sovereignty, have taken a lead in the scrutiny of the past discursive establishment of ‘systems of knowledge’ that have

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come to be considered true and uncontested in the present. Infused by Foucault’s impact on the circularity of influence between power over statements and knowledge, both authors have confronted respectively the issue of diplomacy and sovereignty in their attempt to reconceptualise the diplomatic/sovereignty process. How was diplomatic culture (and in Bartelson’s case, sovereignty) constructed and continues to be projected as universally acceptable? Both authors convey an analysis that interprets how the power of diplomacy/sovereignty constitutes, and was sustained by, a discursive practice and thereby provide a ‘history of the present’ in which context the authors investigate the rationality of modern diplomatic/sovereignty theory. The emphasis of his analysis lies on the broader historical-political process whereby both concepts (diplomacy and sovereignty) are discursively constructed and its boundaries legitimised while similarly rejecting other rules as threatening to the ordered nature (George 1994).17 To summarise: first, there is the underlying notion that phenomena are given meaning only discursively; and second, this practice of meaning-giving is embedded in a contextual framework or system of knowledge that has become accepted in the past as a set of rules upon which to judge present and future discourses as more meaningful and true than others. Notes 1

2

There are a number of scholars who have followed Foucault’s lead on discourse and applied it to the study of foreign policy in terms of identity. Amongst them is Michael Shapiro (1988; 1989) who offers an exemplary reading of the representational practice through which various forms of global otherness have been – and are – created. He uses the case of Guatemala to expose the ways in which meaning is given to US identity through the articulation of foreign policy texts, in which Guatemala is identified as a potential threat to a particular conceptualisation of Western Hemispheric order. According to Shapiro, the representation of threat is possible only within the context of order as captured within a ‘post’-Monroe Doctrine sphere of influence and within which the US ‘inhabits’ a certain representation of its self. Further remarkable contributions include Campbell’s (1998a) work on identity and US foreign policy, Roxanne Doty’s (1993) foreign policy analysis of the American counterinsurgency policy in the Philippines, Cynthia Weber’s (1994) problematisation of the US invasion of Grenada and Jutta Weldes’ (1999a) study on the US social construction of the Cuban Missile Crisis. See, for instance, Foucault’s Madness and Civilisation (1989), The Birth of the Clinic (1973b), or Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings (1980).

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Foucault understands, for instance, the judicial system to be saturated with power, whereby he connects power to certain knowledge about these categories that have been produced – the power of claiming knowledge over what constitutes the ‘delinquent’ which then determines that those who exhibit them have to be contained, treated and punished. Michel Foucault’s final chapter in Society Must Be Defended (2003, 265–272) offers a useful synopsis of the discussion of agency. Judith Butler offers an invaluable insight to performativity in specific relation to gender. She argues that performativity and gender revolve ‘around the way in which the anticipation of a gendered essence produces that which it posits outside itself’ (1999, xiv). Butler goes on to say that performativity must be seen as ‘a representation and a ritual, which achieves its effects through its naturalisation in the context of a body, understood in part, as a culturally sustained temporal duration’ (1999, xv). In other words, viewing gender in its performativity means showing that what is taken to be the essence of gender is truly manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through a gendered stylisation of the body. Put differently again, what we have come to know as our gender is that which we anticipate and produce through certain acts evolving around our bodily gestures. Of course, I do not claim that there is only one identity or that notions of an American self are in any way homogenous. I am referring here to a specific context – that of NMD (in the same way in which societies are not only made up by notions of normality, or madness; see Foucault). For accounts of these performances of otherness in US founding history, see Campbell (1998a, especially, especially pp. 91–132). For a general introduction with regards to the Monroe doctrine in US history, see, for instance, LaFeber (1989). One way of bringing the existence of the state in its understanding as a ‘bounded community’ into being is by demarcating the specific inside space against that of an outside other community in geographically understood terms. This spatial focus combines the arguments of inclusion and exclusion and recognises that territorial borders provide the possibility for identity formation has been formulated in critical geopolitics (e.g., Dodds and Atkinson 2000; Massey, Allen and Sarre 1999; O’Tuathail, Dalby and Routledge 1998). Critical geopolitics predominantly seeks to expose the politics of national security as a process of spatial exclusion and demonstrate how these representational practices impact upon politics of identity. One pivotal moment is the one that informs identity as the division of space into ‘our’ and ‘their’ space. As Simon Dalby (1990, 22) argues, ‘the exclusion of the other and the inclusion, incorporation and administration of the same is the essential geopolitical moment . . . in which territory is divided, contested and ruled . . . “We” are “the same” in that we are all citizens of the same nation, speak a similar language, share a culture.’ The Cold War, for instance, can be seen in these terms as representing a series of geopolitical practices in which the world was divided into communist

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and democratic countries, forming such categories as East and West. This act of mapping was politicised through the security strategy whereby the entire international landscape was transformed into spaces belonging to the Western Hemisphere in opposition to the Soviet contingencies. Those spheres were reproduced by foreign policy texts that articulated the need to contain what has been termed the ‘evil Soviet empire’. The result of such strategy – after having constructed the need to dominate Communism as the offensive, evil other – is a secure re-affirmation of a defensive and positive US identity. 10 Richard Ashley (1984) engaged critically with the state/security nexus in emphasising that the representation of the rules that determine security for the sovereign state and, hence the orthodox representation of the state, has been deeply challenged. Whilst the state can no longer be represented in traditional terms, it remains conceptually embedded in the kind of rational, sovereign imaginary that characterises the dominant narrative of modern state sovereignty. Accordingly, when outside states and communities are examined, it is on the basis of whether they are essentially individual, rational sovereign actors or not. These challenges to the understanding of the state have mounted to a crisis of representation, within which foreign policy has to be critically re-evaluated as a practice in these terms. See also George (1994). 11 Much of this comes from a fundamental critique of traditional approaches to IR theory that has been referred to by Robert Cox (1984) as the dilemma of ‘problem-solving theory’. Heavily influenced by the methodologies of the natural sciences, problem-solving supposes that positivism provides the only legitimate basis of knowledge. Positivism assumes that facts and values can be separated, and also that it is possible to separate subject and object. This would suggest that there is one objective world existing independently of the human consciousness of the individual, the author or the observer. Furthermore, positivism supposes that the knowledge gained from that reality is also objective as long as values are excluded from the analysis. This way, analyses are aimed at making the world more predictable through fitting it into a rational-scientific method. A critical analysis, on the other hand, does not, as opposed to a problem-solving theory, take the world as it finds it, ‘with the prevailing social power relationships and institutions into which they are organised, as the given framework’ (R. Cox 1984, 218). Thus epistemologically speaking, post-positivism questions the positivist/explanatory forms of social science, calling instead for interpretative modes of understanding the nature of social phenomena and the inherent subjectivity of all observation (Reus-Smit 2001). 12 This is derivative of two key characteristics that are adhered to by the more critical currents of the IR discipline; the notions of anti-foundationalism and anti-essentialism. The former aims at understanding political phenomena without relying on given foundations, the latter at proposing that the essence of any given entity, including the state and national identity, is socially

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constructed (Sayyid and Zac 1998). Taking both notions together, one can insist that there cannot be any a priori category of meaning – ‘what things are’ becomes an unstable ground and any analysis turns into a question of certain ensembles of such meanings. 13 Saussure focused on the organisation of language and the functions which units have within a particular framework. His main contribution is encapsulated in his Course in General Linguistics, in which he proposes, ‘language is a system of signs expressing ideas’ (Saussure 1974, 15). Saussure observes that language consists of a necessary set of linguistic rules that speakers of language must adhere to if they are to communicate meaningfully. Within such a system of language, ‘signs’ provide the basic elements. Signs unite a sound-image and a concept (termed as ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’). A key principle of Saussure’s theory (1974) concerns the arbitrary nature of the sign and that what it signifies. For instance, there is no apparent reason why the sign ‘cat’ is associated with the concept of a ‘cat’; it is a function and convention of the language we use (Howarth 2000). Saussure’s analysis, thus, is not a mere linguistic inquiry, but an examination into the relationship between language and mind that exposes the significance of a pre-given sign system (Culler 1976). 14 Various analytical commitments have been adopted from the Saussurian and Foucauldian notions of discourse. Closest to the Saussurian idea is what Jennifer Milliken (1999) has distinguished as a commitment to a concept of discourse as ‘structures of signification’. Here, the notion of oppositional meaning-gaining in particular has been pursued by Jacques Derrida in his philosophical work. For Derrida (1978), discourses are structured largely in terms of binary oppositions (East/West, modern/traditional). This has allowed Derrida to argue that these oppositions form a sign system in that they ‘signify’ meaning to one another. Yet, furthermore, the signification through oppositions signifies a system of values, as the binary constitutes a hierarchical structure in which one of the elements is privileged over the other (e.g., good/evil). Other theoretical commitments view discourse in its meaning of ‘productivity’, in which discourse is seen ‘as being productive of things defined by the discourse’ (Milliken 1999, 229). It is this analytical variant that is representative of Foucault’s idea of discourse that is more than just language/utterance about phenomena. Instead, discourse is understood as a way of making intelligible some ways of being in the world and operationalising a particular ‘regime of truth’ while excluding other possible modes of being/identity. Understanding discourse in its productivity is closely linked to investigating discourses in their historical contingencies. Here, discourses are not only ‘articulating’ but also ‘re-articulating’ knowledge, which opens up space for (dis)continuity and variation. Termed as a ‘play of practice’ (Milliken 1999, 230), it is this mode of analysis that is most critical about the historical context of practices in which present discourses are embedded. It is based on the

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idea of structures that do not have permanent elements but are contingent with their permanence depending on dominant statements and rules. 15 For a digest of Foucault’s genealogical approach, see Brown (1998). 16 This, however, must not be confused with an analytical search for a history of origin of the phenomenon. The focus is not on revealing an act of creation. Rather, genealogy means to cultivate the details which accompany the prioritisation of statements and which are considered as forming origins and beginnings. It is not an exposure of origin but rather of (dis)continuity from past to present and future. Describing it as a space of transformations, Foucault asserts that to provide an ontology of the present involves articulating the processes that have led to what we are now. 17 Der Derian (1987, 202) highlights in particular the uniformity in the features of diplomacy that ‘imposed a unitary body of theory on a reality which did not, and does not, exist as they depicted it’. He exposes in general those questions that were ignored by realists; such as the question of how a certain understanding, e.g. Western diplomatic culture, was created and has been taken to be unproblematic and applicable thereafter. The aim, according to the author, is not to provide a grand new theory of diplomacy, but to open up a theoretical and political space in order to re-assess the crucial aspects of global politics and the politics of diplomacy therein. Rendering something as the unproblematic ‘truth’ has also been Bartelson’s (1995) concern in his analysis of sovereignty. Refusing to answer ‘what sovereignty is’, Bartelson sets out to investigate the relationship between sovereignty and truth. By this, he means that the relationship between the very term sovereignty, the concept of sovereignty and the reality of sovereignty is ‘historically open, contingent and unstable’ (Bartelson 1995, 2). He insists that in order to be ‘effective’ such an analysis must start from the present and, from there, explain how this present became logically possible in terms of its past. It symbolises a history of how and by what means the kind of differentiation into inside and outside, sameness and otherness is carried out. That does not make genealogy a history of opinions, but a history of knowledge and narratives which appear to make the present stories valid and coherent. Bartelson spells out the significance of looking at phenomena, such as diplomacy or sovereignty, as conceptual systems or discourses. Taken as such, this allows these systems to be exposed as ‘open-ended and subject to constant modification by means of rhetoric – a battle over truth which moves discourse forward in unexpected directions more by its unintended consequences than by its intended ones’ (Bartelson 1995, 2).

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This is an aggressive research and development program that will lead to the defense of the American homeland as soon as possible against the very real threats of the 21st century. (US Department of Defense 2001)

The notion that missile defence is the centrepiece of a responsive US security strategy against global missile proliferation is largely unquestioned.1 Viewed from this perspective, the debate surrounding missile defence is predominantly seen as a contest over the claims to know what currently constitutes a threat to US national security. But, does that really mean we know what missile defence is? Surely, claiming to do so would in turn require us to know what national security is. Thus, whilst the claim to know about missile defence appears perhaps to be omnipresent and uncontested within the confines of the US security realm, the question of how we know about security and missile defence – the foundation upon which the claim to know ‘the what’ rests – is left rather obscure. Questions about the meaning of missile defence need to open up an entire range of issues: those issues that inform our thinking about US foreign policy and security and the ways in which they interact. This is important because once these questions are raised it becomes clear that most claims to know about missile defence are guided by an orthodox conception of the prevalent terms of defence and strategy. When talking about US missile defence today, we must bear in mind that which has dictated the discussions on US foreign policy and security in the past. Although the idea to create a missile shield has been circulating since the end of the World War Two, it was the formulation of military containment and nuclear deterrence that dominated US thinking about, and gave meaning to, national security at that time. Therefore, the first question to ask is not the one of ‘why’ there is missile defence today, but instead, how this defence project has been given the possibility to be prioritised in present security debates. As such, we need to appreciate the ways in which defence has departed from deterrence as the prevailing mode of US security. To put it differently, missile defence

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must not be placed at the heart of missile proliferation at the beginning of one’s analysis, but more so at the centre of how it is embedded in the established conceptions of US security. Viewing it from this perspective means that missile defence holds certain assumptions about the changing perceptions of threat to US security and the very terms that establish what is regarded as a threatening other and how to respond to ‘it’. From deterrence to defence For decades, the world’s two largest nuclear powers have based their defence strategy on the uncomfortable paradox that no country would strike first as long as they were vulnerable to a devastating counterattack. The principle of ‘mutual assured destruction’ (MAD) has been key to the concept of nuclear deterrence in discouraging an adversary ‘from doing something it otherwise would want to do through threats of unacceptable costs’ (Price and Tannenwald 1996, 116). Deterrence, or often defined as the concept of ‘mutual vulnerability’, appeared at the centre of American foreign and security strategy from the early years of the Cold War. This strategy has been reminiscent of particular assumptions about the rationality of the parties involved, which would make it possible to measure the level of vulnerability and to materialise what constitutes a threat to each side. As Glenn Snyder put it in 1961, deterrence may follow, first, any form of control which one has over an opponent’s present and prospective ‘value inventory’ and, secondly, from the communication of a credible threat or promise. Putting it in the author’s own words: The object of military deterrence is to reduce the probability of enemy military attacks, by posing for the enemy a sufficiently likely prospect that he will suffer a net loss as a result of the attack, or at least a higher net loss or lower net gain than would follow from his not attacking. (Snyder 1961, 12)2

Deterrence has since then also been central to the global security environment and even in times of détente between the superpowers, security policy and planning was undoubtedly dominated and stimulated by an articulation of measurable threat to deter a hostile attack. In terms of a US strategy against ballistic missiles, this meant that throughout most of the bipolar era, the US relied equally heavily on nuclear deterrence to address a possible long-range Soviet missile attack. The 1972 ABM Treaty has played, politically, a vital part in controlling the forces at play in the prevalent strategy of deterrence. The Treaty governed both the nuclear balance and ballistic missiles, as the means

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of delivery of the nuclear payloads, for the past three decades by demanding both sides to remain vulnerable. The Treaty, which emerged from the 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I) accords signed by Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev, placed strict limits on the ability of one side to construct defences for countering the other side’s ballistic missiles (ABM Treaty 1972, Article 1). It prohibited either party from having a ‘national’ defence system, that is, a system to protect the entire country against a missile attack, and thereby restricted the number of antiballistic missile sites each superpower was allowed to have as well as the testing and development of those. Showing an interest in such arms control measures, both leaders met again in 1974 to amend the Treaty to allow for only one ABM site each. This made the arrangement very strict with very detailed requirements that, indeed, did not leave much room for interpretation.3 Updating of the system was allowed, but the Treaty forbade the parties to ‘develop, test, or deploy ABM systems or components, which are sea-based, air-based, space-based, or mobile land-based’ (Baucom 1992, 70). Showing a record of intense and successful negotiations like these and considering the premise that the achieved limitations on antiballistic missile systems would create more favourable conditions for further agreements to limit and eliminate strategic nuclear weapons, the Treaty was thereby often labelled as the cornerstone of arms control and global strategic stability. Fast forward to the present, and more than a decade after the end of the Cold War, on 13 December 2001 the US announced its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in favour of deploying what the Treaty prohibits – a national missile defence system that would eradicate an assured vulnerability. Six months after the public notification, on 13 June, the withdrawal formally took effect and President George W. Bush (White House Speech 2002a) explained that, ‘with the Treaty now behind us, our task is to develop and deploy effective defences against limited missile attacks’. ‘Effective defence’ implies here a sophisticated weapon system designed to shield an entire territory against an attack by a small number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) armed with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads (Broek and Slijper 2001).4 The President had argued beforehand that he cannot and will not allow the United States to remain in a Treaty that prevents us from developing effective defenses . . . We now face new threats from terrorists who seek to destroy our civilization by any means available to rogue states armed with weapons of mass destruction and longrange missiles . . . I am committed to deploying a missile defense system as soon as possible to protect the American people and our deployed forces against the growing misses threats we face . . . it is essential that we work

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together do defend against them, an important task which the ABM Treaty prohibited. (White House Speech 2001a)

A missile defence system against those new threats is said to violate the ABM Treaty’s principles in two ways. First, in order to intercept incoming missiles in defence of all 50 US states effectively, two antimissile sites are needed (one in Alaska and one in North Dakota). The commitment to deploy such a system also substantiates, secondly, the demand for ‘freedom for unrestricted testing and deployment of a system as soon as available’. Both elements have been described as incompatible with the ABM principles (Kimball and Boese 2002).5 This, however, is not so obvious. Various, though admittedly more limited, variants of missile defence already exist that are indeed compatible with the ABM Treaty. Active missile defence generally involves destroying a missile before it reaches its target. This may involve defending a limited area, such as a military base from attack by a shorterrange missile (theatre missile defence), or protecting an entire national territory from attack by a longer-range missile (national missile defence). Russia, for example, currently deploys the only missile defence system designed to guard the entire city of Moscow against a long-range missile attack (Isachenkov 2002).6 It has one ABM site, which has been in accordance with the Treaty. The US, which currently has no defence system for the entire country, has been conducting extensive research and development on other types of missile defence technologies since World War Two. Each of the US military services (air force, army and navy) has been pursuing theatre missile defence (TMD) programs that are designed to defend US troops abroad, hence ‘in theatre’.7 TMD systems have also been allowed under the ABM Treaty, since they are first and foremost barely advanced air defence systems to intercept short-, and medium-range missiles in the midst of conflict zones, as opposed to long-range ICBMs (the former being referred to as tactical missiles when used in the context of a military conflict situation; the latter as strategic missiles). Many states are involved in developing such mediumto short-range missile defences. In addition to work by the US and Russia, Israel, Japan, Italy, France and Germany among others are engaged in work on various systems and components. NATO, for instance, has commissioned a feasibility study to investigate the various options of deploying its own large-scale TMD system (NATO Press Release 2001). Such a limited defence system was used, for example, to defend US troops against Iraqi Scud missiles during the Gulf War of 1990/1991. Despite having those defence system in place compliantly, the US felt a need to go beyond what the Treaty allows.

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So, when pressed to justify its withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, the Bush administration declared that America had to ‘move beyond’ what it called a ‘relic of the past’ (White House Speech 2001a). According to the US President, ridding the international community of the Treaty would mean making a ‘clean and clear break’ with the Cold War legacy that gave birth to principles that he now deems as ‘outdated’. When alluding to the question of whether ‘moving beyond’ meant replacing the ‘cornerstone of strategic stability’ (aka the ABM Treaty) with a military system that has once too been considered a relic (but of the Cold War) and that is now being compared in its technological challenge to the Manhattan project to develop the nuclear bomb and to the efforts to place a man on the moon, the President spoke of a world that ‘has changed’, saying that so too had the threats to, and opportunities for, national security (White House Speech 2001a). What has changed for the US since the collapse of its key Cold War antagonist? What are the new opportunities for US security that lend interest to a sophisticated shield to protect the US against ballistic missiles? One of the biggest political changes in US security has been to declare the Cold War security objective of protecting against a full-scale Soviet attack obsolete. With the demise of the Soviet Union, a direct military conflict between the US and Russia has been judged unlikely. In a statement to a Senate Subcommittee in early 1997, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Walter Slocombe, made it clear that the United States did not regard Russia as a potential military threat under its present, or any reasonably foreseeable government. Yet, whilst the Cold War in its particular meaning of the Soviet-US antagonism might have ended, the world has not subsequently been judged more secure (Friedman 2001). This is reflected most lucidly in the continuously rising US military budget, about which Walter Slocombe also says that, ‘nuclear weapons continue to play a critical role in deterring aggression against the United States’ (Slocombe quoted in Skelly 2001, 32). Clearly, the weapons that supported American and Russian nuclear deterrence – and more significantly illustrate the inherent risks of global nuclear annihilation – have yet to be removed from the Cold War stockpiles. Today, both countries maintain approximately 4,000 strategic nuclear weapons on constant, hair-trigger alert (Kimball and Young 2001). Even after bilateral talks between Moscow and Washington that sought deep cuts in offensive nuclear weapons on both sides, all that was achieved was the removal of such weaponry to another, less ‘active’, stockpile.8 Addressing that practice, White House spokesman at the time, Ari Fleischer, explained that while ‘some weapons will be removed from operation status and earmarked for destruction, others will be placed in

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retirement status for eventual destruction and others will be maintained in a non-development status as a hedge against unforeseen technical international events’ (Fleischer quoted in BBC 2002). Additionally, and in continuation of previous practices, the current Bush administration does not plan to destroy most of the warheads removed from strategic systems or to eliminate the capacity of these weapons to be rapidly refitted with these warheads. All this means that the US has clearly maintained the potential to reconstitute a strategic force of Cold War size (more than 6,000 warheads) (Sokolsky 2002). With these numbers in mind, it is hard to escape the conclusion that, even with the arrangements to reduce warheads bilaterally, the so-called new security environment represents a continuation of a Cold War philosophy. In reaction to the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) of 2001 that explicates these force structures, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov commented aptly that, ‘there is a feeling that the document was written during the Cold War’ (Ivanov quoted in Bleek 2002). Despite having these deterrent forces on reserve, the US chose in addition to transform its military establishment and complement the Cold War era weapons with new and super-sophisticated systems. Put differently, despite the dissolution of a direct military confrontation with Russia, the US has moved to increase its existing military expenditure by the largest defence budget in decades; in October 2002, Congress approved $355 billion for US defence spending which symbolised the largest real growth in the defence sector since Ronald Reagan at the height of the Cold War (Associated Press 2002b). The second Bush administration had increased that budget to up to $441.5 billion in 2006 (appropriated). To put this in perspective, this amount is approximately 3.5 times higher than the defence spending of all sixteen European NATO countries taken together, for they invest ‘just’ about $130 billion yearly in defence (Fukuyama 2002). Along with this budget increase, Congress has added funds to the national missile defence spending each year since 1995 (House Armed Service Committee [HASC] 2000). One of the key documents that advocated this strategic direction is the Nuclear Posture Review of 2001 (NPR 2001). Mandated by Congress to clarify US ‘nuclear deterrence policy and strategy . . . for the next 5 to 10 years’, the NPR is produced by the Department of Defense in consultation with the Energy Department (US Department of Defense 2002b). The review itself remains classified, yet parts of it were publicly summarised at a 9 January 2002 Pentagon briefing.9 The document called for a sharp reduction of US nuclear dependence on deterrence by pursuing a missile defence system (alongside expanding the use of conventional and precision arms). It defended its findings by making

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two crucial and interconnected arguments. First, the report depicted that the post-Cold War security environment had fundamentally changed. This led, second, to the conclusion that the Cold War approach to deterrence was ‘no longer appropriate’ (US Department of Defense 2002b). The reason why deterrence was deemed inappropriate takes us back to the presumed existence of the rationality of actors. Based on the logic that, in order for deterrence to work, both parties must disclose rational and predictable behaviour, the Review justified the necessary move away from that strategy in the following ways. Whereas previously the US faced the certainty of an enduring Soviet hostility, defined blocks, and limited numbers of contingencies, this certainty had now gone – and so had the certainty about the opponent’s rationality. Within a predictable bipolar security environment, the Pentagon was able to build a deterrent force designed to respond to, or threaten, a specific threat with specific capabilities. The Review states that ‘greater flexibility’ is needed against adversaries ‘whose values and calculations of risk and of gain and loss may be different from and more difficult to discern than those of past adversaries’ (NPR 2001). There was an obvious opponent against whom American forces could be measured, and more importantly, an opponent who was considered as being rational enough to feel threatened by an offensive nuclear force. Now, in the ‘new era context’ that the NPR depicts, the US has to face ‘multiple potential opponents’ and ‘unprecedented challenges’ that make the calculation of an offensive deterrent force difficult, if not impossible (NPR 2001).10 As Robert G. Joseph, Director for Counterproliferation Research at the National Defense University, explains, ‘we face a much more diverse and less predictable set of countries than we did in the Cold War’ (House Armed Service Committee 2000, 68). Following those arguments, the NPR (2001) proposes new calculations in military requirements, which are codified in the so-called ‘capability-based planning’, as opposed to the Cold War practice of ‘threatbased planning’. The capability-based approach is predicated on the belief that planners must identify specific capabilities (again, as opposed to a specific threat) needed to deter or defeat adversaries and to allow a variety of future possible and hypothetical threats to take positions of prominence in the calculation of requirements. Military capabilities are then devised to counter a broader, longer-term range of potential threats (US Department of Defense 2002b). In other words, lacking a clearly identifiable threat, the US will instead acquire a defence capacity to defeat, or deter, any type of attack mounted by an imaginable adversary at any point in time (Klare 2002). As Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald Kaddish, also Chief of the newly renamed Missile Defense Agency (MDA), clarifies,

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‘we always face the risk of being surprised by changes in threat, but a capabilities-based approach allows us to adjust to those changes’ (Kaddish quoted in Garamone 2002). The emphasis lies here on what the US Department of Defense (2002b) coined ‘active defence’, meaning a response capability made up of once-operational weapons that could be quickly restored. Embedded in this approach is a fundamental change in the objective of military preparations. Whereas during the Cold War the US sought to deter and defend against threats that were known or visibly emerging, today they seek to hedge against the possibility of threat itself at any time. It is here, so the argument goes, that the US will benefit from what has poignantly been referred to as a defence ‘shield’. This shield would cover the entire US territory protectively against such unknown contingencies (Eland and Lee 2001). In this sense, missile defence has become a central component in which US thinking of security could transform the concept of deterrence. Ashton Carter (1999/2000, 101), who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy during the first Clinton administration, supports that approach by arguing that ‘defense programs must be adapted to the mission of preventive defense, and technology investment to preparing an effective response if fundamentally new security threats do emerge in the new century’. Viewed in this way, national missile defence is akin to the perceived likelihood of failed diplomacy and deterrence. As Dean Wilkening (2000, 29) explains, ‘national missile defence provides insurance against the failure of diplomacy to stem the proliferation of long-range ballistic missiles, the failure of deterrence, and ineffective conventional counterforce attacks’. The broad American public seems to agree. An academic poll taken in the US in 2001 showed that 70 per cent of the US population does not feel secure with what they know about the strategy of deterrence. The respondents also said they would favour a missile defence system in order to make them feel more protected (poll quoted in Gromley 2002). Bearing the above development in mind, it is apparent that the US not only has envisioned a new threat to replace the old Cold War antagonism, but that this new threat has new qualities. Summarising those qualities, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proposed that the nation must be prepared to defend itself ‘against the unknown, the uncertain, the unseen, and the unexpected’. He furthermore suggested that the US must prepare its forces ‘to deter and defeat adversaries that have not yet emerged to challenge us’ (Rumsfeld quoted in Klare 2002). Equally, George W. Bush promised, while campaigning for the presidency, fundamental changes in America’s nuclear strategy and force posture. Russia,

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so the President proclaimed, was no longer the enemy of the US, and the premises of Cold War force targeting should no longer dictate the size of the US force arsenal (White House Speech 2002b). This conceit begs an important question that key documents in support of missile defence are at pains to address: how does one prepare effectively and efficiently against that which one does not know? Post-Cold War foreign policy: Bottom-Up Review and rogue states Addressing these questions, significant attempts to clarify what exactly the new threats entail are found in two doctrines that date back to the Clinton administration. The first one is the Bottom-Up Review (BUR) that was commissioned to re-assess the entire US foreign policy and security realm, as the name suggests ‘from the bottom up’. Similar to the NPR, the BUR set out to re-evaluate the post-Cold War security requirements by departing from the assumption that there might be new challenges to US security. The second doctrine is more explicitly aimed at defining what form these new challenges would exactly take. Here, the ‘rogue states doctrine’ has been formulated to specify an emerging group of states that could be considered increasingly hostile and threatening to the US.11 In 1993, the election of a President who promised that he would bring military spending down as part of a wider program to reinvigorate the American economy, was ‘bound to have a significant impact on the US defence debate’ (Cox 1995, 43). According to the President, such a debate had not even taken place yet. He argued that, whereas the previous administration (first Bush) simply responded in an ad hoc manner to a rapidly evolving situation, what was really needed was a complete new approach that looked at security policy from the ‘bottom up’ (Carter 1999/2000). The BUR was initiated in March 1993 by Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, and intended to be a ‘comprehensive review of the nation’s defense strategy, force structure, modernisation, infrastructure, and foundations’ (BUR 1993).12 Integral to this study was to investigate what kind of threats the US would have to face following the demise of the Soviet Union. The BUR identified dangers to the US posed by what has been termed ‘large scale aggression’, which referred to major regional powers with interests ‘anti-ethical to our [US] own’ (Cox 1995, 45). This type of danger was confined geographically, in that it was particularly envisioned from Middle East nations and the Korean peninsula. The problem sought to exist in those regions specifically was that of an uncertain proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of unstable regimes. The BUR drew conclusions as to the regional aggression it

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observed and the problems of proliferation in these regions. Labelled as ‘new dangers’, the Review accordingly outlined the force structure that would be needed to guarantee American security in the ‘twentyfirst century’ under those terms. The BUR laid the foundations for two distinct developments in US foreign policy and security thereafter. First, it advocated the importance of ‘active’ defence for the US, which meant having a permanent defence structure in place instead of having to react to threats in an ad hoc fashion. Bill Clinton reiterated that the existence of deterrence might fail in the light of a newly perceived uncontrollable and hostile proliferation, when he asked if deterrence could ‘protect us against all those who might wish us harm in the future? Can we make America more secure?’ (White House Speech 1999a). Secondly, the BUR associated the post-Cold War security debate with a very particular, new type of threat directly aimed at the US. Many of the arguments here go back to the notions of the rogue states doctrine to describe hostile and unstable regimes, or an unpredictable non-state actor. In the context of the BUR, the rogue doctrine was aimed at describing North Korea, Iraq and Iran, though it is has progressively been used to suggest any type of non-Western state with a subscribed potential to hostility (Lindsay and O’Hanlon 2001). As the editor of the US journal Foreign Policy, Charles Maynes (1996, 4) has described, the ‘rogue’ phrase has been used by US officials who believe that ‘rogue states or anarchy are conceivable replacements for the Soviet menace as America’s principal international concern’. Seeing the transformation from deterrence to defence via the articulation of a rogue state, as picked up in Clinton’s BUR, makes the ‘rogues’ notion undoubtedly an integral part of the current debate on the deployment of a missile defence system. Making the rogue states doctrine a canon of post-Cold War American foreign policy, former Secretary of Defense William Perry warned in April 1996 of a future threat by a ‘rogue state, that may be impossible to deter, will obtain ICBMs that can reach the United States’ (quoted in Litwak 2002/2003, 56). William Perry’s reference to ‘undeterrable rogue states’ was striking, for it suggested that countries such as North Korea, Iraq and Iran were potentially prone to irrational behaviour and that a reliance on deterrence (and diplomacy) would therefore prove futile (Litwak 2002/2003). This notion was reiterated in Clinton’s statement on the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, in which he stressed the ‘growing danger that rogue nations may develop and field long-range missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction against the US and its allies’ (White House Speech 1999a). A year later, in June 2000, the US State Department announced that it was formally dropping the term rogue state from use. Responding to

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the widespread use of the term ‘rogue’, officials had come to the conclusion that one would really have to differentiate more between the ‘designated cases’. For instance, the change in political circumstances in Iran had been judged as a possibility for diplomacy, whereas the Iraqi regime led by Saddam Hussein was viewed as requiring a policy of isolation and containment (Litwak 2002/2003).13 However, shortly after assuming office, George W. Bush swiftly reversed the Clinton decision and revived the rogue states term. In his first speech to Congress in February 2001, President Bush warned of the threat from rogue states and their intention to develop weapons of mass destruction. He went on to cite the rogue state threat as a major motivating factor for a US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty in 2002 (Bush quoted in Litwak 2002/2003). Explaining his motivation for dismantling the arms control treaty, the President concluded that, ‘the ABM Treaty hinders our government’s ability to develop ways to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue-state missile attacks’ (White House Speech 2001a). The rogue doctrine was originally concerned with the growing military resources at the disposal of a small number of hostile powers in the ‘Third World’ since the 1980s. The Reagan administration was particularly concerned here with WMD proliferation, before Presidents Bush (both Junior and Senior) and Clinton made use of the ‘rogue’ phrase to include states such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea in the post-Cold War rhetoric. No matter which country is named in particular, the rogue doctrine is predicated on the general claim that certain states do act irrationally and, if armed with ballistic missiles, such unpredictable states may strike the US at any time. As former National Security Advisor Anthony Lake announced in 1994, ‘these nations [rogue states] exhibit a chronic inability to engage constructively with the outside world’ and show ‘aggressive and defiant behaviour’ in their ‘misguided quest for weapons of mass destruction’ (Anthony Lake quoted in O’Sullivan 2000). Lindsay and O’Hanlon (2001, 72) from the Washington-based Brookings Institute draw together the theme of ‘rogue-ness’ and the concern about a possible failure of deterrence in a truly exceptional manner, using the following biblical analogy. Referring to it as the ‘Samson scenario’, the fellows argue that just as Samson brought down the pillars of the Philistine temple, killing his captors and himself, just so might a North Korean or Iraqi leader on the verge of being overthrown and perhaps killed attack the US simply out of spite, especially if he believed that American officials had engineered his overthrow. The authors argue furthermore that it is generally more difficult to sustain a deterrent force against a small state. Seeking the comparison to the former Soviet Union, both argue that neither side had the incentive to strike

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first knowing that the other had a second strike capability. However, they claim with small powers their missile forces are more vulnerable to US strike from the start. Hence, they are seen as more likely to demonstrate a ‘use-it-or-lose-it’ attitude (Lindsay and O’Hanlon 2001, 73). Such an environment is seen as less predictable and more vulnerable to an easy escalation. Drawing from this perspective, a number of official documents in support of missile defence have been released since 1995, and have concentrated on estimating the exact missile threats from rogue states. Starting with the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 1999 and the Rumsfeld Report (1998), the documents illustrate a change in the methodology used to evaluate the threats from foreign ballistic missiles that are implicitly linked to the rogue image. To begin with, the NIE of 1999 predicts that ‘during the next fifteen years the United States most likely will face ICBM threats from North Korea, probably from Iran, and possibly from Iraq’. In the same way, the Rumsfeld Report investigates the level of technology available to rogue states, and thus the likelihood of a possible missile attack against the US homeland. Moving on, the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR 2001) also attempts to determine the future adversary and lists Iran, Iraq, Libya, North Korea and Syria as ‘among the countries that could be involved in immediate, potential, or unexpected contingencies’. But before going into further detail about the particular threat to US national security as envisioned in those documents that contain the rogue phrase, the following passages intend to put the missile defence debate into a historical perspective first. Having proposed to view the defence strategy in its relation to deterrence via the perception of the change of threat, the subsequent section outlines the various interests in a defence structure beginning in 1944 and leading to the current deployment efforts as articulated by the George W. Bush administration. Same thing, different name? The idea of deploying a missile defence shield is not new. There have been various designs and manifold attempts to deploy ballistic missile defences (BMD).14 BMD as a distinct technological strategic issue is now embarking upon its fifth decade of controversy, dating back to the mid1950s–1960s. One can divide the stages of the systems’ development into three distinct phases; the current one led by President George W. Bush marking the third phase since the 1960s. The first period included President Johnson’s Sentinel program as well as Richard Nixon’s Safeguard project. This era also produced the ABM Treaty of 1972, when

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the Cold War antagonists decided that their efforts to defend against missiles made them simply more insecure. In the late 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) dominated the second (serious) phase of missile defence talks, which centred on the feasibility and advisability of his ‘Star Wars’ vision against a possible Soviet missile attack. Although the SDI program was quickly disregarded due to its ambitious scale, though never formally abandoned, many of the early arguments in favour of deploying defensive systems, as well as the principal objectives, testing and research, have influenced today’s system (Wilkening 2000). How has defence in these terms become prioritised in the US security talks? Two features stand out that: First, US policy makers have argued that the nature of threat has changed. Behind the pressure for early deployment lies a growing concern about the proliferation of missiles and related technology. Linked to this is the second feature, namely the concern that those technologies will be used in the hands of particular regimes with particular attributes. The ‘beginnings’ (1944 to 1983) The interest in developing a defence mechanism against incoming missiles was first expressed following the use of ballistic missiles during World War Two. In 1944, Germany deployed its V-2 missiles against the cities of London and Antwerp, leaving brutal images of terror and destruction.15 During this time, the UK had, alongside Belgium, more ballistic missiles fired at its territory than any other country in the world. The US felt particularly alarmed when, in addition to these attacks, German plans were supposedly in place to develop an intercontinental capability to target New York and cause similar destruction. As a result, one can find early writings about a possible missile defence system proposed by the US Air Force dating as far back as 1946. Despite those early efforts, it was not until 1962 that one can speak of the beginning of the antimissile system era. It was then that a US Nike Zeus test rocket fired from the Marshall Islands knocked out an incoming test missile, demonstrating the possibility to destroy attacking missiles before they could hit their targets. The move towards interceptor missiles had begun in particular since the mid-1950s, at a time when ballistic missiles had not only emerged as the fastest and most reliable way of delivering nuclear weapons, but also had been used politically during the Cold War in its meaning of a situation in which the two superpowers measured up their military capabilities to an astounding scale (Carle 2001). Whereas missiles were clearly associated with the destructive images of the nuclear weapons that they delivered, images of full-scale

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destruction and first-strike options, they also became symbols of a struggle for dominance in the US-Soviet rivalry. In this context, former President John F. Kennedy’s foremost interest in a missile defence system was due to the so-called missile gap, which referred to the perception of a possible Soviet superiority in producing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM). After all, the launch of the Soviet Sputnik in 1955 signalled the end of US dominance in international security, which the US had successfully maintained up until that point, and showed the vision of a nearly absolute security through technological superiority which the Americans had enjoyed was becoming a security of the past (Dobson and Marsh 2001). This phase of considering antimissile systems not only marked the beginning of the Cold War nuclear arms race, as both parties investigated into countermeasures to overwhelm possible defensive structures; missile defence also became attached to its role as a safeguard against offensive nuclear weapons and was thereafter often illustrated with the notion that ‘no offensive weapon should be left unopposed by defensive countermeasures’ (Baucom 1992, xii). Although the US began to work on the deployment of its first antimissile system, the Nike-Zeus, in 1957, technological failures led former President John F. Kennedy to suspend the program during the following years (Young 2000). Transformed into a component of a new system, the Nike-X, the subsequent Johnson administration commenced its own debate over the deployment of the Sentinel missile defence system in 1967 (Burrows 1984). By that time, two factors had changed in favour of an antimissile system. First, and due to research done by previous administrations, the US now seemed more technologically capable of implementing a defence system of that kind. Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, the operation of such a project had become politically more acceptable and desirable. Whereas during the Kennedy years, missile defence was seen in the context of the US/Russian arms race, which made it more akin to an offensive military tool to ‘outrace’ the rival, President Lyndon B. Johnson could advocate the need for a system on the basis of its defensive and responsive role. Only a couple of years beforehand, in December 1965, the US had gathered allegedly considerable evidence that China would become a major nuclear power by the late 1970s, at which time the Chinese would be capable of attacking the US with a limited number of first-generation ICBMs (Adams 1971). Infused by the fear of an attack by China and sustained by the revelation in 1966 that the Soviet Union had already deployed its own missile defence system to protect the city of Moscow (Galosh system), the Johnson administration was given the go-ahead for deployment.

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Whilst the Kennedy system permeated the notion of a Soviet superiority in missile technology, Johnson’s ‘light’ Sentinel program became known as a system to defend selected American cities against a Chinese nuclear attack. Nonetheless, and despite the serious doomsday propaganda this debate enjoyed, Sentinel was never declared operational (Carle 2001). This was mainly due to the fact that Johnson’s system endorsed the daring strategy of placing nuclear-tipped, ‘hit-to-kill’ interceptor missiles at fifteen sites around the country, including ten near major metropolitan areas (Lindsay and O’Hanlon 2001). Though no doubt was expressed as to the need for such a defence system, the administration met fierce public opposition from residents close to the proposed nuclear interceptor sites who feared that they might become a target of an adversary trying to take out these interceptor sites, with fatal consequences. Johnson’s successor in 1968, President Richard M. Nixon, recognised that Sentinel was politically unstable and initiated a review of US strategic requirements (Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) 2000a). Based on this review, Nixon refocused the existing plans for a US missile defence system from the objective of protecting major US cities and its population to one that would primarily protect US deterrent forces and missile silos. In the light of this, he reconfigured Sentinel into the Safeguard system. However, the effort of deploying a protective device was disproportionate to what it actually achieved. Sentinel began operating on 1 October 1975, but was shut down soon afterwards on 27 January 1976, as the costs for such an experimental deployment were escalating; during those three months of operation, the system cost the US $194 million per day (Schlesinger 1986). Reagan and Star Wars (1984 to 1990) The most rigorous attempt at deploying a ballistic missile system was planned during the Reagan presidency. In his legendary missile defence speech, at the time of writing exactly twenty years ago in March 1983, US President Ronald Reagan announced that his administration would also seek to develop a defence system and returned to the system’s mission as a territorial defence against Soviet hostility (Miller and Van Evera 1986). Proposing the need to ‘examine every opportunity for reducing tensions and for introducing greater stability’, the President declared the following: Let me share with you a vision of the future, which offers hope. It is that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive. Let us turn to the very strengths in technology

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that spawned our great industrial base and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today. . . . Tonight, I am taking an important first step. I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. (Reagan quoted in Miller and Van Evera 1986, 257)

This Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), as hailed by the president, envisioned not only ground-based interceptor missiles but also proposed a vast space-based structure. Nicknamed the ‘Star Wars’ program by some critics, who often ridiculed the system for its comprehensive space-based shield as a technical and financial fantasy, it was intended to ‘intercept and destroy strategic missiles before they reached our own soil’ (Miller and Van Evera 1986, 257). As Strobe Talbott (2002), President Clinton’s former Deputy Secretary of State, described retrospectively, ‘he [Reagan] proclaimed in 1983 that the US must undertake a crash program to erect a space-based, impregnable, all-encompassing shield’. Merely ten weeks after the public announcement, the President proved that his intentions were sincere by appointing a number of expert panels to assess the possibilities of strategic defences. These findings, which are still relevant to the research and development of today’s system, provided the basis for Reagan’s defence initiative that again cost the US $26 billion. The three panels, named after their chairpersons Fletcher, Hoffman and Miller, explored, in this order, the possible technologies and the strategic implications (the Miller report remaining fully classified to date). President Reagan also immediately chartered the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO, signed by Secretary of Defense Casper Weinberger) to carry out his program and announced that the defence spending would be increased fourfold amounting to $1 billion per fiscal year (Miller and Van Evera 1986). The SDIO and the panels’ findings sought to develop a capability to defend against the perceived missile threat posed by the Soviet Union’s arsenal of over 1,000 ICBMs armed with nuclear warheads. The President’s efforts were different to those articulated by former President Kennedy. Although both attempts were located amid the US/Soviet rivalry, Reagan’s SDI campaign emerged at a time when the possibility of a nuclear first strike and a pre-emptive nuclear attack was feared the most. This was not broadcast as part of the arms race between the two parties but propagated as an initiative of arms control. As the President remarked: I am directing a comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research and development program to begin to achieve out ultimate goal of eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This could

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be pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the weapons themselves. (Reagan quoted in Miller and Van Evera 1986, 258)

SDI advocates interestingly promoted the defence system not only on strategic grounds but also for what were considered moral reasons. Strategically, Star Wars was seen as an opportunity to safeguard the US against nuclear blackmail. It was considered as a means of diminishing the vulnerability of being attacked and, thus, ensuring an upper hand in negotiations – an argument that was raised from the very beginnings of missile defence. As Reagan highlighted in his 1983 speech, in which he spoke of a vision of ‘truly lasting stability’, the US intended not only to remove itself from a situation in which it could not only be virtually destroyed by the very existence of nuclear-tipped missiles, but also to become the moral advocate in the Cold War arms race. By selling Star Wars as a defensive strategy with an arms control undertone, the US portrayed itself as the victim of nuclear weapons, alas the defender, as much as the initiator in putting an end to nuclear weapons. In other words, the defence structure made it possible to remove the US politically from the canon of deterrence, which was a concept that was hitherto synonymous with the terms of aggression, threat and total destruction in language termed against the Soviet Union (Miller and Van Evera 1986). Now, Americans could depict themselves as responding to a threat against themselves, and at most, as the ones trying to prevent one. This meaning of missile defence must be reiterated; Reagan’s vision of missile defence produced an image of escape from reliance on the threat of retaliation to deter aggression (Drell, Farley, Holloway 1986). In that sense, it created a new term of diplomacy: as the historian Donald Baucom (1992) argues, the US was convinced that its investment in an antimissile system would be a morally accepted way of bringing the ‘enemy to its knees’. The SDI was embedded in the narrative of providing means to force the Soviet Union into bargaining on arms control. The USSR was pictured as fearing the US defence system and thereby transforming Soviet opposition into cooperation. Furthermore, the US argued that the prospect of endorsing the previous Safeguard system by Johnson had led to negotiations of the ABM Treaty in the same way as the SDI was seen to having induced the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987 (entered into force in 1988), which put an end to ground-launched medium range missiles. And above all, as Baucom (1992) concludes, the vigorous testing and high-level technology of the SDI program was advertised as revolutionising a type of warfare that the Soviet Union could simply not afford and that finally led to its demise. In spite of this, the SDI never left the research and development stage.

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In line with the – arguably persistent – vision of a defence system during the Cold War, the US has similarly never been without plans to deploy a national defence structure since the end of that era (Fitzgerald 2000). Although one must not forget that the US still does not currently possess a working NMD system, Americans invested approximately $5.5 billion into a deployable missile defence system from 1991 to 2000 (House Armed Service Committee 2000). Given that the previous interest in such systems was located in the Cold War context, the continuing interest despite the supposed demise of this hostile environment raises questions. First of all, with the end of the bipolar conflict between the superpowers, a deliberate ballistic missile attack by Russia has now been discounted as implausible. Additionally, diplomacy in the form of bilateral agreements seemed to have initially replaced the state of military build-up and readiness, as could be witnessed in Presidents Bush’s and Gorbachev’s signing of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I signed 1991, though only entered into force in 1994) to reduce US and Soviet strategic nuclear forces by 40 per cent and down to 6,000 warheads each. Despite this background, one might argue that the interest in antimissile technology has appeared even more strongly than before. Whereas previously, the question was if such a system could be deployed at all; the question now was not if but when (Pike and Voth 2001). As with earlier versions of a defence system, articulations of threat played a vital part in the claimed rationale for deployment. In a similar way to the statements about a Soviet or Chinese missile threat, the need for missile defence re-emerged publicly during the Gulf War when, in August 1990, Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. Although the US was not the one threatened by a missile attack on its territory, it perceived a threat to its interests and forces in the region. In January 1991, the US and its allies initiated Operation Desert Storm against Iraq and its armed forces, during which it faced an Iraqi response in the form of attacks by Scud missiles that were targeted at Israel and Saudi Arabia. According to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, which was renamed from the SDIO, it was these missile attacks that led to ‘a major milestone in military history’ with respect to NMD (BMDO 2000a). A milestone indeed, considering that the US had embraced the missile defence option since 1944 on the basis of a possible missile attack against its homeland, but it was only more than 50 years later, during the Gulf War, that the first operational engagement actually occurred between a ballistic missile and a limited type of US defence system. This system in

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place, the American Patriot, is an extended air defence scheme designed to protect troops abroad.16 For the BMDO (2000a), the legitimacy for an expansion of antimissile systems seemed clear, and it argued that ‘the dire nature of the threat now posed by theatre missiles [tactical missiles] was graphically illustrated on 25 February 1991, when a Scud missile struck a billeting facility near Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, killing 28 Americans and injuring another 100’. With the Gulf War in mind, the Bush administration announced that it would order the Defense Department to refocus Reagan’s former strategic defence project from its emphasis on defending against a massive Soviet missile attack to a system known as Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS). This system was aimed at subsequently dealing with unauthorised, accidental or limited attacks ‘in theatre’ (BMDO 2000a).17 The focus on an expansion of the theatre missile defence system received strong political support, particularly since the Iraqi missile attack had shown the restrictions on US intervention abroad; contrary to initial reports of the effectiveness of the GPALS of 90 per cent or more, only 9 per cent of the US Patriot interceptor missiles were successful (Young 2000). As a result, the necessity of a missile defence system was formulated when former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen confirmed that the US would need such defence because emerging missile states might threaten to deter Americans from using their forces in a regional conflict (Garamone 2000). By the time of Bill Clinton’s inauguration in January 1993, not only was the Cold War over but so was the Gulf War, which led many to believe that the fortunes of missile defence were at an all-time low (Fitzgerald 2000). Yet, although the BMD budget fell sharply from the $1.9 billion in 1993 to only $553 million in 1994, the shift towards a limited defence system as started under GPALS continued under the Clinton administration (National Institute for Public Policy 2000). This Democratic leadership is, in fact, responsible for the structure of the NMD system that is currently under review. Clinton adopted all three components that were part of the Bush Senior system and gave them individual attention. Those were a ground-based national missile defence system (now known as NMD), the theatre missile defence system (now the operational TMD system referred to as GPALS), and a space-based global defence (now considered for parts of the NMD space-based system). As part of the restructuring, Clinton’s Secretary of Defense, Les Aspin, changed the missile defence agency’s name from SDIO to the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO 2000a). While focusing initially on the TMD variant, it was during the second Clinton administration that the component of national missile defence

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was revived. One of the crucial tasks of the new BMDO was to establish here a ‘technology readiness program’. The idea of this was to launch a timeline to project the various parts needed for a functioning system. This was based on the assumption that, otherwise, post-Cold War planning would be marked by high uncertainty, for it was seen as unclear when a missile threat to the US might emerge and what its exact nature would be. To deal with this uncertainty, the BMDO developed a strategy for concentrating its national missile defence resources on efforts to solve the most difficult technological problems reaching into future planning. This was done in hindsight of a possible, unexpected threat that might require the rapid deployment of a partial NMD system (BMDO 2000a). One of the events that triggered the identification of a possible missile threat, and hence, partial NMD deployment was the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of 1995 that reviewed the future ballistic missile threats to the US in its report on the ‘Emerging Missile Threats to North America during the next 15 years’ (NIE 1995). Although the NIE concluded that the US homeland was not likely to face a direct missile threat over the next fifteen years, the faith in a defence system did not abate. Initially, the estimate’s validity was questioned by the Republicans, which led to the appointment of a new Commission to assess the ballistic missile threat to the US. This Commission involved former (and current) Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who chaired what came to be known as the key document for a US national missile defence system, the Rumsfeld Report (BMDO 2000a). The release of the Rumsfeld Report (1998), which as opposed to the NIE of 1995 suggested that the missile threat was much greater than previously assumed, heightened concerns about missile threats from North Korea, Iraq and Iran. Within only six weeks of the release of the report, in August 1998, North Korea tested its three-stage Taepodong-1 missile over the Sea of Japan – surprising many analysts in the US and confirming talk of a readiness program (Eland and Lee 2001). Even though the North Koreans both failed to successfully launch their system and did not target the US, the rocket was believed to be the prototype of a ballistic missile that might, if perfected, fulfil the Commission’s prophecies and potentially become a threat for the US. The North Korean launch heralded an important turning point in the missile defence debate and was widely perceived as lending credence to concerns that the US faced a new military challenge to its homeland in the form of uncertain, regional powers. These concerns were later reinforced by the findings of several influential expert commissions and intelligence community reports, such as the National Intelligence Estimate of 1999, which concluded that the long-range ballistic missile capabilities being developed

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by countries such as Iran and North Korea represented a capable threat to the US (NIE 1999). In response to Pyongyang’s missile test and in addition to the expert’s projections of possible threats, US Congress translated those events into a severe policy concern centred on the lack of a US missile defence capability (Eland and Lee 2001). This provided the impetus for an announcement made by the US Secretary of Defense at the time, William Cohen (1999), who declared on 20 January 1999 that the US Department of Defense was allocating additional funds to a national missile defence program to meet the growing potential of rogue states and their ballistic missiles. Two months later, in March 1999, President Clinton made this official by signing into law the National Missile Defense Act. Having passed the Senate by a margin of 97 to 3, the act mandates: It is the policy of the United States to deploy as soon as it is technologically possible an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack (whether accidental, unauthorised, or deliberate) with funding subject to the annual authorisations of appropriations and the annual appropriation of funds for National Missile Defense. (NMD Act 1999, Section 2)

The NMD Act had followed a bill that Congress initiated back in 1997 to reflect the fact that the US would be vulnerable to a missile attack by Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Essentially, the bill’s enactment was again part of the broader shift that occurred in the US defence debate. Whereas in previous discussions the question was no longer whether the US should have a defence system or not, but rather when, this time the main point of contention was no longer when a limited NMD system should be deployed but how limited that system should be and the degree to which it should be constrained by the ABM Treaty (Daalder et al. 2000). Facing these pressing decisions towards deployment, President Clinton announced on 1 September 2000 that he would leave the judgment of implementation to his successor (Kimball and Young 2001). Numerous reasons were cited for this postponement, not least of all the issue of the major diplomatic challenge of amending the ABM Treaty to permit the rigorous testing and development of NMD. After all, at a summit meeting in June 2000, Clinton told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he hoped they could work together to find amendments to the ABM Treaty that would allow it to ‘hold up for another thirty years’ (Putin quoted in Graham 2001, 282). Additionally, and on the back of a series of unsuccessful tests, Clinton announced that though the technology for NMD was promising, the system as a whole was not yet proven. Therefore, he decided not to authorise deployment of a national missile defence

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system at this time. However, he added, that his decisions ‘will not have a significant impact on the date the overall system could be deployed in the next administration, if the next president decides to go forward’ (Clinton 2000). The next president indeed decided to go forward. Since assuming office, the administration of George W. Bush has welcomed his predecessor’s choice, for he made the development of a missile defence system unmistakably one of his priorities, giving it prominence in policy, funding and organisation. Previous doubts as to the system’s scale have been addressed and first steps taken for the deployment of a rudimentary system between 2003 and 2008 as a result of the readiness program in place. ‘Rudimentary’ means here the deployment of a layered defence system that contains elements in space, air, sea and on land. This will include an air-based laser that shoots down missiles of all ranges during their boost phase, a so-called ground-based midcourse system, a seabased system with elementary midcourse capability against short- and medium-range threats, terminal defences against long-range ICBMs capable of reaching the US, and a system of satellites to track enemy missiles and distinguish re-entry vehicles from decoys (Coyle 2002a). Finally, to accelerate implementation, the administration has taken a number of tangible steps. One of these was the decision to put forward a first defence budget request that saw a 57 per cent increase in funding for missile defence, from $5.3 billion to $8.3 billion (of which it received $7.8 billion). To publicly mark the renewed interest in, and seriousness of, the project, the US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, re-organised the Ballistic Missile Defence Organization into the newly named Missile Defense Agency (MDA). By so doing, the Secretary cancelled the internal Pentagon documents that had established the program’s previous developmental goals and expanded the agency’s responsibility for all missile defence developments until the programs are ready for procurement.18 Furthermore, the Pentagon requested that all missile defence programs should be components of a single research and development program. The re-organisation makes it possible to take advantage of an existing law in support of Pentagon projects. It enables Donald Rumsfeld to use what is known as the ‘other transactions’ category for all basic, applied and advanced research. This permits Pentagon officials to shift funds from one program to another and make other changes without going through the often-lengthy process of informing Congress and receiving its approval. The granting of exceptional procedures has given the MDA extraordinary freedom, which is considered necessary for a project of national priority with a ‘special assignment’ (Graham 2002). With this

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procedural load put behind, the way is paved for not only the original idea of a single antimissile weapon, but for an entire system of defence. The purpose of this brief historical overview was not to provide a story about missile defence as such; lengthy reports and articles published by the US Department of Defense or the new Missile Defense Agency can be consulted for that reason. Instead, the aim was to highlight two things. First, it was to show how the missile defence debate was centred on a variety of articulations of threat. These ranged from assumptions of Soviet and Chinese hostility during the Cold War to the presumed existence of regional aggression that could lead to an attack against the US from countries such as North Korea, Iran and Iraq. By exposing the exchangeability of threats in the logic of deploying an antimissile system, the extent to which the defence structure has been made a part of US thinking of security becomes clear. As such, missile defence has become synonymous with a certain logic of response in relation to what is claimed to be a threat to national security. The attachment of a defensive meaning to this security project also portrayed, secondly, the US in a particular light. From Reagan’s SDI program onwards, the subsequent initiatives were seen as morally justified, as a protection of US values, interests and efforts in arms control rather than just a military project that contributes to a large arms build-up. Looking at those meanings that came to be attached to missile defence as well as the way it is embedded in the existing framework of US security shows that the system gives meaning to the boundaries of offender and defender, moral and immoral, good and evil. Notes 1

2

3

This has been visible in particular during the recent rounds of debate on North Korean missile capabilities when the project’s proponents left no doubt that the North Korean missile preparations would strengthen the case for building more robust missile defences; see, for instance, Cooper and Gordon (2006). Speaking about the proximity of net losses, former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara had an exact figure at which point the danger of loss would be considered a measurable ‘real’ threat. In a hypothetical retaliatory attack, he argued, the US must be able to destroy approximately 25 per cent of the Soviet population and 50 per cent of the Soviet industry to make it ‘intolerable’ for the Soviet Union to strike first (McNamara quoted in Glaser 1986, 27). In its final form, the accord allowed each superpower to have one ABM facility within a 150 km radius of its capital and one site within a 150 km radius of a missile field. Also, each ABM site could have ‘only’ 100 missiles

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and 100 launchers with each site authorised up to 15 additional launchers at test ranges. 4 ICBMs are long-range missiles that can reach a target as far as approximately 6,000 km away. 5 On further comments and reactions to the US withdrawal from the ABM treaty, see Newspaper reports by Ruppe (2002), Sanger and Wines (2002), Wolfowitz (2002). 6 Though serious doubts are raised as to its effectiveness and operational status (Boese 2002c). In 1987, Russia’s early warning system, which is part of the defence structure, failed to detect a 19-year-old German who flew his Chessna aircraft effortlessly from Hamburg to the centre of the Red Square. Whereas the same system led Russia to believe in 1995 that it would be at the verge of a nuclear attack when Norwegian scientists launched a rocket to study the northern lights (Lindsay and O’Hanlon 2001). 7 For an introductory overview of the elements of theatre missile defence, see Coyle (2002a). 8 This is the result of the 1997 Helsinki Framework Agreement between Russia and the US that calls for a reduction in strategic warheads on both sides to between 2,000 and 2,500 warheads by 2007. The US has chosen to put most of its forces on reserve instead of destroying them. With regard to such ‘hedge’ policy, the Clinton administration in 1994 retained for the US a capability to reconstitute about 6,000 warheads in a relatively short period. This practice has also been employed by the subsequent Bush administration, but has been relabelled as a necessary ‘responsive force’ (Sokolsky 2002, 141). 9 Following includes newspaper articles that disclosed points that had appeared in the classified Review; see, for instance, Gordon (2002) and Arkin (2002). 10 For more details of an official perspective on the implications of the changing security environment for deterrence and US nuclear weapons strategy, see statement of Honourable Douglas Feith (2002). 11 Ashton Carter (1999/2000) proposed an intriguing inside to a particular understanding of the types of threats that are reflected in US foreign policy texts. Carter argues that the claims of uncertainty about threats to the US has not changed, however, there are now different types of threatening uncertainties. He argues that the central task of US strategy must be to identify and categorise A-, B-, and C-lists of security problems. Whereas the C-list contains ‘important problems that do not threaten vital US interests’ and the B-list embraces ‘actual threats’, the A-list is reserved for ‘potential future problems that could threaten US survival, way of life and position in the world’ (Carter 1999/2000, 4). The latter category of potential threats in particular has become a major concept in defining US security, as done by former President Clinton. 12 This defence doctrine is part of the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which is a major review of US defence requirements and strategy. Four

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13

14

15 16 17

18

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of such reviews have been conducted since the end of the Cold War, of which the BUR was the second. One of the key foci was to explore the status of the previously adopted role of deterrence for US security. The Department of Defense removed the rogue states term apparently because it saw its possibilities of acting against, or with, those labelled states as undermined by the very phrase itself. Officials feared that an engagement with states denounced as ‘crazy’ and ‘backward’ would shed a contradictory light on the US; see Litwak (2002/2003, 56–57). All types of missile defence can be termed as BMD systems. It is only the recent version, introduced by the Clinton administration, that has been explicitly called national missile defence (NMD) and so as to highlight the specific task of protecting the North American continent from incoming missiles (as opposed to missile silos, etc.). For a comprehensive ‘timeline’ of US ballistic missile defences, see Union of Concerned Scientists (2001). For a short and concise overview of early missile defence, see Adams (1971), Baucom (1992) and Yanarella (1977). For a timely discussion of the Patriot missile defence system and Iraq, see Gromley (2003/04). During the Reagan Administration, two different ‘Star Wars’ proposals emerged, dubbed Star Wars I and II. The first version embodied the comprehensive population defence, the second encompassed proposals for a more limited defence. President Bush’s approach bases on that second version (Miller and Van Evera 1986). See Coyle (2002a) for an overview of the changes from BMDO to MDA.

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NMD : issues and debates

Basically, hitting an enemy missile out in space, at 15,000 mph, is like trying to hit a hole-in-one in golf when the hole is going 15,000 mph. (Philip Coyle quoted in CBS News, ‘Test failures slow US Missile Defence’, 18 January 2006) We could certainly shoot down an incoming missile if we needed to. (Lt. Gen. Trey Obering, Head of the Missile Defense Agency, quoted in Samson (2006a))

Studies on national missile defence could easily fill a library. No other proposed weapons system has perhaps drawn more arguments than this defence project (Graham 2001). Some of these arguments should be sketched briefly. At its broadest, the literature focuses on three key aspects: the system’s technical feasibility, its costs and international repercussions for arms control and non-proliferation. This focus tends to translate into a set of questions along the following lines: can missile defence work? Is it worth the costs? Is it an appropriate response to real or purported missile threats? And what are the ramifications for international efforts in arms control? All this culminates in the final query as to whether the US needs a missile defence system – or not.2 To be sure, in responding to these questions, the debate over a missile defence deployment is highly polarised, and is more faceted than can possibly be outlined here.3 Generally, however, opponents of NMD in the US complain that the benefits of NMD are uncertain and as long as they remain so, the system would justify neither its steep budget nor the strategic efforts. Supporters, on the other hand, insist that the US should and must build defences against the very possibility of future threats for which the labours of deployment seem appropriate (Lindsay and O’Hanlon 2001). Feasibility and costs No doubt, the Head of the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency, Lt. Gen. Troy Obering, stunned proponents and critics of NMD alike when he

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confidently spoke of an existing US capability to defend against incoming missiles (see quotation at the start of this chapter). After all, the testing history of the some of the project’s elements seemed to suggest otherwise.4 In the past, the ground-based mid-course defence project produced only five successes out of ten attempts. In fact, there has not been a successful flight test with an intercept since October 2002.5 Hence, for the most part, and this is certainly fair to say, the test results have shown that the system is not ready for deployment yet. Perhaps more importantly, any test failure, regardless of its percentage, indicates that there remains uncertainty as to the reliability of an intercepting missile to destroying an incoming object.6 Thus, for a system that seeks to give a guarantee of protection against an attack, and indeed must give such guarantee flawlessly, the issue of whether it can reliably target an enemy missile remains blurred.7 Furthermore, what passed for ‘tests’ has been based on a hypothetical ‘minimum-threat-scenario’, in which the system’s experts, for instance, would rely on the assumption that an incoming missile would carry and disperse one nuclear warhead.8 However, if the missile were to consist of multiple warheads, which is very probable, then there would be too many targets for the defence system to focus on and, as a result, a higher likelihood of failure may occur.9 During the Gulf War, for instance, Iraqi Scud missiles broke up into many agents as they re-entered the atmosphere, creating very effective false targets that caused problems for the US Patriot missile defence system (Forden 2001). This adds to another, and perhaps most controversial, technological obstruction: the ability of the previously tested interceptors to ‘discriminate’, meaning the capacity to distinguish real warheads from decoys, is questionable (Forden 2001). The first NMD interceptor test in 1997 was flawed precisely because the sensor could not decide which of the dispersed warheads was actually the real one (Margasak 2002). So, again, if the success of hitting one target is very low, then having to hit the ‘right’ target out of many possible ones will reduce the chances even further. With all this in mind, the program has been repeatedly criticised for both unrealistic testing conditions and the way the failures have been underestimated. Critics have gone as far as to suggest that the Pentagon deliberately ‘dumbed down’ the tests to avoid having to admit to failure publicly (Sessler et al. 2000). An example is the rigged test of October 2, 1999, in which both the target and the interceptor missile in fact followed a pre-programmed, scripted flight path, creating very unrealistic conditions (Eisendrath, Marsh and Goodman 2001). Admittedly, none of these systems are ever likely to be foolproof. Yet the test failures so far have left doubts as to whether NMD would work at all – now, or in the future. The Chairman of the House Armed Service

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Committee (HASC), Floyd Spence, acknowledged during a meeting that, ‘despite the Rumsfeld Report’s warning, the US lacks the ability to defend against even a single ballistic missile launched in our direction’ (HASC 2000). Notwithstanding the Bush administration’s big leap towards the deployment of further components, the only system likely to be ready by 2008 is a ground-based theatre missile defence that can counter shortrange targets, in other words, a theatre system to defend troops in the field (Coyle 2002a). Nonetheless, and despite the conspicuous technological concerns, the plans for a full development continue apace. Alongside the demands for the high level of technological sophistication that a functioning system necessitates, or perhaps precisely because of that, doubts have been raised as to the value of missile defence visà-vis the enormous costs. The former Clinton administration estimated in 1999 that deploying an NMD system with twenty interceptor missiles would cost $10.5 billion by 2005. If history has taught us any lessons, then the actual costs will be much higher (Daalder, Goldgeier and Lindsay 2000, 12). The program’s cost has already begun to grow; according to a study released by the Congressional Budget Office in 2002, building and operating the major missile defence program that is under current review could cost as much as $238 billion by 2025.10 This amount easily exceeds the Apollo Moon program in today’s dollars (Dao 2002). The ‘basic’ ground-based midcourse system alone will cost $23 billion to $64 billion between 2002 and 2015. It does not stop there, however: Once deployed, the maintenance will amount to $600 million per year (Boese 2002b). The US Department of Defense has already in the past allocated a vast budget to antimissile technology, leaving the country without a system in place nonetheless. Since 1957, the US has spent over $100 billion on a variety of national and theatre missile defence components and systems. Yet even with this expenditure, the US was able to destroy only a small proportion of crude Iraqi Scud missiles in the Persian Gulf War, when it had to rely on its air defence for the first time. The US General Accounting Office (GAO) (2003a, 2) crystallised the controversy of NMD deployment quite poignantly: This is an expensive and risky endeavour because it requires a diverse set of technologies to be quickly developed, integrated and deployed across an array of platforms. DoD [Department of Defense] estimates that it will need $50 billion for missile defense research and development over the next 6 years and likely additional funds in subsequent years.

Proliferation and arms control Following the suspicions as to the system’s feasibility, more pressing concerns have surfaced in relation to the likely effects such a costly

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deployment would have on international efforts to counter proliferation and to establish a reliable regime of arms control. It has been argued that the proliferation of missile technology is driven by commercial and economic considerations, as much as it is by a desire to exert regional or even global influence. The deployment of a new military project may be seen as an incentive for other states to build new technologies themselves in order to overwhelm the, global, US defence. When speaking of missile proliferation, one must recall that there is no international prohibition against the development, possession and deployment of ballistic missiles per se (Wagner 2002). Hence, since the launch of the first V-2s in 1944, the acquisition of missiles could easily increase, and it has indeed done so. During the 1970s and 1980s, the weapons market flourished, enjoying no restrictions and making it more difficult to implement any attempts at regulation, since by that time an extremely complex network of supplier countries and their clients had been created. It is no surprise, therefore, that by the mid-1990s, missile proliferation had become a top issue on the international security agenda. Technology and training to build long-range missiles is now widely available and broadly exchangeable. For instance, the development of commercial space systems can also be used for ballistic missile programs, since the technology required for an ICBM is very similar to that for a satellite launch vehicle. Though the re-entry vehicle, the guidance system, and the warhead still remain extremely sophisticated technologies, a state with a satellite launch capability has already acquired much of the key technology necessary for an ICBM. In fact, even states that used to be considered as less technically developed, such as India, are capable of building missiles and their components today. And if they do not develop those elements themselves, it has become gradually easier for more states to purchase the essential technologies. To put it bluntly, states such as North Korea do not even have to test their own missile technology but can buy the finished product ‘off the shelf’. Today, and including the five declared nuclear powers China, France, Great Britain, Russia, and the US, 35 states have, or are in the process of acquiring, ballistic missiles.11 From the first images of destruction by a missile during World War Two to their, daily prompted, frequent association with the weapons of mass destruction that they deliver, there have been a few landmark negotiations limiting the testing and acquisition of missiles amongst certain states and for certain classes of missiles. Most notably, Presidents Ronald Reagan and Michael Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987. The Treaty eradicates the entire class of intermediate-range ballistic missiles from the arsenals that once threatened Europe. It declares:

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Each Party shall eliminate all its intermediate-range missiles and launchers of such missiles, and all support structures and support equipment of the categories listed in the Memorandum of Understanding associated with such missiles and launchers, so that no later than three years after entry into force of this Treaty and thereafter no such missiles, launchers, support structures or support equipment shall be possessed by either. (INF Treaty 1987, Article IV)

Today, efforts to prevent the spread of ballistic missiles are dominated by what is referred to as ‘supply side initiatives’ whereby missile-capable states seek less to abolish missiles but rather to gain control over their trade. Here, the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) came into effect in 1987 and has 32 members.12 As a voluntary regime, the MTCR is not a treaty that seeks to rid the world of a specific class of weapon, but is a coordination agreement that looks to monitor the export of missiles and related technologies. Recognising, however, that there is more to tackling missile proliferation than merely managing technology control, the biggest achievement of the MTCR has been to produce a politically binding ‘international code of conduct against ballistic missile proliferation’ (Smith 2002b). Launched in The Hague in 2002, the code is the first serious step towards international standards in the field of ballistic missiles. It consists of principles to curb the proliferation of WMD-capable means of delivery, to exercise restraints on developments of missiles themselves, and above all, to adopt confidence-building measures to increase the transparency amongst member states. Though this might appear a solid and promising effort by the international community to address the unrestrained spread of ballistic missiles, it only scratches the surface, as, perhaps expectedly, several missile-holding countries refuse to subscribe to the code themselves. Against this backdrop, the MTCR has failed to stem proliferation adequately for a number of other substantial reasons. Firstly, the approach to reducing missiles has proved difficult, since missiles themselves have never been regarded as inherently ‘bad’, only the weapons of mass destruction that they deliver. The issue of WMD, on the other hand, has been left to be addressed by the Biological and Chemical Weapons Conventions, which in turn leave aside the subjects of missiles. As a consequence, missiles as weapons themselves have been mostly ignored. Secondly, as a voluntary regime, the MTCR simply struggles to gain legitimacy for its implementation outside of its membership. For the arms control-supporting community, the most irritating fact yet is the ‘lopsided’ approach to proliferation in the past and the present. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty I (SALT) of 1972 between the US and the former Soviet Union, for instance, placed a limit on the

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number of missiles each superpower was allowed to acquire. However, it did not restrict the development of new types of weapons, nor did it limit the multiple and independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs), enabling both sides to retire the old systems that were the subject of the treaty and replace them with new ones (Gusterson 1996). The MTCR has to cope with equally ambiguous clauses: It allows missile technology exports, albeit controlled, whilst trying to put restraints on the demand side. From the perspective of developing states, the presence of such export controls in the absence of standards accepted by even the MTCR implementers themselves looks much like a cartel established to maintain a strategic and technological advantage (Smith 2002a).13 Ironically, though possibly less surprisingly, it is in particular those states most vehemently denouncing missile proliferation that exhibit high sales of their weapons to acquiring countries. A recent study on world arms exports conducted by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that the US (followed by Russia), which is now at the forefront of claims about the danger of missile proliferation, has been the leading arms exporter for the past five years (with a US trade total of $44.82 billion) (Pronina 2002). In the past too, Presidents Nixon and Ford appealed for arms control whilst, at the same time, breaking records for arms sales abroad ($10 billion in 1976 alone) (Paterson and Clifford 1995). When stripping the trading market for missile technology off its complexity it looks something like this: in the past, Pakistan’s system was said to rely entirely on foreign assistance, Iraq’s program depended on Argentina, Egypt and Germany had a vibrant cooperation, South Africa depended on Israeli assistance, North Korea assisted Egypt, and Libya depended on private European consortia (Navias 1991). More to the point, again, the US remains, along with Russia and China, the primary supplier of the weapons they are declaring as threatening to their national security. In 1985, for instance, South Korea tested a ballistic missile based on a modified version of the US Nike-Hercules surfaceto-air missile (Navias 1991). Israel, which is judged as having the most technologically advanced ballistic missile program, has based its project on joint US defence deals. In fact, Washington has supplied Israel with millions of tons worth of weaponry, currently worth $3 billion a year (Bancroft-Hinchey 2002). The juncture at which the missile control regime comes in, again, is the one where there are worries about Israel’s suspected sales of its US-supported Arrow missile interceptor to India – in the light of the intensified conflict with Pakistan. And finally, one must also not forget that the US had to acknowledge that in 1985, American companies had transferred technology used for missile proliferation to

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Iraq – after the US had agreed to adhere to the MTCR guidelines (Navias 1991). From 1985 to 1990, the US Commerce Department, for example, licensed $1.5 billion in sales to Iraq of American technology with potential military uses (Hanley 2002). Bearing this in mind, along with the apprehension about costs and feasibility, there are, naturally, serious concerns as to the role the deployment of missile defence would occupy within these already strenuous efforts of counter-proliferation, non-proliferation and arms control (Wilkening 2000). Strenuous, as the second Bush administration appears to argue that, because the Cold War is over and the need for arms control has disappeared, the US asserts complete freedom of action, including the right to dispense with the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), the ABM Treaty and other arms control agreements that might perish along with them. Against this background, the deployment of NMD is seen as problematic in the following way. Firstly, it is regarded as quite likely that the deployment of the US system would in fact increase proliferation. Critics argue here that countries might seek to match the latest US technology or even overcome US strategic superiority by conducting research into alternative weaponry. Many more believe that the US cannot prevent the horizontal spread of missiles (i.e. amongst those countries that had not previously possessed them), unless it did more about its own arsenal (Cox 1995). Russian President Vladimir V. Putin announced that if the United States proceeded to construct a missile defence shield over its territory, Russia would eventually upgrade its strategic nuclear arsenal with multiple warheads, thus reversing the – already trite – achievements of arms control in recent decades simply to ensure that it would be able to overwhelm such a shield (Tyler 2001). By so doing, the concern as to an accidental or erroneous Russian missile launch, as described in US documents, would naturally increase. Accordingly, US fears of weak command and control structures around Moscow could of course be straightforwardly reduced if the Russian leadership did not feel the necessity to have nuclear-tipped missiles on constant high alert to permit a rapid launch of these weapons in such an unstable environment. Putin went on to suggest further that by deploying an NMD system, the US would negate the START I and II treaties and would openly eliminate verification and inspection requirements, reviving an era in which countries would hide their abilities and capabilities (Tyler 2001). Washington has been at pains to suggest the opposite; arguing that a defence against ICBMs would in fact discourage other countries in their efforts to invest further into missiles, as they would become defendable. The Nuclear Posture Review (NPR 2001) highlights the need to establish a ‘responsive defence infrastructure’ based on the argument

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that the ability to ‘upgrade existing weapons systems, surge production of weapons, or develop and field entirely new systems . . . could discourage other countries from competing militarily with the United States’ (emphasis added). Reaching back to arguments made by Ronald Reagan, the case of Russia has been used to show that Moscow does not have the ability to sustain a large increase in military spending and therefore has no ability to proliferate for the sake of overwhelming US technology. This, so it has been contended, would again force Russia to comply with bilateral agreements instead. Whereas China, it has been argued, would proliferate no matter what and independently of any US missile defence plans (Lindsay 2001). In terms of proliferation by ‘rogue states’, Senator Joseph Lieberman voiced his support for NMD as a means of arms control by arguing that, as he calls them, ‘renegade nations’ such as Iran, Iraq and North Korea would ‘think twice about the willingness of the United States to take action to defend our people and our values and our allies’ (Lieberman quoted in Bleek 2002). Having none of this though, opponents of antimissile defences already recognised decades ago that a proclaimed defence strategy is subject to interpretation and, thus, could be undoubtedly regarded as offensive for some countries. In 1960, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk himself acknowledged in an interview that ‘we came to the conclusion that if we and the Soviets began to deploy antiballistic missiles, the inevitable result would be a dramatic increase in offensive missiles, so that you could penetrate or saturate the ABMs before the main strike was delivered’ (which was the underlying consideration that produced the ABM Treaty) (Rusk quoted in Charlton 1986, 5). The issue of drawing the line between defence/offence or theatre/national missile defence is controversial. Such has the deployment of theatre missile defence systems sparked many debates as to whether it could be regarded as a national defence system or not. The argument is that the more advanced the systems are that are designed to protect troops in theatre, the more they could also be viewed as a protection for an entire country in which the system is placed. From that point of view, critics go on to suggest that one must not simply discard Chinese proliferation, as US officials have done, as a development claimed as independent of US NMD, for the repercussions nonetheless have some bearing on regional stability. If China were to increase its arsenal and walk away from non-proliferation, as the US predicts, it would be very likely that Pakistan and India, both of which detonated nuclear devices as recently as May 1998, would follow suit.14 Here, Jan Lodal (2001, 6), a former senior official in the Clinton administration, warned that although the US cannot perfect missile defence technology, ‘even if it were possible, the programme would

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motivate a response from adversaries that would inevitably offset the defence’. A development that seems to confirm the manifold concerns raised here has been the phenomenon of counter-measures. Ranging from sub-munitions, which would be too numerous for an NMD system to detect, to hiding the warhead inside a balloon accompanied by decoys that make the discrimination simply formidable, such efforts fall progressively into the category of weapons proliferation.15 Confronted with this development, the National Intelligence Estimate (1999) had to admit that counter-measures are clearly a response to missile defence and widely available to emerging missile states, saying that ‘countries developing ballistic missiles would also develop various responses to US theatre and national defences. Russia and China each have developed numerous countermeasures and probably are willing to sell the requisite technologies’. Though you would not need a scientist to tell you that countermeasures are seriously challenging to the feasibility of NMD, MIT Physicist Ted Postol has been at the forefront of efforts to create an awareness of the fact that a technologically driven arms race is likely to be created under these terms (in Smith 2002a). Proving Postol’s prophecy, the US has already spoken about ways of ‘countering the countermeasures’. As an example, the Missile Defense Agency has considered the option of using multiple miniature kill vehicles to increase the likelihood of destroying missiles accompanied by sub-munitions or decoys. Another suggestion that has been made public only recently, and that has been fiercely criticised, is the use of a nuclear-tipped interceptor missile. Unlike the ‘hit to kill’ mechanism with its ability to hit only once and therefore being likely to miss-hit, the new method would use a nuclear explosion that has the effect of killing the entire enemy warhead and surroundings (Boese 2002c). This would mean, in other words, that the US is planning to stage nuclear detonations, either in the atmosphere or in space, which may create a demand for testing those nuclear capabilities. Clearly, any country capable of deploying a long-range missile would also be able to acquire and deploy counter-measures that would defeat the planned NMD system (Sessler et al. 2000). But it would not even have to go as far as that: Proliferation into alternative means of delivery alongside missiles is expected, and observed, such as the use of airplanes or suitcases. According to the CIA itself, the US is more likely to be attacked with WMD’s from non-missile delivery means than by missiles (Walpole 2000). As Freedberg (2000, at 2224) suggests, ‘why spend all that money on an ICBM when you could smuggle a suitcase nuclear bomb into the US?’

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Regardless of the serious controversies over a possible arms race, the US decided nonetheless to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty that has hitherto been regarded by many as the cornerstone of arms control and global strategic stability (Arms Control Association 2001a). Linked to this withdrawal is the further international anxiety about the anticipated damaging effect the ABM withdrawal would have on the paper-thin international legal regime concerning weapons in space. The current Bush administration’s publicly admitted consideration of space weapons for missile defence has reopened discussions that took place in the late 1950s regarding military uses of space.16 At the dawn of the space age, controversy over placing weapons in space was settled by the temporary compromise of banning some of the most harmful weapons-related activities (especially nuclear) but to leaving the door open for more limited military programs (Moltz 2002). The planned space-based satellite sensors as part of the new system did not only contravene essential articles of the ABM Treaty, which contained passages that prohibited research and deployment of space-based missile defences (ABM Treaty 1972, Article V, Paragraph 1). It would also discard the Outer Space Treaty (OST) of 1967 that seeks to explicitly prohibit the militarisation of space (Pike and Voth 2001). The OST, negotiated between the US and the former Soviet Union, forbids either side from developing, testing or deploying space-based defence systems (it also bans interference with the other side’s national technical means of verification – or, in other words, spy satellites). The abandonment of the ABM has left the 1967 Outer Space Treaty as the only current legal ban on space weaponisation. However, while the OST bans the placing of weapons of mass destruction in space, on the moon or other celestial bodies, it has no prohibitions on other weapons systems (Grahame 2002b). Physicist Joel Primack (2002) calls for an increasing awareness of the use of space when he discusses the potential damage missile defence programs could pose to satellites in low earth orbit. He posits that programs like Brilliant Pebbles could possibly create massive amounts of space debris that could irrevocably harm non-military assets in space. Despite these concerns, costs, hypothetical threat scenarios and the fact that NMD is the most difficult program ever attempted by the US Department of Defense, the administration under George W. Bush continues to press for its deployment regardless (Coyle 2002a). Even if one completely ignored all the criticism as hypothetical or irrelevant, one must not forget that the US is not defenceless at all. Initially, diplomacy and arms control are in place to protect the US against an escalation of violent military measures; if those failed, then the US still had an overwhelming deterrence force, both conventional and nuclear.17

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It goes without saying that any country that threatens the US with weapons of mass destruction risks devastating retaliation (as all of us could witness in Afghanistan in response to September 11, or in Iraq). Most importantly, alternatives to NMD could be considered, as they do exist, though they have been systematically excluded as the debate has progressed. Non-violent negotiations have been successful in the past. The 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea had provided a way to verify allegations of missile development, and without it, Western observers would not have been allowed to investigate one of North Korea’s facilities when activity took place for the launch in 1998 (Eisendrath, Marsh and Goodman 2001). Additionally, in 1999, for instance, the Clinton administration successfully established diplomatic relations with North Korea by dissuading the country from further tests in return for lifting some of the economic sanctions it had imposed half a century earlier (testing moratorium, Wilkening 2000). In response, North Korea promised to halt its missile tests while the talks were underway. And since flighttesting of long-range missiles can easily be detected, the US could confidently verify an agreement with North Korea to end such activity in the future (Wright 2001). This must surely indicate the possibility of alternative measures to meet alleged threats (Daalder et al. 2000). As Coyle (2002a) most astutely concludes, ‘the most straightforward route to missile defence against North Korea may be through diplomacy, not technology’. Regardless of the impressive record of negotiations, President George W. Bush squandered the opportunity to conclude a verifiable, permanent end to North Korea’s long-range missile program (Eisendrath, Marsh and Goodman 2001). Even though the US has itself acknowledged that the ‘emerging threat’ from China and North Korea takes place ‘where there are no arms control agreements’ (House Armed Service Committee 2000, 22), the option of re-establishing such regimes has not been given a chance. As scholars have urged, rarely has so much international cooperation been placed at risk for the promise of so little. The popularity of missile defence is long-standing. What has changed in recent years is both the strategic context in which NMD is located and the nature of threat said to confront the US. Yet, with the above points about costs, technological obstacles and an already existing military might in place, the question remains as to why there is indeed such an unrelenting, if not increasing, interest in NMD. The threats It has been claimed that the nature of threat has changed. The motivation given for the current NMD program is not aimed at a large-scale

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Russian ICBM, but is designed to protect against a limited ballistic missile attack, launched by regional powers in an act of hostility towards the US. Alongside those ‘new’ threats, typically perceived as Iran, Iraq and North Korea, one can nonetheless still find references to Russia and China, though the intention assumed differs between the two groups. Whereas Iraq et al are said to exhibit possible hostile intentions linked to a deliberate missile launch thereafter, key foreign policy documents depict for Russia and China the likelihood of an ‘accidental, unauthorised, or erroneous’ missile attack (Rumsfeld Report 1998). Although Russia’s arsenal of ballistic missiles has decreased since the end of the Cold War, it continues to deploy large numbers of longrange missiles (Sessler et al. 2000). The concern here is the ‘deteriorating state of the Russian economy’ to the extent that the nuclear control and command systems are not adequately protected and managed, leading to possible equipment failures or operator errors (Wright 2001). Naturally, assuming an accidental or erroneous attack means similarly that it is difficult to assess the likelihood of such disasters or mistakes. As for China, it has, for instance, roughly 20 single-warhead ICBMs with a range capable of reaching the US at any point in time. There are two points to make with reference to the Chinese missile capability. On the one hand, the chances of an accidental launch are slim, since the warheads and fuel are apparently stored separately. On the other hand, however, unlike Russia, China has not got an early warning system to detect incoming missiles itself, meaning that it has no capability to ‘launch on warning’. For this reason, there is concern as to a likely first-strike approach in China (Sessler et al. 2000). In principle, the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 2001) contends that Chinese nuclear-armed ICBM arsenals will increasingly threaten Americans, predicting that by 2015 China could have up to 100 warheads ‘deployed primarily against the US’. In both cases, however, a large and deliberate missile attack is considered implausible and would be too difficult to defend against even with an NMD system in place, anyway. But, defending against such an attack is not really the objective of the US missile defence plans. Rather, the concern is about small states that might acquire missile technology in the near future. The Rumsfeld Report and National Intelligence Estimates No country that ‘is’ hostile to the US has at present the capability to strike the US with a ballistic missile from its territory. However, it is the possibility that an emerging missile power might acquire such capability and use it to threaten, or actually attack, the US, which is of key

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concern. The two most comprehensive documents that address the issue of an emerging multifaceted ballistic missile threat are the Rumsfeld Report of 1998 and the NIE of 1999. Concern about a missile attack was heightened in 1998 with the release of the Rumsfeld Report. The methodology used in this report differs from previous analyses in that it estimates the time it would take a country to build a long-range missile based on an assessment of its technical capabilities, and not on observed or demonstrated current missile capability or missile development programs. In other words, the Commission asked what a country might be able to do if it decided to, and not what it was actually doing based on available ‘evidence’ (Wright 2001). As the report puts it, it sets out to examine the ‘potential of existing and emerging powers’ in pursue of a ballistic missile threat posed to the 50 US states and concludes: Concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United States, its deployed forces and its friends and allies. These newer, developing threats in North Korea, Iran and Iraq are in addition to those still posed by the existing ballistic missile arsenals of Russia and China, nations with which we are not now in conflict but which remain in uncertain transitions. (Rumsfeld Report 1998)

The report did not address the likelihood of such developments occurring. Nonetheless, it raised several concerns that have had a significant impact on US policy. Firstly, it asserted that these emerging missile states could develop long-range missiles more quickly than had commonly been assumed. In particular, North Korea and Iran could acquire the capability to attack the US with long-range ballistic missiles within five years of a decision to do so, whereas Iraq could acquire such a capability within ten years. Secondly, the report assumed that these respective countries could hide their activities so that this capability might be developed with less warning than was generally expected. And lastly, the report stated that the sharing of technology between the emerging missile states was reaching a level that would make ‘outside’ technical assistance less important, with the result that export controls would become a less effective means of curtailing such development (Rumsfeld Report 1998). The Commission confirmed that certain states were increasingly able to conceal important elements of their ballistic missile programs and, more importantly, were also highly motivated to do so. The group of states targeted here includes Iran, Iraq and North Korea, all of which are seen as being able, and willing, to inflict major destruction on the US within a few years. In this sense, one could argue that the notion behind the defence structure was one of pre-emption; in a similar way

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to Reagan’s arguments that his SDI would discourage Moscow from further arms procurement, the ‘overwhelming’ US system is seen as a means of preventing certain countries from even developing a capability that they could not even use successfully. In response to its outlined task of assessing the future threat to the US, the report concludes that ‘the threat to the US posed by these emerging missile technologies is broader, more mature and evolving more rapidly than has been reported in estimates and reports by the Intelligence Community’ (Rumsfeld Report 1998). A second important document with respect to the interpretation of missile threats appeared a year later in September 1999. It is the unclassified summary of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE 1999) on ‘Foreign missile development and the ballistic missile threat to the United States through 2015’, which represents the consensus of the CIA and ten other US intelligence agencies. The NIE complemented the previous findings of the Rumsfeld Report in examining ‘the future capabilities or intentions to pursue’ ballistic missiles. Whilst the Rumsfeld Report focused on what kind of ballistic missile threats could emerge, the NIE also considered the likelihood with which these various threats would materialise. This probability was assessed on the basis of an analysis that considered countries’ changes in political motives and military incentives. Looking at regional powers and conflict-struck regimes, the NIE agreed with the Rumsfeld Report that the US intelligence community would not be able to provide much warning if a country purchased an ICBM. Nonetheless, the experts stated that the community was confident it could provide a warning that a country was developing an ICBM five years prior to the first flight test. Emerging missile states ‘So what if North Korea shoots off its newest missile and shows that even a starving, bankrupt country may soon be able to drop a warhead on Seattle?’, asks David Sanger in a New York Times Op-ed in June 2006. The question refers, of course, to a surprise North Korean test firing of a series of missiles, including one thought capable of reaching the US. One of North Korea’s Taepo Dong long-range missile failed shortly after take-off. This was not the first time that North Korea tested its missiles. Six weeks after the Rumsfeld report was released, in August 1998, North Korea conducted a flight test of a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 (TD-1) missile that landed in the Sea of Japan (the predecessor to Taepo Dong-2, fired in 2006). Although the test was not successful, the NIE argued that this event would be of unambiguous proof that a North

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Korean missile ‘could deliver a light payload . . . to the United States’ (NIE 1999). Based on information about the August 1998 and June 2006 tests, it appears that this missile could, if functional, reach Alaska, Hawaii, and possibly parts of the West coast of the United States with a payload of chemical or biological agents (Wright 2001). But more importantly, for the intelligence community this meant that Pyongyang had demonstrated that it had the expertise to stage this kind of technology, which is necessary for developing an ICBM.18 Of the three countries of concern, North Korea has the most advanced ballistic missile capabilities. It has deployed and apparently sold its Nodong missiles that have a capability of reaching large parts of Japan and existing US bases there. It is believed that North Korea has sold its missiles to Pakistan as well as assisted Iran with the development of its Shahab 3 missile (Wright 2001). Iran is reported to have a relatively strong missile infrastructure, developed through assistance from Russia, China and North Korea. As such, Iran is said to have helped fund North Korea’s development of the Nodong missile in the early 1990s, whilst Iran’s liquid-fuelled Shahab-3 missile was reportedly developed with North Korean help (Wright 2001). These activities have led many analysts to assume that Iran was working to develop considerably more capable missiles. The 1999 NIE states that ‘Iran could test an ICBM that could deliver a severalhundred kilogram payload to many parts of the United States in the latter half of the next decade, using Russian technology and assistance’, but that there is no consensus on whether it is likely to do so or not (NIE 1999, emphases in text). Iraq’s missile capability had already been largely destroyed in the 1991 Gulf War and by subsequent United Nations’ activities (Wright 2001). From the perspective of US intelligence experts, Iraq was feared to having the capability to develop an ICBM capable of delivering a payload of several hundred kilograms to parts of the United States during the next 15 years, possibly by the middle of the coming decade. The range of estimates regarding the timing of Iraq’s first flight test of an ICBM is, however, broad and includes mention of ‘unlikely before 2015; and likely before 2015, possibly before 2010’, and is ‘with foreign assistance a key uncertainty’ (NIE 1999, emphasis in text). While much of the focus is on efforts by countries to develop missiles, the Rumsfeld Report noted that rather than developing a long-range missile, a nation might simply seek to buy one. The report states that ‘the Commission believes that the US needs to pay attention to the possibility that a complete, long-range ballistic missile system could be transferred from one nation to another’ and that ‘such missiles could be

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equipped with weapons of mass destruction’ (Rumsfeld Report 1998). The 1999 NIE echoed this concern, although concluded that ‘Russia or China are unlikely to sell an ICBM or [space-launch vehicle] in the next 15 years’ (NIE 1999). Sketching the main thrust of the two key documents that depict the threat to the US, and also justify a NMD system, shows that arguments are generally vague and hypothetical. This is not to say they are ‘wrong’ or that they should be discarded. It does mean, however, that the threat may not seem as obvious, or perhaps, obvious enough to lend interest to the astonishing efforts and costs of a system as described here. A look towards an alternative intervention to this debate is, thus, in order. Notes 1

2 3

4

5 6

The missile defence system under current review is a continuation of former President Clinton’s ground-based ‘midcourse defence’. It means that the intercepting missiles are based on land (as opposed to air, sea or space) and that the incoming missile will be destroyed during its midcourse trajectory (flight path). Whereas the previous administration referred to this system as NMD, the program has now been renamed again to midcourse defence. Nonetheless, in the context depicted here, the thesis continues to refer to the current plans as national missile defence. This is done not only to make reference to its ‘origin’ in the Clinton era, but moreover to use it as a way of referring to any system that is intended to defend the continental United States, Alaska and Hawaii against strategic ballistic missiles, and it is in that sense that it is used hereafter. See, for instance, Vignard (2001). Eisendrath, Goodman and Marsh (2001, viii) ask ‘is national missile defence feasible?’ and ‘is there a credible threat?’ There are various scenarios of a missile defence ‘matrix’; some may agree that there is a growing missile threat, but disagree that the costs for a defence system are justified; or, others agree with the idea of the defence system, but disagree with those who claim that the current project is workable, and so forth. For an overview of past tests and their ‘successes’ see the Centre for Defence Information (2002). The Union of Concerned Scientists has published a detailed report on the technical ‘realities’ of NMD, see Gronlund et al. (2004). See, for instance, Samson (2006a). Admittedly, NMD is a complex, ‘layered’ weapons system with a distinct set of elements, which need to function both independently and as part of an integrated defence arrangement. Such system includes (the structure can vary-this presents a basic model): an initial launch detection and tracking system made up by a constellation of early-warning satellites (Defence Support Program); ground-based early warning radars (five according to

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National missile defence and the politics of US identity the current plan, including the one at Fylingdales in the UK) that receive the tracking data from the defence satellite through the system’s ‘command and control network’; X-band radars to discriminate then between incoming ‘real’ warheads or decoys; the interceptor missile; an exo-atmospheric kill vehicle that destroys the hostile missile by kinetic energy; and the battle management, the ‘command, control, and communications’ (BMC3), which receives all data in order to analyse speed, trajectory, and the intended hostile missile’s target, calculates the optimum intercept point, and assesses the failure, or success, of the interceptor. See Smith (2002a) for an informative overview. The interceptor missiles that were tested have to work in conjunction with satellite-based infrared sensors and radars to track the incoming missile. Once detected, the US interceptor missiles ought to launch ‘kill vehicles’, intended to destroy incoming warheads by colliding with them in the midcourse of their trajectory and outside the earth’s atmosphere. The current system relies on the most controversial form of destruction of the incoming missile, which is during its terminal phase. This requires the intercepting missile to be absolutely flawless, for if it were to fail then there would simply be no back-up system. To be faultless, however, is difficult, given that the incoming missile releases its warheads at an incredible speed that reduces the possible window for interception. For a good debate on these issues, see Forden (2001), Miller and Van Evera (1986). A more effective and reliable option would be to target missiles during its boost phase in its country of origin, and thus, before it even gets close to its intended target. As Richard Garwin (2002, 45), member of the Rumsfeld Commission, has supported this approach, arguing that ‘rather than putting a lid over the entire United States and much of the eastern Pacific Ocean as proposed, it seems more reasonable to put a lid over North Korea, a country slightly smaller than Mississippi’. The reason why this option has not been taken up yet is because it is also the most problematic one; for a discussion, see Coyle (2001), Eisendrath, Marsh and Goodman (2001), Smith (2002a). A ballistic missile (BM), as opposed to a cruise missile, is initially a rocket that can operate outside the earth’s atmosphere. BMs are classified by the maximum distance they can travel, which is a combined function of how powerful the missile’s engines are and the weight of the missile’s warhead. A general distinction is made between short-, medium-, intermediate-range, and intercontinental ballistic missiles. Within that classification, long-range ballistic missiles are technologically complex weapon systems. They have a short period of powered flight when they are launched towards their destination and then continue on an unpowered, ballistic trajectory, arching back down to earth to reach their target destination. Long-range ballistic missiles are designed to travel through space in their trajectory from launch point to target (National Institute for Public Policy 2000). At these ranges, only the re-entry vehicle reaches the target on earth (the tip on the warhead

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that carries the payload). Most long-range missiles are now armed with nuclear agents, but can also carry biological, chemical and conventional weapons. As opposed to a cruise missile or a bomber that travels for several hours, an ICBM travels at extremely high speed, which makes it enormously difficult to respond to it in time. From a launch in the Soviet Union to a target in the US, a missile takes 30 minutes or less. The warhead, which will then detach from the missile, is carried by gravity to its intended target and therefore moves at many times faster than the speed of sound (MacKenzie 1990). When long-range ballistic missiles were first deployed by the US and the former Soviet Union in 1950, they carried one single warhead contained in a re-entry vehicle (a warhead that can re-enter the atmosphere, the RV). Now, missiles cannot only carry multiple re-entry vehicles (MRVs), they can also have different targets, and ICBMs can carry up to ten multiple and independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). There have been sincere efforts to reduce the upgrade of multiple warheads. The Strategic Arms Reduction (START) Treaty II, for instance, calls for a ban on deployment of MIRVs on ICBMs. The Treaty was signed in 1993 by the US and Russia, but the US Senate once again failed to ratify it in 1999 (National Institute for Public Policy 2000), which means it still (at the time of writing) has to enter into force. In addition to MIRVs, the use of decoys has also been problematic. Decoys are false warheads and represent one of the many counter-measures that have been invented to divert an antimissile system’s attention away from the real payload. This could mean that, in an attempt to destroy one of the many incoming warheads, the ‘wrong’ one could be taken out, leaving the deadly payload to reach its target undestroyed. For an overview and comparison of the Clinton and second Bush administration’s missile defence budgets, see Lindsay and O’Hanlon (2002). For an update on states and numbers, see Arms Control Association (2001b). In fact, the MTCR was originally intended to buttress the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) (Smith 2002b). For an overview and debate on MTCR, see Smith (2002b). In a collection of essays published by the Henry L. Stimson Centre, several experts based in South Asia speculated how states would probably react to any US deployment of national- and theatre missile defence systems and what effect their actions would have on regional security, see Bender (2002) and Krepon and Gagne (2002). For an overview of the vast amount of counter-measures, see Sessler et al. (2000). For a concise overview of the early debates over weapons in space, see Moltz (2002). For a comprehensive overview of past and present US nuclear stockpiles and forces, see Natural Resources Defence Council (2002). Let’s not forget, the technologies to develop re-entry vehicles are very complex, both to control the vehicle’s behaviour and to cope with the heating

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NMD and foreign policy discourse

Much of the modern studies on foreign policy and national security are pre-occupied with what Hugh Gusterson (1996, 222) describes as ‘policy positivism’. The term suggests that the overall majority of the security literature is predicated on a so-called ‘expert’ debate (especially in the realm of military technologies) that has as its purpose the production of knowledge aimed primarily at a specific policy outcome. The invocation of such positivist agenda carries a huge burden for foreign policy analyses. This is so precisely because the process of composing a policy tends to take for granted a whole set of assumptions, which remain largely unquestioned, and encodes and reifies those same presuppositions. The argument of ‘policy positivism’, in other words, tends to assume a technical and situational context similar to the one already existing at the time, and goes on to examine policy problems that are present within that context to derive their meaning from it (Luke 1989). As an inexorable result, such policy positivism – more often than not – underpins the debate over the subject matter itself. It excludes the, perhaps less obvious, possibilities of seeing why and how certain policies have become of interest. One only needs to examine, as in Gusterson’s case, the trope of nuclear weapons, which has more often than not been reduced to its association with the strategy of deterrence. The weapons have become meaningful because of their role for a certain security strategy. Thus, nuclear weapons are seen as a legitimised tool for producing sophisticated technologies to deter, or threaten, an opponent. This process ignores, however, the fact that deterrence itself is only a hypothetical construct to make sense of certain assumptions about military capabilities. As a consequence, the discussion over nuclear proliferation itself has been limited to a set of presuppositions whereby a concern about the weapons’ destructiveness outside the assumed context has been pushed to the margins. Addressing this notion, Gusterson (1996, 222) proposes that we must confront policy positivism as a dictum of ‘a single, or most ‘realistic’ set

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of policies in regard to nuclear weapons and that it is the purpose of public policy debate and expert discourse on nuclear weapons, through the power of reason, to finally determine what those policies are.’ The national missile defence debate is obscured exactly by such policy positivism. Insofar as NMD is governed by a belief in the narratives of assumed and unquestioned sets of threats to US national security, while, simultaneously, the missile proliferation issue itself is presented in terms of the assumed technological and strategic certitude of NMD. Both processes limit the analysis to a concern with policy outcomes centred on notions of a fixed understanding of threat, dangers and the ‘appropriate’ responses thereto. In their most abstract, the questions surrounding missile defence focus on the issue of whether NMD can go beyond its task of defending the US and ultimately contribute to limiting worldwide missile proliferation. This notion stems from the popular belief that the defence project would discourage other countries in their efforts to invest further into the acquisition of long-range missiles (see Chapter 3). The Nuclear Posture Review (2001), for instance, describes NMD as a way to ‘deter aggressors’ and ‘frustrate enemy plans’ because it generates the notion that an attack against the US would be unsuccessful. However, more common are the questions as to whether the system is functional or not, when it would be deployable and at what costs. For a positivist debate about producing the ‘right technologies’ to take place, a great number of elements are assumed, whilst other aspects are systematically excluded from it. In contrast, by offering a view on foreign policy as a boundary producing performance in which the domains of us and them, self and other, inside and outside are constituted through the perpetual writing and rewriting of externalised threats, we can shift our commitment to discussing NMD from a belief in pre-given threats and policies to a concern with the constitution of the very same. In other words, by looking at the new missile threats to national security from that perspective, I suggest here that the NMD plan be viewed not as a responding military strategy, but as an ensemble of political practices that operate through the logic of identity and difference, inclusion and exclusion. When addressing the question as to why there is such an interest in NMD deployment despite its costs and complexity, the main argument put forward is the one of an urgent and evolving threat of an attack against the US. Indeed, the discussion about NMD is thoroughly centred on the assumption that there is, quite unquestionably, an outside threat. For its study on NMD in August 2003, the US General Accounting Office (2003b, 2) prepared a report for a number of House and Senate Committees, in which it invoked the following facts:

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A number of countries hostile to the United States and its allies have or will soon have missiles capable of delivering nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons. To counter this threat, the DoD’s [Department of Defense] Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is developing a system to defeat ballistic missiles (emphasis added).

Yet, is the missile threat to the US really so obvious?1 How have we arrived at the powerful notion of an impending threat conducive to NMD? Consider the following: In 1998, North Korea staged a surprise test flight of its Taepo Dong-1 long-range ballistic missile (‘surprise’ means here ‘unknown’ to US intelligence).2 The test was unsuccessful. It was not targeted at US territory, and launched into the Sea of Japan. Even if it had been successful, as well as targeted at the US, that particular missile simply had no capacity to reach the North American continent (Boese 2003a). As for the chance of developing a missile that can do so, North Korea has been working on its follow-up Taepo Dong-2 ballistic missile (which has been tested in 2006 – again, unsuccessfully). Again, there are contradictory accounts as to the capability and readiness of this new long-range missile. A CIA spokesman claims that this second version of the Taepo Dong might well be able to hit parts of continental United States – it might also not. Thus, the same intelligence expert admits, the argument of a threat from this missile for the US remains largely speculative (Boese 2003a).3 Regardless of some of the doubts as to Pyongyang’s missile capabilities and intentions, North Korea has been at the core of threats identified in support of the deployment of NMD and as outlined in the Rumsfeld Report of 1998. The Report leaves no doubt that North Korea belongs to a number of ‘overtly or potentially hostile nations [likely] to acquire ballistic missiles’. In similar fashion, former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen (1999) saw the first round of tests in 1998 as a strong indicator that the US ‘will face a rogue nation missile threat to our homeland against which we will have to defend the American people’. So rigid is this ensuing threat prediction that it begs the question how states such as North Korea, with an arguably ambiguous ICBM capability, have been considered as more dangerous than states with a very clear ICBM capability (such as Russia, or Great Britain for that matter). Furthermore, one must wonder how North Korea has indeed become a threat to the US, taking into account that it has neither attacked the same nor even explicitly threatened to aim a missile at the US. Turning towards these kinds of questions, we should raise serious concern with respect to the ways in which certain events and places become more dangerous than others (bearing in mind, again, that this is not to

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doubt any of the risks involved in countries acquiring missiles). David Campbell (1998a) makes the compelling case that Iraq, for instance, became a danger to the US, a so-called foreign policy problem, when it invaded Kuwait in 1990. Although it was not the US that had been invaded, this event was seen as a fact that could be understood as something dangerous. Yet, as Campbell (1998, 1) asserts, ‘danger is not an objective condition’ and thus nothing can of itself constitute a danger or threat, but is dependent on those to whom it may become threatening.4 Pursuing this line of thought further, it is not difficult to argue that threats, such as from Iraq (or North Korea for that matter) cannot exist in, and of, themselves but are understood as such only discursively. In other words, what a threat is does not already exist outside discourse but only becomes a threat through an act of interpretation within a particular, known context. If there is no pre-given meaning of threat then nothing can be intrinsically more or less dangerous than something else (Campbell 1993b). Instead, what constitutes a danger or what becomes a threat to someone, and that which does not, is confined to an established framework of meaning that exhibits the (strenuous) relationship between what is interpreted and the ‘real’ facts that compose the object or the event. For example, if we were merely to compare the numbers and type of weapons and military force at the disposal of both the US and North Korea, one might conclude that this would surely make the former ‘more dangerous’ than the latter. Yet, the context in which we see these weapons within our knowledge of the North Korean regime leads to a different interpretation. How have we come to believe, for example, that a North Korean nuclear arsenal is more threatening than that of the US? Why would the world be safer with American weapons, but needed to be rid of North Korean ones? It suffices to say that this act of interpretation reflects certain characteristics that are intrinsic less to the ‘object of concern’ (here, North Korean missiles) but more to the interpreter (here, the US foreign policy establishment; Campbell 1998a).5 Foreign policy is a practice central to the above notion of ‘narrative activity’. It is the writings of foreign policy that communicate the terms of the ‘what’ and ‘who’ of threat with regard to the ‘what’ and ‘who’ of the threatened. In this sense, it becomes a foreign policy and a possible discursive act to determine the non-objective boundaries between the missile capabilities of, let’s say, North Korea and those of the US. What is constitutive of such articulations is a particular context or understanding of the interpreter and the interpreted, inside and outside, and self and other, which I summon in this book as being constitutive of the logic of (American) identity. In other words, there is a framework in place through which Iraq becomes more dangerous and North Korea

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becomes a threat to the US due to interpretations of ‘irrational’ leadership, ‘backward’ lifestyle, ‘unfamiliar’ religion and simply ‘non-Western’ way of thinking that are alien to the US and differ from a certain US understanding of international norms and values. This interpretation is vital for those in whose name such foreign policy speaks: seeing and acting against an irrational and non-Western other reproduces a nationstate’s identity of being rational and Western, and protecting against the invasion of a backward lifestyle determines the protected community as the modern one.6 The intersection of foreign policy and identity, as I suggested earlier, has implications for the reading of threat in reference to the NMD debate. Whilst there is an empirical analysis of a contemporary security strategy at stake (the ‘facts’), the need for a defence system rests on an interpretation of threat, which says less about the ‘facts’ than about the interpreter. Thus, the most relevant thing to be said about my intervention here is that certain ways of posing a question are more fruitful than others. In addition to the ‘what’ question (as in ‘what threat’), there is a strong concern with the ‘how’ question of threat: How has the specific perception of a hostile missile threat been made possible, and how has the illustration of North Korea as a threat to the US been understood as requiring a complex military strategy? How is the vision of a future missile capability of a certain nation problematised? NMD constructs a discursive or social space that gives rise to a performance that renders these questions as meaningful. The threatening capabilities of the socalled ‘rogue states’ do not exist independently – nor do their supposed hostile intentions towards the US. Admittedly, this is not to say that North Korea might not conduct research into more capable missile technologies, as witnessed in the staged ICBM test flight of 1998 and, more recently, 2006. This is also not to say that this does not constitute real and physical risks in the world – any missile launch and subsequent hit constitutes such physical danger. To be sure, the spread of missile technology cannot, and must not, be ignored and the acquisition of the latest ballistic missile programs by more states does indeed testify an observable development in proliferation. This book does not claim otherwise. However, this is to say that the assessment that an emerging missile state poses a threat (as opposed to a mere risk) to the US is neither apparent nor inevitable. What if? The United States is more open to a sudden attack than Poland was in 1939. (Edward Teller quoted in Linenthal 1989, 7)

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The influence of ‘what if ’ statements and worse case scenarios in highly published security pamphlets is powerful: the National Intelligence Council projected in its 1999 estimate that the US would most likely face an ICBM threat in the next fifteen years from Russia, China, North Korea, probably from Iran and possibly from Iraq (NIE 1999). Taking a closer look at these threat assessments, Russia and China are currently the only countries in possession of an ICBM capability that can, with certainty, reach the North American continent. With regard to both states, the report further stipulates that the Russian threat will continue to be ‘the most robust and lethal’ as Russia will maintain ‘as many nuclear weapons on ballistic missiles as its economy will allow’. China, on the other hand, is said to be likely to have ‘tens of missiles capable of targeting the United States’ (NIE 1999). The previously commissioned Rumsfeld Report (1998) had been taken into account for this particular intelligence estimate and suggested that the US was vulnerable to these missiles in a situation described as a ‘possible accidental, unauthorised and erroneous’ attack by China or Russia. With reference to Russia in particular, it was argued that there is an increasing risk of ‘an accident or loss of control’ over Russian ballistic missile forces if the political situation in Russia ‘were to deteriorate’. Alternative understandings and juxtapositionings are possible – consider the following counter-arguments: Wilkening (2000) finds that more probable and likely threats exist than the assumed accidental attack by certain states. In his research the author argues that, in fact, an accidental collision between an asteroid and the Earth is more likely than an unauthorised attack by China or Russia. It is known that China has both warheads and fuel stored separately from their missiles, which makes the risk of an accidental launch very unlikely. Furthermore, compared to Russia, the Chinese strategic nuclear arsenal of twenty singlewarhead ICBMs is only a fraction the size of Russia’s and far less sophisticated (Gertz 1998). And finally, in response to arguments that Russian missiles may constitute a ‘lethal’ threat as well as the concerns about a failure in the security maintenance that have been raised many times due to the regime’s economic weakness, other developments have seemingly been excluded in the threat assessment: It should be borne in mind, for example, that despite the fact that Russia’s arsenal remains still very large since the end of the Cold War, the number of Russian ICBM launches has been reduced by half from 1989 to 1996 (from 1,378 to 775).7 It seems, as Doty (1996, 13) has aptly put it, that alternative representations indeed exist though they are ‘either marginalized or systematically silenced’. Why would the reduction in missile launches be less meaningful than the hypothetical case of an accidental launch?

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The Rumsfeld Report (1998) furthermore identified North Korea, Iraq and Iran as enemies of the US with an interest in building ICBMs that could threaten the American people. The unclassified summary stated that any of these nations, given a high priority program, enough money and technology, could obtain within five years – by exchange among themselves, or from Russia and China – the ability to build a few, inaccurate ICBMs that could carry a nuclear warhead to the US. Turning towards the above ‘facts’ surrounding North Korea, Iran and Iraq, one might say that a rogue state, by definition of being ‘rogue’, does not possess long-range missiles that are capable of reaching the US. As John and Karl Mueller (2000) point out, the concern to list ballistic missiles as a litany of post-Cold War dangers is substantially misplaced when applied to rogue states. With regard to the anticipated acquisition of capabilities, one must remember how small and economically weak North Korea is – a country intermittently hit by famine with a GNP only 4 per cent that of Taiwan (Eisendrath, Marsh, Goodman 2001). It should, moreover, be considered that the US has indeed shown a, more or less successful, record of negotiations with North Korea that has halted the testing facilities in the past.8 With regard to Iran, it has yet to test any ICBM capability, whilst Iraq’s ballistic missile program lags even farther behind than those of North Korea and Iran (Lindsay and O’Hanlon 2001).9 Conventionally, missiles such as the Iraqi Scud are still so inaccurate that it would require approximately 3,700 of them armed with conventional weapons to achieve a 50 per cent chance of destroying a soft command centre. As US General Norman Schwartzkopf put it, the Scud (in the hands of one rogue state) is the ‘military equivalent of a mosquito’ (Schwartzkopf quoted in Mueller and Mueller 2000, 169). Without going into much technical detail, one has to bear in mind that a missile in its function as a ‘means of delivery’ for biological or chemical agents needs to disperse its payload in a spray at a very low altitude – something which requires a warhead of enormous sophistication. Iran, for instance, has only recently – in 2000 – successfully tested its medium-range missile, which is ‘only’ capable of reaching targets in Saudi Arabia, Israel and Turkey. The missile has never been tested to its claimed range of an ICBM and is highly inaccurate with again only about a 50 per cent chance of landing within 4 km of its target (Eisendrath, Marsh and Goodman 2001). Taking Iran, Iraq and North Korea (as well as progressively Syria and Libya) together, it is also important to note that their military spending has fallen by 70 per cent since the late 1980s. This also means that their arms imports are barely 10 per cent of what they once were. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) has found that armoured threats, like

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that posed by Iraq in 1990, are rapidly diminishing. The DIA also calculates that by 2005 such threats are likely to be less than 20 per cent as large as those of the early 1990s. More generally speaking, without the technical support, funds and arms once provided by superpower patrons themselves, yesterday’s rogue ‘giants’ have lost the capacity to equip, train, sustain or employ armed forces of the size and quality typical of the 1980s (General Accounting Office 1999). These figures stand almost in no relation to the weapons available to the US. When contemplating the need for national missile defence, it is true to say that Americans are not really defenceless at all, even if they were threatened directly on a large scale. In the case of North Korea, for instance, the modern South Korean military force that was at times supported by some 35,000 US troops in South Korea, plus the simple prospect that the US might use its nuclear capabilities, are arguably already a good defence against any North Korean action. As an official was paraphrased, the North Koreans know that a missile attack on the US ‘would result in the vaporization of Pyongyang’ (in Sanger 2006). Moreover, the military spending of the US in relation to rogue states reflects this – whereas in 1985 the US spent ‘only’ 65 per cent as much on defence as potential rogue states did taken together, it spent more than twice as much as these states in 2001. In other words, US military spending has improved by a factor of more than three in relation to rogues – from only 65 per cent of their total in the 1980s to more than 200 per cent today. In real numbers that means America already pays out more annually on missile defence, roughly $4.5 billion per year, than the estimated total military budgets of Iraq and North Korea combined. And this is without considering any additional features, such as satellite networks (Eisendrath, Marsh and Goodman 2001). The sobering juxtapositioning presented here tend to have little impact on the pervasive ‘what if ’ predictions and worse case scenarios. The inevitable effect of such constant reminders of immanent threats is a result from the identification of any possibility of vulnerability. The effect is summoned best in the words Joseph Cirincione, the director of the Carnegie Endowment’s non-proliferation project, who noted that the increasing ICBM threats by so-called ‘rogue states’ have absolutely nothing to do with any acceleration of missile development in those countries that were only recently relabelled as forming an ‘axis of evil’. Instead, we can observe a series of changes in the criteria that the intelligence agencies consider as threatening (again, the process of problematisation lies with the interpreter and not the interpreted). What poses a threat, as opposed to a risk, is the judgment of a possible ‘offensive intention’, thus, the hostile objective of a state to use any existent and

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future capabilities and, more importantly, direct them against the US. This said, the assumptions of threat have to be understood as a very specific discourse. The group of rogue states is problematised as a potential foreign policy problem not only on the basis of missile capabilities, but also because of a behaviour that has been identified as rogue and understood as hostility on the international level. Considering this, there are two questions that need to be investigated. First, how has the weapon at play, the ballistic missile, come to be associated with a threat to the US in the first place? Here we should consider that, for instance, the designated threatening states have never deployed a missile in the direction of the North American continent. Secondly, how is a group of states associated with hostile and irrational behaviour, and what do these attributes comprise of?

Giving meaning to ballistic missiles The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. (Rumsfeld Report 1998)

There are many ways to ‘see’ a missile: It can be a peacekeeper, an offensive weapon, a token of security or a symbol of vulnerability (Gusterson 1996). In the latter sense, the director of counter-proliferation research at the National Defense University, Robert Joseph, sees long-range missiles as ‘particularly valuable instruments of coercion to hold American and allied cities hostage and thereby deter us from intervention’ (House Armed Service Committee 2000, 69). Some see ballistic missiles as a symbol of the risks of proliferation (Schmid 2001). Others, however, such as the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), see ballistic missiles as political instruments that do not even have to be launched in order to be understood in a threatening way. Instead, ‘possessing a ballistic missile obviously implies to potential enemies that it can be used’ (NIPP 2000, 1). For the Institute, threats need not be made explicit and to consider the possibility of a missile launch is sufficient enough to represent a threat. Whereas, scholars such as Navias (1991, 3) see ballistic missiles ‘simply’ as a dangerous weapon plainly because of their capabilities as marked by ‘a missile’s rapidity to hit, the difficulty to destroy it, and the destructiveness of its payload’. NMD proponents, on the one hand, see missiles as threatening because more than 38 countries possess them, with more countries likely to acquire missiles in the coming decade and possibly willing to use them in an offensive attack against the US. The NMD critics, on the other hand, as represented, for example, by Lindsay and O’Hanlon (2001, 51) from the Brookings Institute, might also see the image of the US ‘amid a sea of hostile countries armed with

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missiles’ as alarming, yet question whether this really describes the world we [Americans] live in. What is clear is that there is no pre-given offensive, or threatening meaning to a ballistic missile. Rather what a missile is in a foreign policy context derives from a multiplicity of interconnected meanings. These meanings have been allocated to this weapon in a series of discourses pending on a particular circumstance or experience.10 To be sure, a ballistic missile in its function as a means of delivering a destructive payload provides it with the given meaning of a general risk. Nevertheless, the mere fact of a missile installation ‘does not, and cannot, determine that meaning’ (Weldes 1999a, 1). Instead, the US objection to missiles as a serious foreign policy crisis is based upon a more elaborate set of meanings, which become attached to a situation, event, or people. As such, the perception of missiles as threatening can be seen as part of ‘a structure of well-established meanings and social relations out of which representations of the world are created’ (Weldes 1999a, 10).11 According to Weldes, these representations belong to an existing construct, a vision or a map, utilised to make sense of the world. In her view, this way of making sense is truly indispensable for state performances. States, or the officials acting as the state, need to establish an understanding about that which is of national interest, that which needs to be protected and that which needs to be secured against. In order to ascertain this essential understanding, state officials must have some knowledge of the surroundings and some specification of their goals. Applying these thoughts to the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, US officials functioned within the familiar postwar US security imaginary (or map), which permitted the representation of the international system as one of the Cold War and to understand the Cuban missiles as a crisis known in its meaning for US national security therein.12 Placing these findings into the framework of the current US missile defence plans, one can make similar observations. Stripping missiles of their supposed pre-given threatening or offensive meaning, one can read the arguments of a ballistic missile threat as a representation of events that are placed in a framework of familiar objects and meanings. In the case of NMD and the articulation of a ‘crisis’ of missile proliferation, the understanding of threat is less derivative of an experience with missile attacks themselves but more so from the rogue context – the weapon state – in which they are situated. This is emphasised when looking at the ‘history’ of missile attacks against the US. The US has come to feel threatened by a possible missile attack, though an enemy ballistic missile has never landed on US territory. There are cases, of course, in which the US was involved in military conflict that saw the

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exchange of ballistic missiles. Yet, the instances when troops were targeted are limited to hostilities within an existing conflict situation and, thus, do not necessarily bear a resemblance to a hostile motivation towards the US in itself, let alone a surprise attack towards the American continent that would demand an all-embracing defence mechanism. For instance, in 1986 Libya fired two short-range ballistic missiles at a US Coast Guard navigation station off the coast of Italy – yet, one would argue that it did so in response to a prior US air strike. Another example constitutes the US-led Operation Desert Storm in the Gulf region, where the US was attacked by Iraqi Scud missiles whilst fighting against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Having been exposed to a missile attack of a similar kind to the ones above, and thus, limited to an existing conflict abroad, one must furthermore question the anticipated missile threat in terms of the casualties it has caused. Although every death caused by a missile is tragic and unnecessary, the examples of missile deployments used here initiated less death and injury than could have been caused through accidents in everyday life. Even though US Patriot interceptor missiles were largely ineffective during the Gulf War, the 27 to 30 Iraqi Scud missiles that showered down on Israel caused one death directly – and three by heart attack (though a Scud killed 28 US troops directly when it hit a barracks in Saudi Arabia) (Mueller and Mueller 2000). For purposes of comparison, a single suicide bomber could expect to kill and injure dozens of people.13 Regardless of this, President George W. Bush issued a directive in 2003 regarding his approach to immediately defend the US homeland and its people from a possible missile attack by formulating his objective to ‘devalue missiles as tools of extortion and aggression’ (White House Speech 2003). It should be clear, then, that the acquisition of a missile capability cannot mean a status of threat conducive to NMD. The frameworks of meaning in which missiles are located in the post-Cold War era are constitutive of something else – the Soviet aggression through which missiles became threatening has been replaced by the representation of an unknown security challenge by rogue states.

Of self and other: The rogue states doctrine revisited Madeleine Albright has all of a sudden decided that she is going to magically rename Iran, Iraq, Syria and Libya. To me, they are still rogue states. I guess to the White House they are nations of concern. I don’t know what happened with a one-day time period to change that classification, but to me they are still rogue states. (Representative of Pennsylvania Curt Weldon 2000, 43)

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The purpose of exploring the unquestioned assumptions of a particular threat is not to deny the existence of it, but to portray the apparent interest in NMD deployment as not obvious. The purpose of taking both points of conspicuous interest and discursive performativity together is to pave the way for ultimately making arguments about the relationship of missile defence to identity. Identity, as a reminder, is important for the questions of increasing interest in NMD in ways that see the defence strategy as a practice that reproduces a US image of the self, the American self against the rogue missile other, and the outside missile threat against the defensive inside community. Considering this, I want to place US identity vis-à-vis the rogue states image. The focus is here on how the other has been illustrated in the missile proliferation context and how this stands in relation to US identity. To start with, missile proliferation has been considered as an uncontrollable development with an uncertainty as to the exact acquisition, location and target of ballistic missiles. Within this framework, the representation of the so-called ‘rogue states’ is vital. Over the last few years a new concept has taken on heightened emphasis in the public rhetoric of American policy makers – the ‘rogue state’ and the related ‘pariah’ and ‘outlaw state’ designations. The Bottom-Up Review (BUR 1993) that was commissioned by former President Bill Clinton and which presented a landmark foreign policy text in its articulation of the emerging rogue threat to US national security. Labelled by the Review as the ‘new dangers’, the illustrated attributes of the ‘rogue’ have since then come to determine a notion of hostility, uncertain attack and vulnerability. Following this, the ‘rogue’ has not only become a trope in which the identity/difference logic is at play. Furthermore, it shows that its location in the proliferation imagery lends interest to the deployment of adefence shield as a threat management legitimised by the knowledge of, and about, the ‘rogue’ other. Colin Gray (1993, 29) has argued, unambiguously, that the most important fact to know about a weapon, or a missile for that matter, is ‘who owns it’. In this sense, Wendt (1995, 73) has observed that the British ownership of 500 nuclear weapons is ‘less threatening to the United States than 5 North Korean weapons’. In a similar way, Israel, India and Pakistan have missiles in development with estimated ranges of between 1,200 and 2,000 miles with the latter two having nuclear capabilities, or, Brazil and Japan both have active space-launch programs that could be converted into ICBM programs (though both states are not currently seeking to develop long-range missiles). Yet, it is none of these countries that are viewed as threatening from a US perspective, but instead it is a group of rogue states, namely Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

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In this context, consider the following example: in 1998, President Clinton declared Iraq, again, to be a rogue state. Barely ten years before though, towards the end of the 1980s, the Iraqi regime led by Saddam Hussein was not rogue. Back then, Saddam was a friend and trading partner. Back then, there was no reason to regard Iraq as rogue, let alone act or defend against Iraq, when Saddam violently moved against the Kurds in 1988. Quite the opposite was the case, as he was rewarded with money, intelligence and massive arms transfers (Mutimer 2000). Now, however, Iraq represents a group of states that is described by Charles Krauthammer as ‘relatively small, peripheral, and backward states [that] will be able to emerge rapidly as threats not only to regional but to world security’ (Krauthammer quoted in Mutimer 2000, 78). This is seen as a true and acceptable proposition to make, for Iraq most violently invaded Kuwait in 1990. And this time, this act is said to constitute a clear danger to international peace, security and Western interests. The invasion of Kuwait is claimed to exemplify a rogue act endangering stability and peace, as opposed to the US-backed Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. This latter incident not only caused more deaths than the Kuwait invasion, but was also in breach of the 1978 Security Council resolution – the symbol for maintaining peace – which ordered Israel to withdraw from Lebanon (Chomsky 2000). Against this background, it seems plausible to ask how Iraq, and not Israel, has emerged as a (proliferation) threat to the US, as rogue? Indeed, what makes Iraq rogue? The following sets of questions raised towards the logic by which states become threats appear useful: Does the mere existence of some condition or the possession of some capability suffice to constitute a threat, or is the demonstrated intent to do harm required? For example, where nuclear weapons are concerned, is a country that possesses (or is pursuing the development of) such weapons ipso facto a threat? Is a nuclear-armed France a threat? Would a nuclear-armed Germany be? Is a nuclear-armed China a threat? Would a nuclear-armed Japan be? Would a nuclear-armed Iraq be a threat? Is a nuclear-armed Israel? Was the Soviet Union a threat, or is the absence of the Soviet Union a threat? (Foster 1994, 65–66)

What these questions highlight is that the evidence of ‘risk’ in terms of the mere existence of military capabilities is not what constitutes a threat. The principal impetus behind the perception of a threat by an other is thus less a performance of that foreign entity, than a performance of the one in whose name that perception speaks, and of the one in whose name the policies against that foreign other operate. Thus, from a US perspective, the deployment of ICBMs by certain states has come to mean something that is understood as threatening. So how has the ‘proliferation

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image’, as Mutimer (2000, 79) calls it, been located in such a way as to be understood as meaningful, and more so, as threatening in relation to only a handful of states? This question is addressed best with reference to the concept of identity, about which we know that it is ‘established in relation to a series of differences that have become socially recognised’ (Connolly 1991, 64). In this sense, the image of rogue states has come to constitute the world by rendering objects as meaningful as objects of a certain kind – that of a hostile weapon state. The articulation of something as rogue is exactly what draws the lines of superiority and inferiority, between us and them, in relation to Western society, values and culture. The ways in which such hierarchical demarcation can be performed and how it can become indispensable for the object of the self is of course most magnificently illustrated in Edward Said’s (1979) work, Orientalism.14 Said illustrates the constitution of an Eastern other in the example of the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. The author reveals how the necessity of a British invasion was justified in the form of supremacy that is associated with a certain accepted, and comes to mind as ‘our’, knowledge of Egypt. As he puts it, ‘Egypt is what England knows’ (1979, 39; emphasis added). To ‘know’ means to have the power to dominate and have authority to determine the lines of supremacy versus inferiority. Furthermore, that knowledge is reinforced by action. The occupation of Egypt, for instance, underscored the image of British superiority and supremacy at the same time as it undermined Egypt’s authority and legitimacy (what Said considers to be the ‘vindication of Western imperialism’). The very power and scope of the ‘Orientalism’ discourse produced a fair amount of mythology of the mysterious East, notions of Asian inscrutability, and primitive tribal tales, which contributed to a particular logic of classification by which Western society can judge and legitimise its action towards the East (Said 1979). As Said (1979, 39) pertinently observes, ‘men have always divided the world up into regions having either real or imagined distinction from each other’. Understood in this way, Said’s ‘Orientalism’ as part of the East versus West logic constitutes a system of representation, framed by a whole set of rules and procedures that allowed the construct of the Orient to bring the West into being, and that can be applied to other cases.15 The Western self is constituted by estranging the non-Western other; indeed it is naturalised by pathologising the Other (Campbell 1998a). As Campbell argues: At one time or another, European and American discourse has inscribed women, the working class, Eastern Europeans, Jews, blacks, criminals,

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coloreds, mulattos, Africans, drug addicts, Arabs, the insane, Asians, the Orient, the Third World, terrorists, and others through tropes that have written their identity as inferior, often in terms of their being a mob or horde (sometimes passive and sometimes threatening) that is without culture, devoid of morals, infected with disease, lacking in industry, incapable of achievement, prone to be unruly, inspired by emotion, given to passion, indebted to tradition, or . . . whatever ‘we’ are not. (Campbell 1998a, 89)

With Said’s contribution in mind, two elements are particularly valuable for seeing NMD as a similar identity-producing performance. On the one hand, following the notion of ‘Orientalism’, one can explore the ways in which missile defence constitutes the articulation of a rogue other through which, the opposite, US identity comes into being. On the other hand, the rogue object is made intelligible as rogue within the security context of worldwide proliferation. Put differently, the making of the rogue other is not an ‘innocent exercise’ but is most inexorably linked to how the self is understood (Shapiro 1988, 101). As Shapiro (1988, 101–102) summarises aptly: A self construed with a security-related identity leads to the construction of Otherness on the axis of threats or lack of threats to that security, while a self identified as one engaged in ‘crisis management’ – a current selfunderstanding of American foreign policy thinking – will create modes of Otherness on a ruly versus unruly axis.

Surely, the discursive meanings of what precisely constitutes a threat in terms of a ‘mode of otherness’ may be manifold. But mostly, there need not even be an action to provide a perceived threat, but merely an alternative mode of being. The designated being of the other can be seen as exposing features that may be unfamiliar with Western culture, liberal economies, concepts of democracy, statehood and religion. Such are the discourses on North Korea, for example, often related to an already established, and contested, US understanding of communism. This unfamiliarity is often equated to (tribal) disorder and unpredictability. Once the imaginary of this kind of difference is established on the grounds of a constructed hostility, it is only necessary to invoke the mere existence (as well as future possibility of the same) of military capabilities – missile capabilities – to establish an incontrovertible transformation into otherness (Klein 1994). In this sense, the notion of rogue states and nuclear outlaws has become a very recurrent theme of such threatening other. From assumptions of uncontrollable acquisition of missile capabilities to the bulwark against irrational, hostile and evil behaviour, the rogue state has become a mode of interpretation of a place or event that seeks to permanently challenge the US (or Western)

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security context. As President George W. Bush remarked to students at the National Defense University in May 2001, the threats to the US do not come from thousands of Russian nuclear-armed missiles but ‘from a small number of missiles in the hands of these states . . . for whom terror and blackmail are a way of life’ (White House Speech 2001b). The image of rogue states is thus used to portray a threat to the prevailing order, the spread of democracy and international standards against nuclear and chemical proliferation. Assuming such a role, rogues are often deemed the ‘wilful violator of the international rules’ and, most importantly, said to deserve counter-action (Herring 2000, 189). The mode of rogue discourse encompasses a range of metaphors, memories and vilifications. Originally, the term ‘rogue’ was reserved for states with what was described ‘repulsive’ domestic behaviour. Examples include that of Pol Pot’s Cambodia with actions that seemingly manifested themselves in a self-imposed isolation. From there, the image of ‘rogue-ness’ was filled with known evildoers of the past, for example, the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990 was compared with Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 (Selfa 1999). In this respect, the rogue Iraqi regime lead by Saddam Hussein was compared to Adolf Hitler’s Nazi regime. Here, the Pentagon did not shy away from releasing a paper, entitled ‘From Hitler to Hussein: The need for missile defence’ (Garamone 2001b). The image of a rogue Iraq is thus associated with terms that are already known and suggestive of a particular traumatic and evil ‘problem’. Immediately, images of violence, death and suspicion come to mind. From here, it is not far to suggest, as the National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2002 does, that rogue regimes ‘become a looming threat to all nations’. Looking at these comparisons, however, is not motivated by a concern as to whether there is, and permanently will be, an other in the forging of identity. It is rather guided by a notion of analysing the performance of the ways in which the re-articulation of self and other is indeed taking place and to what effect.16 If we bring up the BottomUp Review again, US official documents speak of ‘rogue-missile attacks’ by states with ‘misguided behaviour’ and ‘aggressive policies’ (US Department of Defense 1992). The National Security Strategy (2002) of the US maintained that rogues ‘share a number of attributes’, according to which they: [Brutalise] their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers, display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbours, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party, are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats

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or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes, sponsor terrorism around the globe; and reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.

A rogue state in view of this has been portrayed as not occupying the same (hence, US) moral grounds, paradigms of democracy and order, and liberal economic values. The hostile other has thereby become an integral part of Western, or US, identity formation. Noam Chomsky (2000) associates here too uses for the term ‘rogue states’: a propagandistic one, applied to designated enemies, and a literal use that applies to states that do not regard themselves as bound by international norms. Chomsky (2000, 30) goes on to argue that a rogue is not simply a ‘criminal state, but one that defies the orders of the powerful’. Internationally, this other has been perceived as occupying space outside the ‘normal rules’. As such, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright (1998) has described rogue states as a group of states that ‘not only do not have a part in the international system, but whose very being outside of it [results in] throwing, literally, hand grenades inside in order to destroy it’. The association with these norm-defying attributes are particularly prevalent in narratives about Third World countries. Since the 1980s, concern over the spread of advanced military capabilities in certain regions began to grow within US intelligence. The first notion of such concern appeared in a report entitled ‘Discriminate Deterrence’, which was composed by the ‘US Commission on Integrated Long-Term Strategy’ in 1988 (in Klare 1995). Commissioned by the Reagan administration in 1986, the panel concentrated on developing a long-term strategic blueprint for the US.17 The main theme of this concept was an emphasis on future Third World ‘problems’, particularly in relation to the growing pace of WMD proliferation. Several of these states determined back then are described today as outlaws or rogue states because of their anticipated anti-Western orientation (Klare 1995). As former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger (1999) put it: We are here to discuss the emerging threats to America’s security as we reach a new century. How do we respond to the threat of terrorists around the world, turning from bullets and bombs to even more insidious and potent weapons? What if they and the rogue states that sponsor them try to attack the critical computer systems that drive our society? What if they seek to use chemical, biological, even nuclear weapons? The United States must deal with these emerging threats now, so that the instruments of prevention develop at least as rapidly as the instruments of disruption (emphasis added).

In his account of missile proliferation in Third World countries, Navias (1991) unpacks the attribution of ‘unfriendliness’ by highlighting the

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relationship between a Western perception of instability and the acquisition of missile technology by Third World regimes. Departing from President Reagan’s concern with the proliferation crisis posed by Third World countries, the paper is at pains to show how the existence of economic instability coupled with a non-democratic leadership provides the context in which missile proliferation is increasingly seen as creating a particular kind of danger: Whereas before, ballistic missiles were seen as offensive weapons against military targets, they are now interpreted as weapons of terror and mass destruction. The intention behind a missile launch is no longer reduced to a mere strategic-military struggle, but is seen as a dissenting attempt by developing nation states that allegedly disregard Western society. The image of terror is regarded as both a sense of uncontrollable misuse of weapons and a destabilising factor with respect to Western efforts of intervention to introduce and maintain what it understands to be order and stability. In view of this, Navias (1991) concludes that ballistic missile proliferation has become attached to an understanding of making Third World countries more difficult to control. This lack of control amounts to a sense of uncertainty and unpredictability as to the use of the missiles. In this sense Gusterson (1996), for instance, revealed during his series of interviews with nuclear scientists at the Livermore laboratories in the US that none of the interviewees expected nuclear weapons to be used in their lifetime unless it was by a Third World country. The knowledge of a rogue state does not only determine the lines between the inferior rogue culture and the superior US set of values and morals; located in the context of images of increasing proliferation, the rogue attributes become also known as a challenge to national security. From the 1990s onwards, the model of a rogue state, ruled by a rogue regime with rogue intentions and armed with a nuclear-tipped ballistic missile, has become the ‘standard of currency of national security discourse’ (Klare 1995, 27). As concerns about a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union decrease, rogue states tend to be linked with such international evils as terrorism (commonly associated with rogues), drug syndicates and organised crime. The concept of pernicious states correspondingly have provided the rational not only for the preservation of a Cold War military arsenal, but also for the purpose of the ‘Star Wars-like’ technology – which would defend against any hypothetical, future missile attack. In other words, if the Cold War foreign policy discourse of a communist other gave rise to security strategies in the forms of heretic hunting and containing (Mutimer 2000), the articulation of an imminent rogue threat has allowed the US to adopt a role of acting defensively, or even pre-emptively, against this threat.

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A mode of otherness has been construed that exhibits ‘unruly’ characteristics and allows the self to engage in a form of ‘threat management’ that similarly reproduces the ‘ruly’ image of the self. President George W. Bush highlighted the use of such a dichotomised mode of categorisation, when he announced in 2002 that ‘some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities’ (White House Speech 2002a). It is the construction of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ that reproduces images of the US self centred on the notion of protecting the prevailing Western order, enabling the spread of democracy and implementing the international standards against missile proliferation. We are compelled, then, to conclude that the US places its foremost motivation for NMD deployment in the existence of rogue regimes. The National Security Strategy (2002) clearly asserts that, ‘given the goals of rogue states and terrorists, the US can no longer solely rely on a reactive posture as we [the US] have done in the past’. On the one hand, missiles can now be acquired by countries that are traditionally seen as unstable and more likely to engage in (regional) conflicts (derivative from notions about Third World countries). On the other hand, the nature of crisis is said to have changed, in that regional conflicts could easily expand globally with the use of intercontinental weaponry. The National Intelligence Estimate (1999) has adopted these points and, quite persistently, propagated them as one of the defining paradigms in post-Cold War American foreign policy. The NIE furthermore contends that the growth in missile capabilities, hence proliferation, is particularly dangerous in its potential to spill over to other regions of the world. A threat, which has been characterised by President George W. Bush as a ‘deadly challenge’ posed by states of a nature and motivation that is determined by obtaining ‘destructive power’ (National Security Strategy 2002). The strategic document says, moreover, that deterrence is now ‘less likely to work against leaders of rogue states more willing to take risks, gambling with the lives of their people’. Adding to the notion of proliferation in certain areas and regions, former US Secretary of State Warren Christopher told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that certain weapons ‘give rogue states disproportionate power, destabilise entire regions, and threaten human and environmental disasters’ (Christopher quoted in Mutimer 2000, 94). And finally, it is argued that missiles in the hands of rogues become ‘tools of intimidation and military aggression’ (National Security Strategy 2002). By characterising the threatening effects of missile proliferation as something that disrupts worldwide stability, the rogue state emerges

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as a space that causes great concern for the state that promotes itself as the guardian of international peace, stability, and democracy – the whole then becomes a contest for national security and the sovereign state. Occupying the negative space of an ‘evil’ entity, the rogue states doctrine, thus, develops a logic of its own: One cannot engage diplomatically, or negotiate peacefully with such an evil enemy. Instead, the process of moralisation and vilification in the rhetoric of us and them, and ‘rogue’ and ‘orderly’ has re-instated a need for a defence system. Robert D. Walpole (1999), former CIA National Intelligence Officer for Strategic and Nuclear Programmes, reflected this notion when he stated: The new missile threats confronting the United States are far different from the Cold War threat during the past three decades. During that period, the ballistic missile threat to the United States involved relatively accurate, survivable, and reliable missiles deployed in large number. Soviet – and to much lesser extent Chinese – strategic forces threatened, as they still do, the potential for catastrophic, nation-killing damage. By contrast, the new missile threats involve states with considerably fewer missiles with less accuracy, yield, survivability, reliability, and range-payload capability than the hostile strategic forces we have faced for thirty years.

In sum: whether we are speaking in terms of discursive articulations of an other in the general Foucauldian sense or in the exemplified terms of Said’s notion of ‘Orientalism’, the specific context of a proliferation ‘problem’ has made the construed picture of a rogue other a credible threat that is understood in the US foreign policy vernacular. I argued that the way in which the rogue difference and rogue danger are portrayed and conceptualised plays a crucial part in constituting the identity of the US. It makes the relationship between identity and missile defence evident: NMD, in its writings about a specific other, constitutes a condition of possibility for articulating the very terms of a securityrelated US identity. The notion that security strategies are less a response to the claim of objective facts and more linked to an act of interpretation within a particular context was supported by the argument that alternative (re)actions to proliferation are possible and existent. Such particular context – the lack of transparency and the unfamiliarity with both military plans and the institutions on the ‘other rogue side’ – has led to a worst case scenario planning as expressed in the official documents consulted here. Although these areas of uncertainty remain, for example the uncertainty as to the exact number of non-strategic nuclear weapons in Russia and ICBMs in North Korea, far more contact between the US and these nations exists through a variety of official – and unofficial – channels (Sloss 2002). From this point of

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view, transparency has increased and there is less need to rely on worst case assumptions. As Chapter 3 has shown, arms control has been an integral component of US national security and alternative responses to missile proliferation do exist (e.g., the Missile Technology Control regime). With this in mind, the guiding question with regard to the ways in which NMD is important for US identity must be extended to address how the (re)action of deploying NMD is made possible as opposed to alternative strategies. In the process of weighing existent arms control proposals with other factors – military capabilities, diplomatic conditions and political behaviour and intentions of all players – how has NMD gained priority and become acceptable? Notes 1

2 3

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Jutta Weldes (1999a, 1) asks the question pertaining to ‘obvious threat’ at the very opening of her critical reading of the Cuban Missile Crisis: ‘For most Americans, at least, the so-called Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 plainly revolved around the Soviet deployment of nuclear-capable missiles in Cuba. But is this really so obvious?’ Posing this question does not deny the risks of a situation, event or capabilities but it invites us to think about how the interpretation of threat – exclusively – has developed. A similar round of tests was conducted only recently, in 2006. The debate over a North Korean long-range missile capability has not abated at the time of writing, and following the surprise tests in June 2006. To be sure, while the latest rounds of tests signalled a clear missile proliferation risk coming from Pyongyang, there is no evidence for a clear missile threat to the US. In a recent New York Times article, David Sanger (2006) quoted Vice President Dick Cheney as responding to North Korea’s missile technology as ‘fairly rudimental’. That this is the case can be demonstrated by looking at how the US responded to ‘similar facts’ and Campbell (1998a) reminds us that only a decade earlier, the Iraqi invasion of Iran (similar to Kuwait) had not even remotely brought a similar (re)action – let alone a military response. Jean-Francois Lyotard put it quite aptly when he referred to these processes of interpretation as a ‘habitual sequence’ in which ‘there is a fact, then the account of the witness, that is to say a narrative activity transforming the fact into a narrative’ (Lyotard quoted in Shapiro 1993, 49). Campbell’s work (1998; 1999) has most notably focused on the relationship between foreign policy and identity in ways that suggest the consequences for the dominant representations of other peoples, places and events. In National Deconstruction, Campbell (1998b) highlights the interaction between identity and foreign policy and the ramifications for US and European action regarding the conflict in Bosnia.

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National missile defence and the politics of US identity For more details on US and Russian nuclear stockpiles in comparison, see Natural Resources Defense Council (2002). Reference is being made here to Pyongyang’s moratorium on its long-range missile launchings in 1999, which it extended indefinitely in 2002, before breaking with the agreement in 2005 (see Kerr 2002, 2005). The invasion of Iraq in 2003 re-opened the debate as to Iraq’s possible (and disclosed) capabilities. To cite a feminist perspective as an example on this, Carol Cohn (1987) has commented avidly on the meaning of missiles in their analogy for phallic imagery, and in the context of the male-dominated military establishment. Jutta Weldes (1999a) critical account of the Cuban Missile Crisis explains this further. She discusses how the meaning of missiles as offensive weapons has been articulated in the context of the Soviet-US security environment at the time. Whereby the Cuban Missile Crisis needs to be understood as a matter of discursive construction, rather than a selection of objective facts through which it is commonly read (indeed, she suggests recognising the articulation of the Cuban crisis as a performance of US identity). The missile crisis was possible within the understood Cold War imaginary of threat against US national security. Put in such perspective, the Soviet nuclear-tipped ballistic missiles, which were stationed on Cuba in 1962, were the condition of possibility for the Americans to ‘see’ Cuba within a notion of threatening crisis. Central to this perception was the assumption in 1962 that the only purpose of a missile in Soviet hands would be as an offensive weapon targeted at the US. Moreover, these missiles were portrayed as synonymous with an intolerable danger representative of a regime willing to act aggressively against the Western Hemisphere. Weldes connects the determination of national interest to identity. She concludes that US identity is at the heart of whatever we take US national interest to be. Hence, not only was identity central to the construction of the Cuban Missile Crisis as a theme of national interest, but conversely, the articulation of a crisis (as national interest) was in part an exercise in the reproduction of a particular, and always precarious, US state identity. Lindsay and O’Hanlon (2001, 81) provide an excerpt of Steven Fetter’s provocative table of ‘Casualties produced by a hypothetical missile attack on Los Angeles’. Departing from the Foucauldian notion of discourses in terms of their constitution of claims about self and other, Said explores the performance of Western identity in, and through, the articulation of an Eastern otherness. The author exposes how the reproduction of a European self is based on the discourses of ‘the East’ in its illustration of what has been termed ‘the Orient’. Said (1979, 1–2) argues that the notion of the Orient is ‘one of Europe’s deepest and most recurring images of the other’, and moreover, has helped to define Europe (or the West for that matter) ‘as its contrasting image, idea, personality, experience’. He conceptualises European

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representations of ‘other’ cultures, such as exemplified in the imagery of ‘the Orient’, as part of an entire system of discursive practice. 15 Following such notions, Neumann (1999, 207), for instance, investigates the ways in which European identities have emerged in relation to a Turkish and Russian other. The author puts forward that the East must not only be understood as Europe’s other, thus, bringing into existence the very European self. But the performances of Self and other are also ‘continuously being recycled in order to represent European identities’. 16 One intelligent way of exposing the discursive attributes of self/other at play in a study particularly devoted to US foreign policy has been presented by Doty (1993). In her article ‘Foreign policy as a social construction’, Doty meticulously undertakes an empirical analysis in support of the arguments made about the performances of US foreign policy discourses that she sees as vital in reference to the reproduction of US identity in relation to an other. She does so by looking at an ensemble of statements found in key documents surrounding a specific site of US foreign policy (here, the US counterinsurgency policy in the Philippines). By assembling predicates and presupposition that are used for the US on one hand and the Philippines on the other, Doty is able to expose a particular pattern in the ways the specific rhetoric is used. Whereas US characteristics include ‘a world citizen’, ‘fatherland’, ‘political and moral responsibilities’, the Philippines were described as ‘key to Soviet control’, ‘underdeveloped’, ‘inept and wasteful’ (Doty 1993, 311). For Doty, these attributes are not only made meaningful through the use of binary oppositions, in which one term is understood through the opposite meaning of the other. Furthermore, these attributes are constitutive of a wider, more inclusive framework of understanding that reveals a certain existing view of hierarchy of, for instance, the free world versus communism, or moral versus totalitarian. Pulling together these findings, the author concludes that the performances of US identity as articulated through the textual practices in the policies towards the Philippines say something profound about the ways in which the US understands its self; in this case as ‘moral, rational, efficient, honest’ (Doty 1993, 214). 17 For more details, see Klare (1995, 19–25).

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On 24 January 2006, the Pentagon’s Missile Defense Agency hosted a missile defence ‘war game’. While the defence project is still under construction and that for a spectacular $9 billion a year, the Agency decided to stage a simulation of the system for members of Congress and the Media (Coyle 2006). The claimed purpose of this game – launched just ahead of President Bush’s latest defence budget request to Capitol Hill – was to shore up support for the use and value of missile defence. It sought to do so by giving participants the virtual experience of responding to a hypothesized missile attack and by adopting a role in the missile defence command and control structure. The central story of the game goes something like this: a fictional country (named ‘Midland’), located in the Sea of Japan, threatens its neighbours, Japan and South Korea, with an intercontinental ballistic missile launch. The geography is, as you may suspect, no accident – nothing about the assumptions of a simulation as reality ever is.1 Accordingly, the fictional ‘Midland’ is North Korea. Yet, not only is the choice of geography no accident, the virtual scenario also assumes – if not prescribes – that the virtual North Korea is in fact willing to use missile capabilities against the US. Embedded in the ongoing concerns about North Korean missile (and nuclear) capabilities in the vernacular of US foreign policy, it is all too easy to conflate this game with a reflection of a reality ‘out there’. Echoing this exact notion, Republican Senator Wayne Allard assured the players in his introduction to the game that nearby North Korea had nuclear missiles that could indeed threaten the United States. He insisted, ‘I believe we all have come to the conclusion that there is a technology out there where they can reach our coast in the United States’ (quoted in Coyle 2006). It is tempting to write off the game as simply conveying a playful sense of how NMD will work in a given reality of missile threats. However, we should suspect there are other ways of reading the game. Contrary to the notion that it is the game which equals reality, perhaps

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we should consider, conversely, that it is the North Korean hostility and US defence capabilities that are precisely foretold in the narrative of the storyline and the playing of the game. I argue that playing the game is a technique of activating NMD, ‘virtualising’ its rationale and confirming its strategic conditions as ‘real’.2 In this chapter, I attend to the ways in which this takes place. To begin with, the missile game is an example of producing a certain reality (see North Korea) by allowing the players to internalise and adopt the assumed conditions of NMD (as played out in the game). Put crudely, NMD inscribes, pervades and predetermines the characteristics of a reality that warrants a specialised form of response.3 The blurring of lines between the virtual in the game and reality ‘out there’ is striking – as Paul Virilio (1989, 83) remarks, ‘the fusion is complete, the confusion perfect’ – and its purpose clear: The virtual and worst-case hypothesis of an attack by North Korean intercontinental ballistic missiles is an assumption that gives claims to, and rationale for, the very real construction of a missile defence system. Furthermore, and inexorably linked to the first point, the animated missile game advocates a certain discipline and control. Playing the shooting down of missiles is an exercise in the utility of claims to knowledge about the behaviour and intention of a threatening other and the role of a defending self. The process of verifying these kinds of knowledge claims is epitomised in Foucault’s notion of ‘regimes of truth’ and which I draw on in this section in order to expose how the military defence project constitutes a system that fabricates ‘true’ and ‘accepted’ statements about threats to US security. Through what is labelled ‘technostrategic discourse’ (Cohn 1989) that allocates and accumulates knowledge claims pervasively, NMD creates a regime of truth that appears omnipresent in its technologised ritual of language, virtual games and experts. NMD and truths All truth is perspectival, all seeing interpretative, all knowing interested, perspectival, and interpretative. (Nietzsche quoted in Hood 1997, 424)

In Foucault’s view (1989), ‘truth’ is to be understood as a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution and circulation of statements. As such, he depicts truth as an ‘ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific effects of power attached to the true’ (Foucault 1989, 132). Seeing the meaning of truth in such a procedural way, Foucault refers to the set of rules that bring into existence the truth as a ‘regime’. A regime in

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this sense is tantamount to a manifestation of a ritual that exposes a particular arrangement of statements, which in turn determine the value of what lends meaning to the word ‘truth’. To recognise this process means a shift in analysis, for the aim cannot be to judge the ‘truthfulness’ of what we usually take to be scientifically acceptable, testifiable or true (hence, the use of truth), but to focus on the condition in which this truth or falsehood has been established (hence, the production of truth).4 Thus, and as argued from the very outset of this book, the aim is not to dwell on how scientifically acceptable NMD is in its articulation of a threatening other, but to trace the ways in which this designation has become accepted as truthful. Understood in this way, Foucault (1980, 131) claims: Each society has its regime of truth, its ‘general politics’ of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.

Making the leap from Foucault to NMD, I argue that the notion of regimes of truth bears useful insights into the analysis of how certain statements, policies and strategies surrounding NMD can be read. As a truth-producing regime, the defence project is embedded in the act of establishing categories of true versus false, accepted versus unconventional and right versus wrong. Following Foucault, we ought to engage in that which governs statements about missile threats and prioritises them in an existing security structure.5 In other words, NMD can be understood as a system of knowledge that composes the condition of a series of foreign policy discourses which ascertain what then becomes an accepted picture of reality and what is of concern therein. Correspondingly, the assumption of systems of knowledge and interpretation is key to the study of identity, for the articulation of the self is immanent in forms of claiming knowledge about the other. In every question of self and other lies implicitly a question of demarcations between realms of knowledge: How the knower relates to the known, how the inside is related to the outside and how same is distinguished from other (Dalby 1990).6 One must certainly look no further than Foucault’s Discipline and Punish (1979) for the relation between the constructions of the self, discourses on the other and assumptions of truth. He illustrates the processes that have mobilised techniques of discipline and punitive rules in order to assert a particular, constructed knowledge about the ‘delinquent’ and ‘pervert’ other within these rules

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and procedures. As discussed earlier, Foucault demonstrates that the categories of the ‘delinquent’ and the ‘criminal’ are the product of a set of practices that establishes the categories in which it becomes possible to specify the rules and that determine the identity of individuals – those who are to be included and accepted and those who are to be excluded. This process of defining knowledge about the criminal other is simultaneously re-affirmed through concrete policies, or actions, such as the working of a prison in which criminality is regulated. In so doing, the discourses of criminality are not only accepted as true because of the authoritative and affirmative rules in the institution. Furthermore, they assure the constant re-articulation of such truth in the form of the prison – one is a criminal because of the ways in which a difference to normality outside the prison is construed, whilst one is verified as a criminal person through the fact of being inside an institution that shuts the criminal away from the non-criminal. So how do we get from regimes of truth to NMD/identity? The answer to this is simple: It has to do with the argument that NMD as a regime encapsulates an ensemble of practices, rules and statements that give rise to – and simultaneously verify and reproduce – an ‘accepted’ image of US self and rogue other. In the course of establishing these norms, certain orientations and actions are legitimised (missile defence), whilst others remain unacceptable. Once more, NMD resembles an exercise that allows certain empirical data to be read as acceptable knowledge about self and other. Take, for instance, the claims about Iraq as rogue. Whereas previously the rules of interpreting the ‘data’ on the Iraqi regime did not result in a problematisation of Iraq as a threat in the 1980s, the modification of these rules, however, has led the US to see the Iraqi leadership as a foreign policy problem in the 1990s and onwards (Campbell 1998). The question to raise then is one that asks for the rules that prioritise a set of statements and construe these as true. Responding to this challenge, I suggest that the condition for some statements within US thinking of security to be sanctioned, and others to be accorded the value of truth, is the process of technologisation. Akin to the Foucauldian reading of the establishment of punitive rules in relation to criminality, technology has served to make available a certain understanding of the institutions of security with that of specific foreign policy threats.7 The practice of defence, for instance, is a fabricated ritual in which the articulation of an other as threatening, and the responding strategy thereto, are institutionalised through the build-up of military forces with the aim to defend. In this way, the contentious relationship between US self and threatening other is made possible through a ‘technostrategic discourse’ and the ‘intertwined,

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inextricable nature of technological and strategic thinking’ (Cohn 1987, 690, footnote 6). Looking at the theme of technology more closely, perhaps the most prevalent assumption that highlights the pervasiveness of technostrategic discourse is the one that sees technological achievements and progress as a natural development. This has been reflected in a special report by the MDA (Ballistic Missile Defense Organization 2003a), which is intriguingly entitled ‘Missile defence agency sensors: Making the unknown known’, and relates the necessity for NMD development to the five natural human senses: Most people have the use of five senses – hearing, taste, touch, sight, and smell. However, human senses are limited by biology; people cannot see in the infrared and have limited frequency discrimination. The Missile Defense Agency has funded land-, sea-, air-, and space-based sensor technology to support the ballistic missile defense system and perform the duties that go beyond human capability.

Accordingly, conventional wisdom suggests that there resides an ‘internal logic of technological change’ or even a ‘technological imperative’ (MacKenzie 1990, 166).8 According to this, we are led to believe that the accuracy of missiles increased because it is ‘natural’ for it to do so, as much as the defence against these missiles is a response to the technological standards ‘naturally’ available worldwide. As the Missile Defense Agency furthermore suggests in its fact sheets on missile threats, ‘the threat from foreign missiles has grown steadily as sophisticated missile technology becomes available on a wider scale’ (BMDO website 2003; emphasis added). A similar notion of creating perpetual technological superstructures is presented to us in the debate about countermeasures and countercountermeasures in NMD talks. In Chapter 2, I outlined the manifold technological inventions and spiralling amendments to NMD to overcome possible ‘decoys’ and ‘sub-munitions’ attached to incoming missiles.9 Thus, questioning the necessity for such technological preparedness and sophistication, I want to suggest here that the debate on NMD technology can be associated with a way of looking at foreign policy problems and making the threatening other understood in terms that are known in the security context. Campbell and Dillon (1993, 21) aptly remark that ‘technology is no mere means to an end but the essential character of a mode of thought which is also a mode of practice’ (emphasis added). Therefore, technology must not be reduced to the mere application of science, but the instruments that have become associated with technology need to be understood as a tradition to reveal and bring

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things into being. Understood in this way, the technology associated with NMD brings into being the existence of an other as an accepted rogue, and thereby frames the existence of the US self. Thus, technology does not equal ‘hard facts’. The most direct bearing on this arises because technology consists not just of facts but also of a particular knowledge about these facts. This knowledge is sustained and reproduced by scientific language and its experts that propagate what this technology is for, what it does and what it tries to explain.10 As Foucault (1991) has observed in relation to scientific discourses, we live in an age of experts and intellectuals who regulate the exchanges of power and knowledge within technocratic societies. Whatever ‘they say’ is presumed to carry a special, valid authority. As Carol Cohn adds, the particular coded language allows experts to think and act as they do and to give meaning to the security system as it is. It belongs to a mode of discursive practices articulated by scientific experts, or ‘defence intellectuals’, who are charged with deciding what counts as true. These experts determine the language in which the truth is understood and, most essentially, move the debate about NMD to a level of technological abstraction that is considered the exclusive trope for discussing proliferation. In this regard, technology provides an agency through which certain concerns can be communicated in a certain way for a certain purpose. Put in such context, objects come into existence in a calculable, empirical and accepted manner. This being so, technology has created a category, a pool of knowledge that can be redeployed in a continuous exercise and can re-invent itself permanently in a ritual-like manner (Campbell and Dillon 1993).11 When researching into NMD, one is overwhelmed – though less surprised – by the coverage of technological details. News and information that reach us about national missile defence, indeed what we are told about the defence strategy, is almost exclusively channelled in terms of successful interceptor test flights, the acquisition of new, sophisticated technologies and contracts for the military establishments to further investigate the purpose of missile defence. One only needs to look at the regular news updates published by the US Department of Defense and the MDA to find ample cases. Our understanding of the purpose of missile defence is guided by headlines that portray the program as an exclusively technical endeavour. Examples abound; for instance, the Missile Defense Agency reports that the ‘Aegis missile defence flight test [was] successful’ (BMDO 2003c) and that the ‘Missile defence agency conducts flight mission 6’ (BMDO 2003b). In more popular publications we can read that ‘Successful tests may restore credibility to the program’ (LA Times 26 March 2001) and that the ‘PAC-3 did two out

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of nine engagements’ (Inside the Pentagon 2003). And most importantly, recent analyses, which include the Rumsfeld Report of 1998 and the National Intelligence Estimate of 1999, constitute commissioned research by experts, propagating much of their findings in experts’ language. The NIE (1999) reports that ‘Pakistan has Chinese-supplied M-11 short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and Ghauri MRBMs from North Korea’ or mentions a North Korean ‘space launch vehicle’ which ‘did not demonstrate a payload capable of surviving atmospheric re-entry at ICBM range’. In the meantime, the Rumsfeld Report (1998) informs us about a ‘10,000 km-range Iranian missile [that] could hold the US at risk in an arc extending northeast of a line from Philadelphia’. In this way, the problem is not only that experts use abstract terminology that removes them from the reality of which they speak (Cohn 1987). Rather, there is no reality of which they speak, which is to suggest that the reality they address is in itself a world of abstractions. Complicated defence mechanisms, and perhaps much of military strategic doctrines taken together, are ‘invented’ by scientists, their rational assumptions and mathematical equations of actors and choices. These strategic systems are developed as a way to make it possible to grasp hypothetical scenarios and unthinkable cases, which are then construed as the true image of the international security environment we live in, and by. In other words, it is a certain ‘technological truth’ that enables a specially disciplined knowledge in order to achieve certain effects and shape political identities (Klein 1988). Within the realm of technology, NMD is imbued with, and indeed constructed out of, the modes of thinking that have been associated with technology. NMD as a strategy is made strategic through the technological terms that takes place predominantly in the fashion of a ‘threat-response’ equation. For example, in its ‘Fact Sheet JN-00-35’, the former Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO 2000b) argues that ‘technology is spreading around the world at an astonishing rate, including technology dealing with ballistic missile development’ before saying that ‘complementing this growing technological capability is the continuing intent among some regimes to harm the international system, particularly the US and its allies’. In response to this observation, the BMDO (2001, 8) adds later on that the US would consequently require a technological system with a set of elements that will include ‘potential missile boosters; interceptor kill vehicles; early warning and guidance radars; the battle management, command and control system; space sensors for missile detection and tracking; system citing and environmental analysis’. Speaking through the technostrategic language and experts that have established NMD as scientifically necessary and common-sensical, the

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threat it seeks to counter gains credibility, acceptance, and ultimately, is considered as true. Technology has become a basis, framework or context for accounting what is regarded as a present threat against the US in its relation to the uncertain acquisition of technological capabilities. It provides a way of knowing the future challenges to national security by making worldwide technological developments more ‘predictable’ and the global actors that they represent therein: using the terms of technological development that are understood in the US, the level of threat can be given an understandable and explanatory figure. Events and actions, and those in whose name they speak, can be categorised according to their acquired technology and the assumptions about how this technology relates to the US. In doing so, the Rumsfeld Report of 1998 portrayed the alleged threat in terms of technological parameters by analysing possible missile tests by certain designated countries. When North Korea staged a surprise test of a long-range missile in August 1998, the US understood this event as a signifier for a development towards a North Korean missile acquisition that could be used in offensive hostility towards the US. In other words, articulations of the undertaken missile launch itself overshadowed other statements saying that, in fact, the test was not a success, nor had North Korea made any bellicose statements (Ferguson and Pike 2000). In the same way as the scientific terms give possibility to an articulation of threat, the role and task of missile defence within that threat realm is made meaningful and purposeful. The ‘process of knowing’ through scientific terms deduces a particular procedure about how to view the technological proliferation of other states and how to respond, or even discipline it. Using the example of the North Korean missile test of 1998 once more, it was understood in such a way as to provide the rationale for rapidly moving towards deployment of a responding NMD system, instead of further pursuing diplomatic means (National Institute for Public Policy 2000). Furthermore, as an instrument for analysis, technology is used as a measure for the feasibility of a US defence system and gives meaning to its function and purpose – it is its ultimate condition of possibility. Interceptor test flights can be seen as re-inventing the real-ness, thus existence, of missile defence and removing it from its abstraction as a program. As illustrated at the outset of this chapter, the NMD game and its playing ritual codify the defence project’s existence. The technological capability was therefore kept alive – and so is that which it rationalises: the reality it purports to counter. We see these techniques in the staging of missile interceptor tests as a recognised scientific practice that confirms what this defence project is for. The Pentagon informs

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regularly about interceptor flight tests to verify the strategic function and legitimacy of NMD. This is done to reinstate the image of the everpresent possibility of an incoming missile by a threatening rogue, which can only be countered – so we are told – by the ‘hit-to-kill’ mechanism of the US defence system. Looking at technology in the NMD context, one can argue that it has provided the means through which missile defence has emerged as a strategic imperative that creates the effects that it responds to. The language is distinctive, often obscure, operating to reinforce the premises of the discourse about proliferation. There is mention of ‘hit-to-kill devices’ and future ‘space-based laser systems’, all of which are prone to be challenged by so-called decoys and counter-measures, leading to even further mind-game abstraction through attempts to counter the counter-measures. The debate has clearly moved away from the terms of threatening states and how we have come to designate these states as threatening to begin with. Rather than questioning the aspects of the interpreted foreign policy threat, NMD technology has in fact reiterated the need for a defence system by producing such technologically driven scenarios. The discussion is now dominated by the terms of threatening technologies in the hands of hostile states. This being so, the assumption of the unpredictable, irrational actor has been made predictable and rational by applying a style of scientific reasoning that favours definitions of strategically acceptable technologies. This also suggests, as Jutta Weldes (2001, 652) has observed, that this ‘true’ method of strategic response is comparable to what she calls the ‘rhetoric of inevitability’. This inevitability is grounded on the self-fulfilling prophecy embedded in technologically dominated discourses, creating a particular logic of ‘no alternative’. Having established the parameters of how to understand ballistic missiles and their assumed unavoidably accelerated proliferation, the logic of inevitability provides a case for NMD as the only way to meet the alleged missile threat. NMD has often been portrayed as a natural development, an automated mechanism to worldwide technological evolution that demands a firm US response. Viewed in this way, the US withdrawal from the ABM Treaty of 1972, for instance, has been a revealing moment, reducing the purpose of this long-standing arms control agreement to becoming outdated and an obstacle for giving priority to developing missile defence sites (BBC 2001). In the process of recognising NMD as an important performance of US identity, one must also consider how the debate over missile defence has been removed from the outset of a political controversy over its deployment and has been obscured by arguments over further research and development into possible sophisticated response mechanisms.

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In sum: I argue that the debate about missile defence, and as criticised in this book, exists mostly between the lines. It is implicit in documents which the average citizen does not read, let alone understand. The Quadrennial Defense Review, the National Intelligence Estimates, and the daily publications by the Department of Defense have encoded the political aspect of missile defence in speeches about technology and rogues, with the technology fortifying the rogues as a ‘true’ threat whilst the discourses on the rogues ascertain the reality of a ‘true’ need for technology. The current national missile defence program had formally been recast from an ‘acquisition’ program to one producing a technological base from which future programs might follow. This in effect made NMD more akin to an advanced technological and military research program than a forum intended to produce a political debate about missile proliferation that it sought to defend against. Frankly, there is little discussion outside the technological realm in publications for non-experts. This ‘isolation of technical knowledge’ is representational of a body of truth that has come to exist independently of any other truth or knowledge (Cohn 1987, 712). Linked to what has been outlined here as technostrategic language, the debate about missile defence against proliferation takes place without asking what it actually does for proliferation and therefore marginalises the complexities of the missile problematique. This leads us to believe that the discourses of technology have virtually become the only legitimate form of response to the question of how to achieve security. In correspondence with Foucault, the production of truth is centred on scientific discourse and the institutions which produce it; and to produce scientific and empirical knowledge, reason and rationale has therefore become the dominant form of what we take political practice to be. In this sense, technology assumes the role of a form of categorisation in that it is a process utilised to reduce the complexities of security, and indeed, produce the truth about a real threat demanding security that is otherwise illusive.

Notes 1

2

Much of this is reflected in Jean Baudrillard’s (1983, 32) understanding of simulation and hyperreality whereby fact ‘no longer have a trajectory on their own, [but they] arise at the intersection of the models’. The concept of ‘virtualisation’ of American politics and of war has been most brilliantly discussed in James Der Derian’s Virtuous War (2001), in which the author offers a complex investigation of the impact of virtual elements of our culture.

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Paul Virilio’s thoughts on technology, military technology and technologies of representations weigh heavy in my reading of the NMD war game. For an introduction to Virilio in this regard, see Virilio (1998). 4 In The Order of Things, Foucault (1973) looks at the sciences and their claim to empirical, verifiable forms of knowledge. The author proposes that changes and transformations within the scientific realm are not simply new discoveries or even a matter of new knowledge. Rather, they must be viewed in their relation to a series of (scientific) discourses and forms of (empirical) knowledge that structure this meaning of new discovery. In other words, these affirmed scientific transformations are not an alteration of content in scientific knowledge as such. They are, to a certain extent, representational of a modification in the rules of formation of statements, which leads one to accept a different set of statements as scientifically true – as opposed to others. 5 According to Foucault (1980, 60), it is about taking statements and asking, ‘how effects of truth are created within discourses which are in themselves neither true nor false’. 6 In order to show that these assumptions can be used for various disciplines, Foucault has expanded his studies of discursive practices as regimes of truth to the realm of medicine, sex and penology, showing how the conception of madness is created in an antithesis to reason, deviance to normalcy and delinquency to reform See Foucault (1991; 1979; 1980b). 7 The term ‘institution’ is used here to mean a customised understanding of the terms of security. 8 MacKenzie (1990) arrives at his insights by pointing to the level of technological accuracy for nuclear missile guidance. Posing the question of ‘what that accuracy is for’ (1990, 2), the author argues that the convoluted high level of technology is, indeed, neither necessary in the deterrent role for missiles as such (based on arguments that, in this case, a missile defence system would take away the incentives for others to further proliferate), nor is it needed for the strategy of assured destruction (based on the fact that accuracy becomes less important if the weaponry is simply used as a form of retaliation). 9 Hugh Gusterson (1996) raises the question of ‘how much’ of the latest technological sophistication of was truly necessary. He finds that these arms are becoming more suitable for fighting wars rather than deterring them, which is understood to have been the original purpose. For example, considering that nuclear weapons are so ‘destructive’, the US would need only a few hundred to deter an attack, taking into consideration that one US Trident submarine can launch 192 nuclear warheads, each equivalent to 8 Hiroshima bombs that could easily kill more than 50 million people if aimed at Russian cities (Scoblic 2002). 10 In this sense, Lyotard (1984, 3) pertinently suggests that scientific knowledge ‘is a kind of discourse’.

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11 Hugh Gusterson’s (1996) uses the Foucauldian argument to look at the ways in which regimes of truth are produced in the field of nuclear weapons. Though Gusterson is far from suggesting that nuclear weapons and their destructive power are not ‘real’, he maintains that in their predominant existence as a scientific phenomenon they [nuclear weapons] are made real through recognised practices, scientific language and scientific experts. Pursuing Foucault’s proposal, Gusterson (1996) contends that there is a certain obligation of truth, which requires ritualised procedures that recodify the weapon’s existence in terms of function, purpose and legitimacy. Bearing this in mind, Gusterson finds that the nuclear scientists (or experts) have been important agents within the process of giving meaning to what nuclear weapons are and the need to reproduce that meaning (thus, what Foucault describes as regimes of truth). These experts occupy an important role, in that they are not only the products of a system that provides them with a special authority, but also because it is they who re-iterate the standards for determining which kinds of statements count as true within that system. Consequently, by instituting which speakers count as truthful, and which arguments will be discarded as irrational and false, they correspondingly re-establish their own authority and reproduce the system.

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NMD and the ‘everyday’

The main rocket launcher spouts silver flash, green flash and golden flash with crackling. After ignition, crackling mines are discharged and two intercept missiles take off with whistling tails and reports. (Brother’s Pyrotechnics, Inc. (2003) manufacturer’s description of the missile Defence Shield fireworks)

For some, it is perhaps something of a leap to move from the official strategic documents of missile defence to practices of the ‘everyday’. The concept of the everyday is understood here as a realm that encompasses an entire network of socially embedded meaning that we use so as to make sense of our daily lives, and includes references to popular culture in general, fiction in film and sports (among other themes). To be sure, most studies of discourse tend to focus on the state rather than the popular sites of discursive practices themselves. As Jutta Weldes (1999b) critically observes, ‘students of international relations have rarely descended from the heights of interstate interaction or elite settings to analyse the everyday cultural conditions which make particular state action possible’. For others, however, and that includes specifically those for whom the contours of identity and foreign policy are not clearly drawn, it appears wrong to assume that (a sense of) security could be exclusively defined and invoked solely in the hallways of ‘high politics’. The neat equation that the national state is the only relevant form of identity in world politics, where the people are only treated as citizens of a given state, has been the focus of considerable sustained critique (see Introduction). After all, it is in tropes such as popular culture where state action is made ‘common-sensical’ to start with (Weldes 1999b, 119). It means to suggest that the non-state level – be it popular culture in this case – is an integral element in understanding state action, for state officials define and articulate foreign policy in ways that are plausible and persuasive for the American public. In turn, the state actor’s representations are themselves made sensible because they fit in with the diversity of public everyday life and the existing framework of what is

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considered common sense.1 The purpose, then, of interconnecting the, seemingly, far-fetched relationship between a security strategy and, for example, a baseball game, is twofold. Initially, the approach of ‘domesticating’ NMD (though it is more than that) is an attempt to move away from the trite interstate analysis that dictates much of the study of foreign policy and security and, hence, to make this analysis more inclusive. The intention is furthermore to show how this latest in a series of security strategies affects, as much as it is affected by – and indeed, brought to existence through – the frameworks of meaning that structure the everyday. This follows on from the previous chapter, in which I suggested to interpret NMD as truth-producing regime; this section is, thus, devoted towards understanding how some of those truth-producing practices are played out. National missile defence connects with the sphere of everyday life in a variety of ways. Although the system is not yet fully operational in the physical sense of the term, the interest in this system and its meaning for the US is already operational indeed in everyday political images – through narratives, language and metaphors surrounding the US concept of security. Consider, for instance, the non-governmental organisation named The High Frontier (2003), which describes itself as a ‘citizen’s guide to missile defence issues’, committed to ‘ensuring the nation is defended against the threat of ballistic missiles’. The High Frontier aired TV commercial advertisements during the 1980s to promote Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative by bringing it not only into the living rooms of the American public but also into our political imagination concerning the safety of our families. The advert shows a little girl asking her father ‘what this Star Wars stuff is all about’, while red-coloured missiles fly toward her and bounce off an invisible shield. The commercial associates the girl’s father with the American President and the US citizens with children in need of assurance (Rogin 1987). Performances like this have made the missile defence project akin to a very personal experience, moving it away from an abstract military strategy to something that is understood through the emotions we associate with those close to us. The strategy of defence does thereby not only mediate knowledge about US security in general but also connects this theme with a personalised meaning of defence through which one can clearly identify that there is a danger against which a US citizen needs protection. Illustrations like this are representative of the instances in which the mode of security, which is provided by the sovereign for the community and which informs NMD, enters the everyday. Though the case chosen refers to Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ program of the 1980s, there are considerable parallels between the past plan and the current NMD

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project with the latter often being understood through the security images of the former. More substantially, both systems (SDI and NMD) reveal compelling images as a technologically achievable and morally commendable system that would usher the US into a more secure world. Bearing this in mind, and placing an emphasis on the connecting practice of self and other on both the foreign policy and the popular level, the following section analyses one such piece of ‘connecting’ imagery. The metaphor of the defence shield is explored in its manifold meaning of defence, cover and protection. This constitutes a point of departure for looking at the instances in which knowledge about NMD, which includes the image of the shield, is circulated, verified, and made commonsensical within US sports and fictional film. Imagining NMD through the ‘shield’ [America] lives in a perpetual simulation, in a perpetual present of signs. (Baudrillard 1988a)

The use of the image of the defence shield to describe the function of NMD is ubiquitous. The shield refers to a protective device to cover our bodies, or territories, by comparing it to the guarding function of an umbrella. Describing, or making sense of, missile defence through the shield follows the notion of an umbrella to both explain the project’s operation and to categorise it as a defensive strategy (as opposed to a military force with destructive implications). To be sure, the media has also come to refer to Bush’s NDM project simply as the ‘defence shield’, which we can read regularly in newspaper headlines such as ‘US missile defences called extortion shield’ (Sanger 2003), ‘A setback for Missile shield . . .’ (Dao 2001a), ‘The hole in the US missile shield’ (Broad 2001), or, ‘For now, Pentagon to keep missile-shield tests basic’ (Schrader 2001) – to name only a few (emphases added). The project’s supporters, some of whom have grouped together in the organisation ‘The High Frontier’, have even entitled the group’s bi-monthly publication on missile defence news and analyses ‘The Shield’. Comprehending NMD ‘through the shield’ says many things. First and foremost it operates in our imagination in the sense of a protective tool or umbrella. In so being, there is a particular process of categorisation implicit in the umbrella analogy, for there is always someone who holds that shield or umbrella defensively whilst at the same time the umbrella insinuates that there is always the possibility of someone/something else being offensive. To begin with this latter imaginary of protection, the shield symbolises refuge. It provides cover, and most importantly, it is not directed against something specific but has multiple purposes.

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Following this, for instance, an umbrella can protect us against rain, snow or even the sun (or ‘bird poop’), and most crucially, it protects us at any possible time simply whenever we wish to use it. In addition, an umbrella can span a large area and thereby protect not only us but also others that we care for. The concept of protection ‘whenever’ and against ‘whatever’ has been a common theme amongst NMD supporters who have argued that the threats to US national security have become uncertain and unpredictable since the demise of the Soviet Union. Both the Rumsfeld Report and the National Intelligence Estimate conclude that the US has therefore to react to the mere ‘possibility’ of threat. As President George W. Bush has announced on many occasions, such as in his speech on 1 May 2001, ‘this is still a dangerous world, [yet] a less certain, a less predictable one’ (White House Press Release 2001b). The President went on to say that therefore ‘to maintain peace, to protect our own citizens and our own allies and friends, we must seek security based on more than the grim premise that we can destroy those who seek to destroy us’, before concluding to argue that ‘we need a framework that allows us to build missile defences to counter the different threats of today’s world’. The perception of countering any possibility of danger, as symbolised by the shield, has been injected with rhetoric of an absolute security in a time portrayed as absolutely insecure. It is here that the metaphor of the shield is often rendered as an all-embracing structure associated with an evocation of a ‘fortress America’ in which the defence shield provides a sense of certainty in the way it is used before the possible attack. Take the Rumsfeld Report, for instance, which was commissioned to analyse what a country ‘might’ be able to do ‘if’ it decided to. As the report puts it, it sets out to examine the ‘potential of existing and emerging powers’ in pursue of a ballistic missile threat posed to the 50 US states and concludes: Concerted efforts by a number of overtly or potentially hostile nations to acquire ballistic missiles with biological or nuclear payloads pose a growing threat to the United States, its deployed forces and its friends and allies. These newer, developing threats in North Korea, Iran and Iraq are in addition to those still posed by the existing ballistic missile arsenals of Russia and China, nations with which we are not now in conflict but which remain in uncertain transitions. (1998)

The shield, hence, resembles the action of taking ‘destiny’, or the momentum of aggression, into one’s own hands. The vision of being safe under the shield/umbrella is often associated with the enormous technological sophistication that is involved in NMD deployment (see Chapter 2). As such, the ‘defence of the American homeland’ (see, for

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instance, House Armed Service Committee 2001) does not only require a complex defence architecture that will span the globe: it will furthermore comprise space-based reconnaissance to allow monitoring of any missile deployment worldwide. Jacques Gansler, US Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, describes the efforts to remove US vulnerability through the presence of NMD as mostly effective ‘simply by its presence, to discourage these nations from committing their limited resources to develop the technology necessary’ (Gansler quoted in House Armed Service Committee 2000, 14). Yet, the metaphor of the shield does not only exhibit notions of a desired protection ‘whenever’ and against ’whatever’. But this uncertainty also speaks to a certain foreign policy discourse that oscillates in its depiction of the other as threatening and the self as vulnerable. As has been proposed in the writings here, states mostly exist by virtue of their ability to constitute discourses of danger, which are there to tell us what (and who) we fear, and thus, enable us to secure who (and what) we are. The defence system, through its imaginary as the shield, fixes what ‘we’ are in the following ways. Most apparent is the meaning of a shield in terms of distinguishing who the dangerous outside is and who the defending inside. Cleary, ‘holding the umbrella’ has a benign connotation, it is positive in its meaning of not being offensive. Thus, the promotion of danger is inevitably productive for the formation of identity in two ways – by constituting the agency of an inferior, rogue and erratic identity of an immanent missile threat and by building a superior identity of the non-rogue and rational defender. As George W. Bush fittingly remarked at the UN General Assembly meeting on 12 September 2002, ‘our principles and our security are challenged today by outlaw groups that accept no law of morality and have no limit to their violent ambitions’ (White House Speech 2002b). But beyond its representation of a defensive device against an uncertain danger, the synonym of a shield in fact determines and validates the existence of an attack before it actually becomes one. In its design as a protective shield, the deployment of such device is implicit in its claims that there is indeed someone/something to protect against. It is as though you are taking your umbrella with you in expectation that there will be rain because it does exist. Thus, if NMD is said to protect against an attack by so-called ‘rogue states’, its deployment is, in effect, constituting the rogue other as threatening in the first place.2 Inevitably, this leads to a major problem: If we can ask what rogues ‘can do’, we can all too quickly come to assume that ‘that is what they intend to do’ (Cohn 1987, 707). In other words, to base planning on ‘worst case scenarios’ does not only lead us to commit vast forces in

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order to prevent, but also commits us to assume something will indeed happen. As one can see in official accounts in support of NMD, the ability of those states that have been denounced as rogues to actually deploy an ICBM against the US is close to zero – yet, such ability is nonetheless assumed to be possible, less so on the basis of capabilities but more so on that of intention: Installing a missile shield to protect against incoming missiles suggests that Iraq, Iran and North Korea do exhibit both a future possibility of constituting danger and a willingness to do so. Therefore, and this is a vital conclusion, the missile defence shield constructs the reality of a rogue state threat that it purports to counter and, therewith, secures and validates the image of a hostile other. The performance of fixing the boundaries of self and other in these ways makes it apparent that the missile defence shield has an important meaning for US identity. To summarise: the metaphor of the shield virtually pre-empts the dangerous other whilst admittedly fixing the identity of the defending self. The perceived US vulnerability to danger is, thus, not one of national security in itself but one that is between security and a permeably unstable state whose boundaries have become ambiguous in its confined practice of making sense of itself through the discursive logic of identity/difference. The seemingly inexorable connection between security as a practice of the state and the performances attuned to the alleged nation within the state will be the focus of analysis in the following section. Pursuing an investigation of the metaphorical understanding of missile defence similar to the shield analogy that makes NMD a very personal experience, the following section looks in more detail at how the defence strategy is in fact ever-present as a mode of security in our political imagination, in which it operates through the common understanding of self and other in popular sports and fictional film. The popular culture/NMD intertext Nothing that appears on the screen is meant to be deciphered in depth, but actually to be explored instantaneously, in an abreaction immediate to meaning in an immediate convulsion of the poles of representation. (Baudrillard 1988b)

Having proposed in the previous section that NMD is an important performance for US identity as mediated through the connotations of the ‘shield’, I want to take the argument further by looking at the place where missile defence as an identity practice is reproduced in, and intersects with, discourses of everyday life. Let me be clear on this: entering missile defence at the level of the everyday derives from the notion that the everyday, the popular and the common represent a site that deserves

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more attention in analyses directed at exposing US politics of identity. It constitutes a trope in which a process of meaning-giving through which we already know about security as part of our daily life is practised, articulated and reformulated. Identity is an ever-continuing performance that permeates ‘all corners of society’ (Gusterson 1996, 7). And whilst the writing of foreign policy itself is one way of representing a situation in which the people within a state can be mobilised to perceive as sharing the same experience of danger in relation to a foreign actor, the politics of identity enabled through foreign policy must not be limited to the interstate level. This is to mean that there is a distinctive connection between the articulations of what is too often separated – the international and the domestic (Bloom 1990). Though in a constructed situation of threat the government acts qua the state to protect its assumed collective nation, performances of identity can also be observed beyond the action of the state entity. The relation among the discourses of the international and the domestic is represented fittingly by the episode in US history known as McCarthyism. Through his conduct of a communist hunt within the US establishment, Senator Joseph McCarthy became the symbol of a dedicated patriot and guardian of genuine ‘Americanism’ (Bloom 1990, 91). As McCarthy himself insisted, McCarthyism was ‘nothing more than Americanism with the sleeves rolled up’ (Dao 2003). Thus, the supposed international Cold War theme of communism that is understood mostly through the international practice at the state level has yet also been a phenomenon within the societal level. Closely related to McCarthyism is another narrative that draws from the imaginaries of the everyday to bring the Cold War hype of communism to the nation and vice versa: the medical analogies disseminated in relation to the Soviet Union. The metaphor of a ‘serious disease’ that could spread uncontrollably was used to promote the idea of a Soviet other in terms of what is already known to the public. Dean Acheson’s ‘rotten apple’ analogy comes to mind, which was used to illustrate Truman’s theory of communist expansion in Greece that could ‘infect’ Iran and all to the East. Religious connotations are another example in which the relation between discourses of self and other transcend to the level of the everyday. The demonisation of the Soviet Union as propagated through foreign policy documents was fabricated, for instance, through nicknaming Russian ICBMs ‘Satan’ (Walsh 2002). References to the Bible were made on a regular basis in respect to components of US security strategies. It was claimed, for instance, that Reagan’s SDI offered the same ‘fatal illusions’ of security as the Bible had prophesised through Isaiah’s warning against the mutual defence treaty signed by the Israelites with Egypt

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some twenty-seven centuries ago.3 And lastly, one can turn to Carol Cohn’s (1987) analogy of men, missiles and security and the way to read an analysis of the way in which US military strategies come to being through sexual, ‘everyday’ references. In her much-quoted article, Cohn shows how the security realm and its ‘intellectuals’ is made understood when she displays ample cases for the connections between masculine sexuality and nuclear arms races, military endeavours and missile capabilities. Some of these cases include linguistic references to ‘vertical erector launchers’, ‘deep penetrations’, an ‘orgasmic whump’ and the placement of missiles in ‘the nicest hole’ (Cohn 1987, 693). For Cohn, such performance highlights a particular relationship between the abstract level of ‘making security’ and everyday discourses, in which culturally grounded references and familiar language makes it possible to mediate that abstract world of strategy. The complex realm of military strategies gains familiarity through that which is already known, by using ‘sexy and fun’ language (Cohn 1987, 715). Popular culture, considered here to be a practice at the level of the ‘everyday’, has been chosen as a referent for the performances of NMD and US identity for several reasons, not least because it participates in the reproduction of the imageries of the introduced defence ‘shield’ in multiple ways. Whether NMD is made common-sensical through the metaphor of an umbrella, or is referred to as the Sentinel (as former President Johnson’s missile defence project was called), the existence of a threatening other is always assumed – if not demanded – accompanied by ways in which to engage with this offensive entity. Making the articulation of missile defence possible in such a way is a juncture at which the discursive nature of identity politics is most apparent. Searching the everyday for this articulation is, as Iver Neumann (2001, 603) remarks, a way of comprehending a world which does not present itself to us directly ‘but can only be grasped through its representations’ that are constitutive of our social worlds. What this book includes to mean by ‘popular culture of the social world’ is in this specific instance the tropes of sports and fictional film. Coining these spheres as ‘practices of the everyday’ is aimed at the proposition that within both of these, and in many other spheres besides, the narratives of self and other are always at work whilst lending themselves to the understanding of, and about, missile defence as a security strategy. Thus, whereas the previous discussion of the defence shield was exercised to reveal how NMD is entered through an understanding of defence that is already known to the US, and at the same time verifies the knowledge of defence and offence, the practice of establishing a notion of defender and offender is also performed in similarly subtle ways. Notions of both ‘who we

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are’ and ‘what we represent’ are always present in popular culture. Think through, for instance, the following baseball/missile analogy that was used by a publication of the Washington-based Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis (IFPA) for the purpose of demonstrating the functions of some of the NMD components. Baseball and missiles In an attempt to explain the various stages of interception of a ballistic missile by radar, David Tanks (2001) draws on an interesting analogy: he compares the defence system to the stages of a baseball match. In so doing, the interplay between the radar signal that responds to a missile launch and the transmitter that forwards this interception so that a ‘hit-to-kill’ missile can be deployed is applied to the rules of baseball. The signal is therefore compared to a baseball, the transmission to a hit and the reception to a catch. The stations, or bases, in the sports game are compared to the various components of the NMD structure. The intention of this analogy (though it can only be assumed) is to highlight the complexity of the defence structure and to explain the necessity for a reliable and extensive network of sophisticated equipment (as the picture writes, ‘what is needed is a team of fielders that are all aware of the situation’). However, I want to suggest that the analogy does not stop here (neither does it, of course, entirely begin here). The representation of NMD through one of the most popular sports in the US ingeniously engages in a whole array of symbolism through which everyday life in American society is made intelligible. The baseball/defence comparison does not only allow one to make sense of NMD through something that is already understood (i.e., understanding the meaning of radar signals through the ball imaginary, or take the shield analogy again). In this sense, the analogy also explicitly partakes in reducing the complexity and abstract idea of NMD and puts it into comprehensible and known terms (Ryan 2000). Yet furthermore, the process of recognition of what NMD is and what it might be for is achieved here through the relationship with an other as the opponent, the opposite team, the offender. It is here that the relation between the foreign policy discourses surrounding NMD and the popular discourses surrounding the everyday is most apparent. Michael Shapiro (1989) has most compellingly argued for the notion of what has been termed ‘sports discourse’ in relation to the politics of identity. In the author’s (1989, 79) words, sports discourse is explicable only when we recognise that ‘what we have as a sport reflects who we are and further that who we are is constituted as a set of practices,

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sporting practices amongst others’. To put it slightly differently, sport has become more than simply a physical exercise but rather a way of recognising ourselves as part of an entity whose identity is shaped by the competitiveness of the sports game. The sports game has thus become pervasive as to the social depth of this activity in which it can function as ‘the ritualisation of self and other’ (Shapiro 1989, 86). It does so in the form of a ritual in which the sports game assumes a set of rules that lend control to the direction of the competition and provide guidelines for understanding the game by declaring who is ‘against’ whom and who is superior and emerges as the winner. In particular, the rules determine the two rival teams, their equipment or weapons, and the roles that either team may occupy in turn – the offender versus the defender. Sports discourse along these lines is already firmly established as a primary mode of representation amongst the thinking on US security. One must look no further than to Zbigniew Brzezinski’s analogy of a ‘game plan’ with regard to the US/Soviet rivalry that has been analysed by Shapiro (1989). The sports metaphor presented throughout Brzezinski’s plan shows a preoccupation with an image in which the US and its adversary or competitor are involved in a contest that functions within a trope thoroughly emptied of any significant content other than the kinds of strategic locations one finds on a sports field. The practice of making sense of the ‘international game’ through sports discourse in foreign policy performances is not new, in fact, most sporting events had their origin in military engagements or activities of the Greeks and Romans.4 Similar to the ancient practices, Shapiro (1989) highlights that the US has indeed a history of addressing sports through its Presidential leadership. Thus Nixon, for instance, attempted to vindicate US participation in Vietnam by having a former prisoner of war throw out baseballs to inaugurate seasons and championship series. Nixon was a firm believer that the sports world was the ‘real’ world in its comparison with competition, true commitment and victory. In addition to the list of names for operations, Nixon’s sports imagery spilled over to the naming of military forces, which includes titles such as ‘quarterback’ or ‘Operation Linebacker’ (Shapiro 1989, 87). The analogy with baseball, therefore, stems from the ideational depth that certain forms of gaming cultures have acquired in American society. There is more, however, to the likeness of foreign policy and the competitive rituals of sports itself and, hence, the meaning of sport in its cultural tradition can be strongly linked to the accepted understanding of other aspects of social formation. One can define two distinct discursive practices; one that produces consensus and solidarity and the one that reinforces difference through the idea of contest (Shapiro 1989).

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It creates a ritualistic dimension, a recognition of binding and shared history that connects symbols of national unity. As Baudrillard (1983) suggests in his view of contemporary politics as football and game shows, the people are merely defendants – they are always already potential contestants. Following this and grasping NMD through the strategic rules of a sports game operates on similar ritualistic performances. On the one hand, and recalling the notion of pre-empting or fixing an elusive other through the shield metaphor, to understand NMD through the game (i.e., baseball) assumes that there does exist an opponent team, party or player in order for a game to exist. On the other hand, the notion of a competition presupposes that the game must indeed revolve around a bipolar rivalry at the end of which there is only one winner. And the act of winning is in turn reduced to connotations of the ‘better team’ with the ‘better equipment’ or technology. Yet, above all, and taking us back to the concept of the everyday/identity performance, using US baseball to engage in NMD suggests that the latter is as common, as ‘American’, as ‘essential’ and as ‘normal’ to the American way of life as the former. Assuming this relationship between baseball and missile defence and, thus, assuming the closely intertwined relationship between US security and the practices of everyday life, the complexity of the ‘real’ defence project sometimes becomes blurred, perhaps even remaining concealed as a result of this. In creating a notion of ‘common sense’ and need with regard to NMD deployment via the association with the commonality of the everyday, it seems only inevitable perhaps that the concept of NMD, in its meaning for security, is not only fairly familiar to the broad public, but also unquestionably assumed to be already an existent part of US society. Indeed, an American poll taken in 2002 showed that only 31 per cent of the respondents correctly understood that the US does not currently possess a national missile defence system. In other words, some 60 per cent incorrectly assumed that such a system was already in place (Gromley 2002). This is clearly not simply a question of reducing the level of abstractness of the NMD scheme by bringing it close to the public’s favourite sport. Moreover, we can read every day about NMD in terms that lead us to believe it is already in operation as part of the existing security apparatus. It involves news of the existing costs of the system in ‘an additional $95 million for more missiles and tests’ (Aerospace Daily 2002), the possible cooperation arrangements as ‘Russia considers working with US on missile shield’ (Agence France-Press 2003) or the flight tests as ‘another missile defence flight test cancelled’ (Global Newswire News 2003). Who is to blame, seeing that already former US President Ronald Reagan commonly slipped between movies and ‘reality’ – a referent which

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is seen as symptomatic of a political culture increasingly impervious to distinctions between fiction and history (Prince 1992, 16). How could one not believe in the predestined existence of weapons ‘that have been in our everyday vocabulary ever since the “phasers” and “shields” of Star Trek?’ (Franklin 1988, 203). Think of, for instance, the prevalent video arcades where one can participate interactively in the technological fantasy of games that let you ‘zap’ the enemies while you use your ‘blaster’ to blow up their homeland. These fantasies bear close resemblance to ways in which Reagan’s Brilliant Pebbles Space component of SDI was envisioned as much as Bush’s space-based radar and laser architecture. Games such as ‘Missile Command’ allow one to finish off the sequence by firing missiles at incoming warheads with an apocalyptic explosion. To be even more obvious with regard to the notion of a ‘blurred’ vision, two weeks before his Star Wars speech, Ronald Reagan expressed his appreciation of the video arcades at the Walt Disney Epcot Centre, praising the beneficial influence which space-based games would have on a twelve-year-old in shaping the much-needed ability to ‘take evasive action and score multiple hits’ (quoted in Franklin 1988, 203). This state of indistinctness between what already exists in US political imaginary of security and what has never been deployed (Reagan’s SDI), or has not yet been deployed (NMD), is vital if applied to the practices of self and other. The performance of US identity in the self/ other intertext operates in various spheres or levels that are already part of a framework of meaning. Therefore, the defence plan is not only understood through that which is already a security practice, it also reinstates that practice in its association with what is familiar and known to us. Ultimately, however, rationalising rogue missile states ‘through the game’ performs a very powerful practice for NMD and in relation to the articulation of threat discussed here: it not only appeals to our imagination about the possibilities ‘out there’ and lets us ‘play through’ the possible vulnerabilities that could be inflicted upon us by irrational rogues (according to the rules of the game which we know); it also lets us feel the fear of the unknown which is informed by the very depiction of a rogue too irrational to abide by the rules of the game. Star wars, science fiction, NMD Don’t Worry, It’s Only Science Fiction. (Franklin 1988, 131)

The intimate correlation between popular culture and the textual practices of US foreign policy has been attended to by a number of IR scholars with a particular focus on fiction in film. Much of it stems from the notion, as Prince (1992, xv) aptly puts it, that ‘movies are vehicles

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revealing the parameters of human society’.5 Amid this research focus, the analyses of Cold War practices in movies have emerged as most prominent. Here, the centre of attention has been placed on exposing the popular and personal images of paranoia, conspiracy, apocalypse and an unrelieved suspicion of all representation and discourses that were sought to be reflected as great fiction in post-War American film and literature (Dolan and Dumm1993). Why such observations matter is best explained by comparing Reagan’s foreign policies and Cold War movies (and Reagan in Cold War movies, Franklin 1988). Popular culture, and here films therein, helps to construct a reality of international politics and security strategies to the extent that it produces consent for foreign policy amongst the public. Franklin (1988, 131) contends, ‘before nuclear weapons could be used, they had to be designed; before they could be designed, they had to be imagined’. Admittedly, there is a long list of films that dealt with – and ‘tested’ – for instance, radioactive and atomic weapons, before those were indeed developed.6 Back then, a long time before American scientists of the Manhattan Project began their feverish quest for an atomic deterrent, science fiction probed the fallacies of a deterrent theory (Franklin 1988). Within the spectre of films, the tradition of the science fiction genre has perhaps been most expressive in its allegory for many themes within policy-making. Indeed, the ‘sci-fi’ movie bears much resemblance to a whole set of understandings constitutive of a world that exposes features found in US foreign policy discourse, which is why it is used in this context. The most apparent ‘common feature’ of science fiction and foreign policy is perhaps the theme of technology. The sci-fi movies during the Cold War exposed in particular striking similarities between the technological arms race on the Soviet/US international level and anxieties about reproduction and excess in form of aliens, clones and robots in the ‘Reaganite’ movies.7 Drawing lines between foreign policy and science fiction films must not be reduced, however, to the themes akin in both fields. The subject matter of, for instance, technology, weapons or spies in film has already been extensively documented by past and present literature.8 Instead, and what seems more appealing for the analysis here, one can observe a remarkable likeness of the ways in which science fiction films represent the alienated, futuristic threat on the one hand, and how foreign policy is articulated in the security realm of NMD on the other. A further reminder of the missile defence ‘shield’ illustration seems appropriate, in which it was argued that the narrative of the shield or umbrella speaks for a determination of a defender (covered by the shield) versus the pre-emption of an offender that is assumed to be attacking

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at any possible time. Entering NMD through the ways in which self and other (here, defender and offender) are represented, and indeed fixed, seems equally applicable when we think of the binary representations of good versus evil that are well known from science fiction film. Making such claims, both Neumann (2001) and Weldes (1999b) use the example of Star Trek to discuss the relationship between representations of diplomacy in this science fiction TV series on the one side, and American diplomacy and foreign policy on the other. Both authors propose that the specific science fiction representations in Star Trek tell us something remarkably profound about the way in which American practices of identity interact within, and through, foreign policy. These explorations can tell us it is in particular how the core in US foreign policy discourse, ‘the US we’, is typically represented as the protector of individual rights and liberty that has to defend against a mostly unpleasant invader, before concluding that this kind of depiction produces an imagery of US state action as peaceful and defensive (Weldes 1999b, 126). The NMD-fictional film analogy demonstrates, first, how the alien, the monster or the amorphous entity that is animated in fictive movie stories is assimilated in US policies towards an uncertain, hostile and rogue state. This reveals, secondly, how the futuristic vision of sci-fi technology has much to say about the ways in which US identity requires a technological superstructure to fix the imagery of a dangerous and rogue other. It should be clear that the interrelation between the two realms of film and military strategy has circulated ever since Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative was christened the ‘Star Wars’ program and disseminated within the public through images related to the same-named movie.9 Admittedly, the link to the popular George Lucas trilogy was all too easy to draw. First and foremost because the Reagan space-based initiative was publicised very shortly after the great successes of movies such as Star Wars and E.T. Furthermore, because the President made very contradictory statements himself with regard to those movies: Two years after his Grand Vision speech of 1983, in which SDI was formally introduced, he announced that ‘the Strategic Defense Initiative has been labelled Star Wars, but it isn’t about war. It is about peace . . . If you will pardon my stealing a film line – the force is with us’ (Reagan quoted in Rogin 1987, 3). Prior to this, journalists went looking for the source of the technological inspiration of the so-called ‘Brilliant Pebbles Program’, which was the space-based component at the heart of the defence initiative. After all, whilst Reagan’s proposal seemed extremely far-fetched in its images of placing more than a thousand miniature interceptors (‘pebbles’) in space, each of them capable of destroying incoming missiles by a kinetic-energy laser, it paradoxically seemed very

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familiar at the same time. Initially, there had been suggestions about a link between Reagan’s Brilliant Pebbles Program and the President’s previous role as an actor in a 1940s movie called Murder in the Air. In this film, Reagan plays the heroic Secret Service agent Brass Bancroft who secures a ‘new super-weapon’, a defensive beam, similar to the structure later planned for SDI, destined to make America invincible.10 In addition to this, what these journalists were to discover furthermore has been meticulously described by Franklin (1988). In this work, the author illuminates the apparent connection between US security policies and what he depicts as a lively US imagination informed by science fiction. By some, this analogy has been welcomed and supported seeing it as, like the movie, a drama of the battle between good and evil, and of the triumphs of good over evil through adventure, courage, confrontation, and sophisticated technologies (Linenthal 1989). Moving beyond these initial popular observations about missile defence as ‘Star Wars’ and turning towards understanding the defence vision through the narratives and metaphors within Star Wars, the tale of the fiction movie (and hereby the missile defence project) reiterates two substantial practices. First, the purpose of missile defence as a system aimed at protecting against an attack by hostile states is a reflection of the popular Manichean metaphor of good versus evil, as we find it displayed most prominently in science fiction cinema (an argument which supports Weldes’ invader/protector analogy). In this sense, the popular imagery of ‘Star Wars’ is representative of a palpable vision of friends (e.g., centred around the heroic figure of Luke Skywalker) and enemies (e.g., centred around the character of Darth Vader). For, nowhere as much as in science fiction film, the modern fairy tale, is the good/evil dichotomy so distinct. On the other hand, the missile defence project makes sense of its task and mission by drawing out fears of an unpredictable future and its threats therein. Here, the aspects of sophisticated hightechnology weaponry enters our understanding of missile defence in its necessitated meaning of providing a solution to the uncertain dangers of our futuristic imagination – equally known from science fiction movies. Both themes are closely related and both themes constitute a framework of an understanding of the world in terms of these identity-producing narratives. In other words, making missile defence ‘operational’ (and furthermore, its performance of identity) is not merely achieved through the physical deployment of the system itself, but rather in terms of the ways in which this project is already operating through what is observed, experienced and known about strategy as evoked in fictional film. In one important example of the good/evil dichotomisation, Michael Shapiro (1999) observes that the ‘rampages’ represented in Hollywood

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films constitute a ‘vanquishing of danger implicit in the other’ and the ‘wilful expenditure of the other in an imposing production of the self’. For Shapiro, the location of danger within the other works in various tropes, all of which are most common in modern-day film. He clarifies that, just as other nations constitute the other against which a claim of national cohesion seems achieved, women are, for instance, used to formulate the other against which a coherent masculinity can be secured. A great number of similar examples could be used at his point, and whilst drawing on such manifold range, Shapiro (1999, 144) is confident in concluding that cinema creates a ‘moral geography’ of global politics, a cartography that provides mappings of the world (ibid.).11 Instances of such mapping is perhaps most typically remembered from the sci-fi genre. Most science fiction films rely on the theme of ‘invasion’, usually by a crude enemy (see Dolan 1994). This is typically accentuated by a portrayal of conflicts in terms of an ever-defending, heroic self and an evil, invading other. Movies such as Them!, Godzilla, and The Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman, or even more recent ones including Independence Day and Men in Black all seem to be about the American people facing a threat to their ‘American’ integrity by most hypothetical and exaggerated ‘things’ (Dolan 1994). Against this background, I argue that, within the post-Cold War missile environment, it is the narrative of the rogue state that has morphed into the image of the ‘alien’ other. Aligning with the observations made in sci-fi movies about the attacker that is represented in terms of ‘a monolithic other’ (Ryan 2000, 50), this performance is not merely an act of reducing complexity for cinematic purposes (though there is much of that), but rather says something insightful about the perception of threat itself. Whilst generally an intelligible hazard, the images of an indefinable, extraterrestrial entity represent the uncertainty as to the exact nature of threat, the type and its weapons. Analogous to the process of ‘lumping’ the sci-fi danger into an amorphous body that becomes emblematic of any type of threat, yet non-specific, the notion of the rogue state provides, too, an agency for US foreign policy in an image of an international security problem largely devoid of agency. Hence, although one is not sure as to the exact nature of danger, it is still possible, as Klare (1995, 4) has said, to construct a ‘cognitive system for dividing the world into friends and enemies’. Accordingly, rogue states have been allocated equally mystifying characteristics, bearing assumptions of ‘weaker, though hostile states’, ‘outlaws’ along the ‘axis of evil’ that want to ‘harm the US’ through their ‘aggressive and defiant behaviour’.12 What this means in view of NMD and its relation to identity is emphasised in the following points: First, by locating the vision of

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rogue states at the centre of (or as the rationale for) NMD, the project is understood as defending the US against an Other that is already part of a US political imagination through its familiarity with the good/evil logic derived from movies. Secondly, matching the rogue states image with fears of uncertainty as to the exact ‘who, what and when’, as suggested in the sci-fi visions of the unpredictable invasion from space, the deployment of NMD is a way of containing the rogue other before it has, indeed, a chance to take up that role. Similar to the determining character of the shield or umbrella to protect against the possibility of danger, national missile defence is akin to a pre-emptive measure that equally fixes the possibility of any type of dangerous other against which the US self needs protection. And following this, the theme of ‘fixation’ can be taken further when looking at the role that technology plays in both the NMD debate and in the science fiction genre. A technological fix What follows from the depiction of a threat that is devoid of ‘normal’ standards, such as the non-human alien, is that its futuristic und unknown weapons and military muscle emerge as the real protagonist. In the movie this leads to suggestions that only a highly sophisticated military force can meet the offender and gain control over the invasion. The process that connects the image of uncertain danger to a strong US military buildup has been seen as allegorical for the practices undertaking in the name of US foreign policy (Dolan 1994). It is well known that technology has been acknowledged throughout the post-War period as the linchpin of US policy making. Amongst US policy makers, technology is widely described as a most precious source and a national asset for influencing intentions (Nau 1974, 11–12) and has been key in the way in which events, conflicts and most international phenomena have been dealt with. Dolan (1994), for instance, highlights the likeness of the alien invasion and its violent destruction thereafter and the performances of the scientific and military establishments under the rubric of national security at a time when an extensive military budget was sought to be justified on the claim of the ‘evil Soviet empire’ and its ‘Satanistic’ weapons. With regard to missile defence, the visions of both Reagan’s SDI dream as well as the current NMD project have in the past, as much as now, been dominated by their statement for technological sophistication on land, sea, air and, most pressingly, in space. When the Reagan administration introduced the idea of its Brilliant Pebbles space-based laser weapon, and thus, concerns about the ‘weaponisation of space’ began to surface, the military budgets allocated for space research and

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development already exceeded ten billion dollars (which did not even include classified budgets). The preparation for Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative through images of a technological superstructure have often been described as a ‘massive campaign [that] began to flood American culture with positive images of space war’ (Franklin 1988, 200). The performances of a screening of technology, as illustrated in Star Wars and other science fiction movies has led to a particular narrative which Zygmunt Bauman has aptly called a ‘technological fix’ (Bauman quoted in Lacy 2001, 636). Such ‘fixation’ can mean, on one side, the technological fascination itself, the fantasy of Star Wars and the images of flashing laser or particle beams instantaneously leaping thousands of miles at their speeding targets and killing missiles. On the other side though, it can also include the issues of what or who is being fixed by the use of technology. In this context, Klein (1994, 111) reflects on the argument made about the perception of uncertainty (about invasion), in which the vision of a particular necessity to obtain technological capabilities has been linked to the images of the possibility of threat that there might be to national security. The author (1994, 111) observes fittingly that in order to overcome the unbearable anxiety of contemporary insecurity, Americans needed ‘only to hand their fate over to the naturalised impetus of a technologically-driven strategy’. Such an observation has been made before, when arguments were put forward with regard to the metaphor of the shield in its meaning of fixing a non-particular other. In this sense, the futuristic technology explored through NMD is also a way of determining the nature of self and other. As understood through the science fiction genre, the invading other in its alienated representation must be met with the strongest force possible. It is the idea of the monstrous invader that requires certain weapons to be in place. Put differently, by having forces in place that can indeed be deployed against any type of threat is self-fulfilling. It suggests that there always is the possibility of a threat/invasion in the form of a hostile other. Hence, and to remain with Bauman’s comment on fixation, technology truly ‘fixes’ not only its own legitimacy but also the boundaries of self and other. Furthermore, these boundaries determine the fact that there is indeed a party on either side of the line as much as they establish what kind of line can be drawn between us and them. The use of a very complex and global defence system for protecting the US homeland and its people makes the deployment of NMD, like the movies, strongly moralistic (Lacy 2001). This means that the destruction of a hostile being by high-tech weapons is equated to the ‘suitable’ use of science versus the exploitative and morally wrong use by the perpetrator.

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To conclude, drawing on the relationship between foreign policy discourses and US popular culture appears useful for understanding how national missile defence always-already exists in the US political imagery of security through certain narratives that are part of the everyday. Such a proposition can be explored in various ways and has been pursued here by looking at how the metaphor of the shield, the baseball game and the science fiction movie all connect to discursive practices about self and other in the same way as in the NMD debate. To show that NMD taps into discourses of the everyday within the above tropes was relevant for highlighting how NMD is brought into being without being physically deployed yet. It allows us to see how NMD is meaningful and operational in terms of the politics of identity and its boundaryproducing practice of self and other. It has been argued that all three analogies of shield, baseball and science fiction reveal the ways in which US identity operates amid the workings of identity in terms of difference. In other words, there is a performance implicit that locates the other in opposition to the self ranging from being ‘the protector under the shield/umbrella’, to the game ritual of ‘offender versus defender’, or ‘the alienated other versus the heroic self’. By aligning with these performances, the national missile defence scheme is not only made common-sensical, but even more so, reproduces an understanding of the world along these lines. However, what stands out as most critical about the ways in which the politics of identity operate through, and are reproduced by, NMD is the possibility to in fact pre-empt a threatening other and to fix an unstable US self. I hope to have shown that we need to take seriously how NMD engages performatively; the cultural spatiality, in its forms of sports and film used here, provides an effective representation of the complex interplay of national imageries of the everyday and international articulations through foreign policy. Notes 1

2

Weldes exemplifies her argument by using Michael Hunt’s (1987) work on ideology and American foreign policy, in which Hunt is able to demonstrate that American culture has continually defined attitudes towards other people through racial hierarchies. This, so Hunt proposes, has had effects on US foreign policy towards the so-called Third World. In an illustrative example, Carol Cohn (1987) exposes the ways in which military projects can pre-empt threats and even the threatening intention. In the context of the Soviet/American rivalry, she observes that military analysts have argued that, since they cannot know for certain what Soviet intentions are, they claim to have to plan their military forces as if the Soviets would use all their weapons.

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For more intriguing instances of religious connotations and US security and nuclear policies, see Linenthal (1989). 4 See Shapiro (1989) for a detailed description of Roman and Greek sports practices with regards to the similarity of performances today. 5 Or, as put more explicitly in Jutta Weldes’ (1999b, 133) words, movies bear a ‘striking resemblance to prominent features of US foreign policy discourse’. 6 Franklin’s (1988) list of films supporting this statement includes amazingly early works such as The Vanishing Fleets of 1907, or The Man Who Ended War of 1908. For an excellent list of film biography, see Franklin (1988, esp. 231–235). 7 Another example is given by Edward Linenthal (1989) who writes about the larger cultural resonance and ramifications of Reagan’s SDI debate within science fiction films. 8 Examples include especially those references already used here, such as Franklin (1988) and Rogin (1987). 9 Admittedly, Reagan himself did not approve of the ‘Star Wars’ title for his SDI vision, as he was convinced that it had been used too often to denigrate the idea rather than to reflect its popularity. Instead, the President himself preferred to call his vision the ‘Peace Shield’ (Reagan quoted in Linenthal 1989, 15). 10 For more details on this and other fascinating parallels to the military in film, see Franklin (1988). 11 In addition, as Lacy (2001, 643) correspondingly admits, ‘the world of cinema here is to represent the world’ (emphasis in text). 12 For the source of such remarks, see, for instance, Klare (1995).

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Reflections on NMD and identity

What has been passed for national security strategy is simply the clumsiest [ . . . ] manifestation of a broader orientation toward man, nature, and global politics, which needs to be questioned. (Klein 1994, 139)

How can we make sense of NMD in the wake of 9/11? Clearly, the foreign policy rhetoric of a ‘long war’ and its constant invocations of an impending terrorist threat have supplied considerable emotive fuel to the current vernacular of US foreign and security policy (Quadrennial Defense Review 2006). Concluding a book on such a note is no simple matter. Faced with such task, and by way of providing some final reflections on this book’s key themes, I look towards one strategic phenomenon in US thinking of security ‘post-9/11’ which speaks volumes about the re-assembly of a foreign policy practice as discussed in the writings here: The policy of pre-emption. I see the notion of preempting almost as an extension of the practices of, and within, NMD, because it illustrates how reproducing an identity of the United States, and containing the challenges to it, requires new discourses of threat and veneers of security. The newly refurbished strategy of pre-emption certainly conforms to this argument, insofar as it assumes a set of threat possibilities, perceived vulnerabilities and processes of identity-producing dispositions akin to that of the defence shield debate. Pre-empting rogues On 23 March 1983, President Ronald Reagan addressed the nation, asking what if the US ‘could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reach our soil or that of our allies?’ (Presidential documents 1983, emphasis added). Almost exactly twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan posed this intriguing question indicative of his goal to end America’s vulnerability to possible ballistic missile attacks by launching the ambitious Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Fast-forward to the present, on 23 March 2003, the US commemorated the twentieth

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anniversary of Reagan’s antimissile plan, which finally seems to have been brought to fruition. In this respect, ‘Congressional Resolution 82’ expresses the feeling of the Congress ‘in commemorating the twentieth anniversary of President Ronald Reagan’s vision for protecting the United States against a ballistic missile attack’ and commends: President George W. Bush’s commitment to a multi-layered missile defence system to protect the homeland of the United States, United States Armed Forces overseas, and friends and allies of the United States from the threat of ballistic missiles carrying conventional weapons or weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear, chemical, biological and radiological munitions. (House Concurrent Resolution 82, 2003)

Baker Spring (2003), a senior fellow at the conservative Washingtonbased Heritage Foundation, honoured Reagan’s SDI in an editorial, asking inquisitively why this system ‘has survived and thrived’. Why does the defence scheme draw such fervent support when one considers, as has been done in Chapter 3, that there are larger policy questions and alternatives far more pressing? Attending to this question, one finds that, although many of the original elements and the ambitious scope of the Reagan vision have been transformed into a more ‘limited’ version, the idea for such a complex defence structure has undoubtedly continued. This continuity has left the American taxpayers with the largest increase in defence spending since the Reagan years (Klare 2002). Thus, twenty years on, it appears that Reagan’s prophecy has never been closer to being accomplished. On the back of the Clinton administration’s signing of the National Missile Defense Act of 1999, current President George W. Bush officially announced on 17 December 2002 that the US would almost certainly deploy a NMD shield to protect itself in the light of the ‘new security environment’. Pursuing his commitment, the President directed the Department of Defense to begin fielding initial missile defence capabilities in 2004 and 2005 in order to meet the ‘near-time ballistic missile threat to our homeland’ (US Department of Defense 2002a). According to Spring (2003), the reason for the persistency of Reagan’s vision in US thinking on security stems from what he calls the ‘powerful idea’ behind it. Whilst the defence project was viewed as a means of deterrence against a full-scale Soviet confrontation in the Cold War arms race during the Reagan years, today it is seen as a means of preempting a possible limited attack by regional powers. National missile defence has, therefore, been associated with new types of possible dangers to national security. As emphasised in this book, key US security documents have been at pains to demonstrate how American security

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concerns, once driven by the threat of an apocalyptic war with the Soviet Union and the spread of communism, are now driven by permanent fears of rogue states and unpredictable potential enemies in the context of a so-called ‘Third World proliferation’ imagery. From this point of view, the nuclear deterrence model of the Cold War years is said to be no longer adequate, since it no longer encompasses all the significant dimensions of an increasing missile proliferation problem as well as a full range of adequate policy responses. During the US/Soviet rivalry, the threat assessment and force planning was built on the concept of predictability in the relationship between the two powers – the more the US knew about Russia’s forces, the more straightforward it was to determine how to counter them. Following on from the demise of this Cold War antagonist, it was claimed that the predictable security environment had changed in such a way that, now, the US would face hostile regional powers too irrational and incalculable for deterrence to work. And, more importantly since the terrorist attacks on September 11, the ‘new enemies’ were devoid of territory and state agency in which they could be located. In this sense, rogue states, so we are told, are ‘undeterrable’ because their forces are not measurable, their intentions are hostile and their actions are erratic. Consequently, as the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) of 2001 spelled out, the old ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to national security has become increasingly problematic. The Review suggested thereafter a shift from the existing ‘threat-based’ approach to force planning towards a new ‘capabilities-based’ model. Removed from the NPR-based jargon, scholars such as Spring (2003) see this shift in capabilities based on plain ‘common sense’ to mean America’s ‘natural right’ to ‘defend itself against attacks’. Meanwhile, the so-called ‘Bush doctrine’ summarises much of the future mode of US thinking on security in official terms and provides an outlook into further anticipated transformations with the purpose of protecting against the supposed imminent rogue state threat.1 Described by the White House as a new direction in US strategies of security, the Bush doctrine has come to be explicitly associated with the US intention to use force pre-emptively in the future. This strategic position was foreshadowed in George W. Bush’s speech at West Point in June 2002. Surveying the post-September 11 world, the President warned, ‘if we wait for threats to fully materialise, we will have waited too long’ and concluded, ‘we must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats before they emerge’ (White House Speech 2002c). In the context of US strategies of security, the President outlined this notion in more detail:

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Homeland defence and missile defence are part of stronger security, and they’re essential priorities for America. . . . We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans, and confront the worst threats before they emerge. Our security will require the best intelligence, to reveal threats hidden in caves and growing in laboratories. . . . Our security will require transforming the military you will lead – a military that must be ready to strike at a moment’s notice in any dark corner of the world. And our security will require all Americans to be forward-looking and resolute, to be ready for pre-emptive action when necessary to defend our liberty and to defend our lives. (White House 2002c, emphasis added)

The idea of pre-emption was revealed as a more coherent strategic plan in the first National Security Strategy (NSS) of the second Bush administration in 2002 that followed shortly after. Reduced to its essentials, the Bush administration determines in this document that, henceforth, it would be American policy to launch pre-emptive strikes against rogue states (or any potential adversary). In this strategic document, President George W. Bush justifies the introduction of preemption on the grounds of the severe dangers that the US faces and that lie at the ‘crossroads of radicalism and technology’. The logic behind this military pre-emption doctrine is powerful indeed. Accordingly, a nexus of these new dangers – terrorism, rogue states and weapons of mass destruction – leave the US with no other choice than to have a wide and technologically sophisticated range of capabilities at the ready. For the Bush administration, the assumption of such danger implies the need to ensure that the US ‘will build defences against ballistic missiles and other means of delivery’ in a matter of ‘common sense and self defence’. The document concludes, therefore, that it has to be America’s intention to ‘act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed’ (National Security Strategy 2002, emphasis added). As then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld adds to this document, the US must prepare its forces ‘to deter and defeat adversaries that have not yet emerged to challenge us’ (Rumsfeld quoted in Klare 2002, emphasis added). Stripped of its obfuscation of these ‘likely threats and challenges’, this is a plan for the US to invade and overpower what it considers hostile countries with a significant defence capability on their own and it is backed by the unprecedented degree of military superiority that the US has acquired. In its very essence, one could be led to believe that the strategy symbolises a shift in the primary orientation of US forces from defence against a claimed aggression to offence and intervention (Klare 2002). Amongst Washington policy makers, however, pre-empting does not at all equate to an act of aggression or attack. Rather, the policy of pre-emption has often been referred to as a ‘forward-leaning’ defence

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strategy and, therewith, has meant to suggest that one ‘doesn’t wait for something awful to happen before applying armed force’ (Elliott 2002). As Ronald Reagan (1983) already stated twenty years back, ‘the United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression – to preserve freedom and peace.’ All in all, neither defence nor pre-emption is considered offensive, with the latter in particular often being referred to as a means of ‘defensive intervention’ against those who appear determined to act hostile against the US (Ricks and Loeb 2002). Moreover, to pre-empt a missile launch has been described by some as an effort to use force as an instrument of non-proliferation policy in the decades after the Cold War (Litwak 2002/2003). In this sense, the prospect of an American first strike is said to discourage countries from deploying their ICBMs against the US. Others, however, see the introduction of an even more aggressive military approach to international security as a landmark decision that breaks with the few remaining US efforts at non-proliferation (Allen and Gellman 2002). The reason why the notion of pre-emption has been suggested to fit into the NMD debate becomes obvious with regard to the responses to September 11. The atrocious events of that day, the catalyst around which we now frame much of – if not all – our discussions of security, has caused Americans in particular to re-assess and question their basic notion of national security. For many, this date has demonstrated US vulnerability and highlighted the urgent need to broaden and address a wider range of strategic possibilities. Stephen Younger, Director of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency – a $1.1 billion defence agency created in 1998 to counter the threat of weapons of mass destruction – declared that ‘there was a time during which we really didn’t know what phase we were in, so we called it the “post-cold war phase”’ (Younger quoted in Ricks and Loeb 2002, 1). He went on to admit, ‘it wasn’t clear what kind of weapons we were going to need for the conflicts of the future. September 11 clarified that. And we are getting a better understanding of the types [of threat] we may face in the future and the types of weaponry that will be required [to counter] them.’ The attacks are said to have lent justification to the right of pre-emption in certain cases, specifically against rogue states, since it was terrorists acting under the auspices of regional and hostile powers who allegedly committed the attack. In order to ‘absorb’ the possibility of an assault of this kind happening again, the US sees itself fit to, as it terms it, defensively pre-empt further (missile) proliferation. As George W. Bush put it more colourfully in his speech to the nation on 19 March 2002, ‘we will meet that threat now, with our Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard, and

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Marines, so that we do not have to meet it later with armies of fire fighters and police and doctors on the streets of our cities’ (White House Speech 2002d). Of the many connections one can draw between NMD and the strategy of pre-emption, perhaps the most important one is the notion of rogue states. The National Security Strategy places the rogue issue in perspective to pre-emption, asserting that rogue states may be undeterrable and arguing that ‘we [US] must be prepared to stop rogue states . . . before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States, our allies and friends’ (White House Speech 2002c). With regard to the newly defined strategy of pre-emption, it explains that: Because deterrence may not succeed, and because of the potentially devastating consequences of WMD use against our forces and civilian population, US military forces and appropriate civilian agencies must have the capability to defend against WMD-armed adversaries, including in appropriate cases through pre-emptive measures. This requires capabilities to detect and destroy an adversary’s WMD assets before these weapons are used. (White House Speech 2002c, emphasis added)

Therefore, pre-emption is said to be supplanting the outdated Cold War concepts of deterrence and containment. The ‘right of pre-emption’ against rogue states is based here on principles of international law arguing for the legitimacy of self-defence and, moreover, claiming that, ‘exercising that right of self-defence does not require absorbing the first blow’ (Slocombe 2003, 124). This notion of a natural right of ‘active’ defence is legitimised on the basis of the articulated understanding of a certain type of rogue other. In both strategies of NMD and pre-emption, the construction of danger based on ideological differences between rogue states and the Western Hemisphere (e.g., the backward nations versus the modern ones) has led possible hostile action against the US to be seen as irrational and erratic. Because of this sense of uncertainty and unpredictability of danger, it seems problematic for the US to support any type of strategy which may place faith in the hands of the adversary not to attack first. Thus the point of a ‘first-use’ policy is that it enables one side – the US – to rely upon enormously efficient levels of military power and to secure itself without having to match the uncertain arsenals and motives of an ideologically driven adversary (Klein 1994). Meeting an uncertain and possible danger with such a vast military preparedness has been critical to both the NMD and pre-emption debate. As has been done with regard to rogue states and their ICBM capabilities, one might ask if the permanent danger of attack against

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the US does indeed exist, hence questioning the interest in NMD and pre-emption on the basis of a perceived foreign policy problem. At one level, the belief that there is an imminent danger is not at all surprising. As the tragedy of the biggest – and only – attack on US territory since Pearl Harbor has shown, September 11 symbolises that the possibility of American casualties and insecurities on its own soil does truly exist. Yet, at another level, this has allowed the US to justify the development of security systems in the absence of an adversary possessing anything even remotely resembling America’s existing military capacity – no nation, or combination of states, in the world today can overcome America’s military establishment and none are likely to appear on the horizon with this ability for a long time (Klare 2002). But when one ponders more carefully the events and issues surrounding the particular disaster of 9/11 and the notion of first-strike defence systems, it becomes apparent that the announced US strategies of security have nothing inevitable, responsive or natural about them at all. Whilst NMD and the latest pre-emptive amendments to US defence may not seem an ‘obvious’ US (re)action if one considers the type of threat that is perceived and the existent military capabilities already at the disposal of the US, the book has proposed that these strategies are an important element in the reproduction of US identity. It has been argued that the doctrine of rogue states has provided a trope for the performance of identity in that it re-articulates the discursive boundaries of US self and threatening other. It has also been said that after the dissolution of the imminent Soviet threat, new discourses of danger replaced the old antagonist. Whereas previously, the Soviet Union provided the agency of an outside danger in the sense of spreading communism within the context of the Cold War nuclear arms race, now the rogue state has come to represent an opposite other which subscribes to hostile, evil and erratic behaviour within the context of a proliferation imagery. In other words, the discursive representations and rhetorical performances in US thinking on security have remained unchanged. There are different ‘objects’ of threats, yet the same structure of relating to the world through the existing terms in foreign policy and security applies. And whereas during the Cold War the strategy of nuclear deterrence, which involved having forces on constant hair-trigger alert, appeared not only to deter the Soviet adversary but also to contain the existence of an outside threat, the current metaphor of the defence ‘shield’ suggests similarly the imminence of threat at any time and by any means. Using the shield/umbrella analogy of NMD has indicated that a defence structure needs to be constantly in place because there is the constant possibility of an attack. Hence, missile defence in fact

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already constitutes a policy of pre-emption whereby the shield determines the existence of a dangerous other – before it can indeed become one. In this sense, the notion of ‘striking first’ is already an existent part of the US mode of security. Some have argued that the process of locating a danger ‘by anticipation’ is a self-fulfilling strategy, since the accusation of hostility and danger generates fear and hostility among foreign leaders who might perhaps exhibit a tendency to proliferate when they would otherwise choose to align non-militarily. These defence analysts concede that pre-emption carries the risk of causing a crisis to escalate quickly by increasing pressure on both sides to act sooner rather than later – forcing them, in the parlance of the nuclear chess game, to ‘use it or lose it’ (Ricks and Loeb 2002). While this may or may not be the case, the promotion of a dangerous other in the forging of identity, and indeed the fixing of an otherness, is apparent. It is not just apparent from an articulation of identity which implicitly suggests that there is a rogue and immoral other against which the peaceful and moral US self becomes meaningful. The process of fixation is also evident in the way that pre-emption reflects another step on from NMD in the practice of ‘lumping’ dangers into a one-size-fits-all category. In the same way in which NMD elevates the very possibility of dangers to a foreign policy threat against national security, the NSS does not even distinguish between disarmament and regime change, or between rogue states and stateless actors – all of which are problematised as threatening. Thus, whilst the horrific consequences of an attack against the US have elevated military pre-emption as a policy option, the conditions under which it would be undertaken remain unclear (Litwak 2002/2003). Some have considered the National Security Strategy of 2002 to be the ‘most revolutionary change in American strategy’ since the forging of US nuclear deterrence policy in the 1950s. This is mostly because it is backed by an unprecedented post-Cold War military superiority of the US (Litwak 2002/2003, 53). These voices go as far as to say that pre-emption might signal the most far-reaching shift in American foreign policy in which Americans are asked not only to sign on to a new strategic doctrine, ‘but to accept a new conception of themselves’ (Blinken 2003/2004, 35). Others, however, argue that this doctrine is perhaps less innovative than either its advocates or its critics profess to believe (Slocombe 2003). In this sense, pre-emption has indeed nothing new to offer in terms of the discursive practices of US identity – it is not a ‘new conception’ of the US self. Pre-emption appears to pertain to military action only when one assumes that missile proliferation and hostile intentions by an adversary are imminent. As has been argued,

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NMD has already pre-established the assumption of such imminence, when the image of an all-embracing defence shield determined the existence of a permanent other, ‘out there’. The policy of pre-emption goes further in fixing the existence of an other through the constant military preparedness that is associated with the possibility of having to ‘strike first’. If the defence ‘shield’ insinuates the protection against any type of danger and constitutes the existence of such a danger by the very act of deploying the system, then to ‘strike first’ means to validate these claims of danger. Whilst the dangerous other still remains illusive and vague, the military preparations suggest that the danger becomes mores ‘real’, and propose that the type of danger is more hostile and aggressive than assumed previously. The performance of US identity through the articulation of threat along these lines is unambiguously reflected in a quotation given in an article in DefenseNews, which states that ‘the September 11 attacks illustrated clearly the different thought process between our civilised society and those radical groups that advocate disruption and murder’ (in Fox and Orman 2001, 20). In conclusion, both NMD and the pre-emptive strike policy may be framed as new and novel moves against the foreign policy problem of worldwide missile proliferation (or international terrorism), yet, what we have is merely a policy that gives new resources to the same ‘threat management’ tactics that internalise claims about self and other. Conclusion To replace blueprints with critical fragments does not amount to political nihilism. (Jabri 1998, 611)

The fact that the United States is deploying a national missile defence system is, in itself, unremarkable; more interesting and important is how the system is rendered meaningful as a significant strategic imperative in the current US thinking on security. Hence, an understanding of the leading preferences for NMD, which reconciles claims to feasibility, costs and threat predictions, is, of course, necessary but not sufficient. Instead, I proposed an intervention to the existing NMD debate and one that provides a perspective outside the positivist logic of investigation ‘as’ explanation. That is to say, it is not the ‘why’ questions of causality that are of interest but the ‘how’ questions of performativity. Such questions ask how meanings are produced and have been attached to certain subjects, objects and events, thus, creating certain possibilities of interpretation whilst precluding others. In pursuing a reading that seeks to understand the conditions of possibility for the decisions that

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led to the support of NMD, I turned to the concept of identity. This manifested itself in an analysis that advanced an interpretation of the way a specific foreign policy discourse on threat is constructed, how US identity is constituted, how narratives on the other are articulated and how an ensemble of those narratives is rendered as coherent, acceptable and exclusive. The point at which I entered the NMD debate was at the proposition that the defence system is of interest for the US ‘elsewhere’; that is to say, the statements in support of the antimissile project – notably the way rogue states have been problematised as a foreign policy threat to national security – give clues as to an important ritualised social act of NMD: the domains of inside/outside, self/other, and domestic/ foreign that are constituted through the writing of missile threats and are a central component of the politics of US identity. Consulting Michel Foucault, whose theoretical presence weighs heavily in this book, I proposed to question the increasing interest in NMD by investigating how the defence strategy has come to be prioritised and to what effect. How has the defence system produced a thinking on security that has been considered as ‘appropriate’ or ‘acceptable’ whilst equally possible (and existing) alternatives have been pushed to the margins, or even excluded from the terms of the debate? In order to attend to this question, the book introduced the dominant and official texts, reviews, estimates and doctrines of NMD. These official accounts provided the basis of a discursive reading and included the official threat assessment that is said to give priority to defence over deterrence, the historical background to NMD that showed the continuity of the defence vision in the US mode of security, the NMD structure that highlighted the high level of technological sophistication at stake, and the critically observed effects on arms control and non-proliferation that the system’s deployment is feared to have. All in all, the purpose of this outline of strategic texts was to demonstrate that neither the articulation of imminent threat nor the exclusiveness of a defence strategy over alternative modes of engagement is apparent. In view of this conundrum, and returning to the proposal that NMD is of interest to the US elsewhere, a rereading was suggested by using an approach that focused on the performances of identity in relation to US foreign policy discourses and the disciplining aspects of strategies of security. Recalling that identity needs difference in order to gain meaning, the book juxtaposed the dominant understandings of the palpable threats to US national security and exposed instead the ways in which articulations of difference have permeated US defence thinking. By drawing on Foucault’s concept of systems of knowledge, and regimes of truth therein, the book investigated

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how NMD constitutes a system that is informed by knowledge about existing boundary-producing practices whilst creating effects of ‘truth’ about these practices and justifications for disciplining actions that establish a secure other (here, as military violence). Such an approach involved rethinking an analysis of NMD with two purposes. First, to show how NMD represents a system of statements that are considered as palpable in the already existing framework of US security thinking, and second, to highlight how NMD itself was able to emerge as the most acceptable strategy. A key element in this was the notion of technostrategic discourse to suggest the ways in which the security realm is dominated by, and comes to existence through, the images of technology, expert language and scientists who determine what is seen as an ‘appropriate’ and ‘acceptable’ action thereto. The search for how NMD is made possible was extended to include the ways in which the terms of security, and of the defence project therein, connect to practices of ‘the everyday’ and tap into our political imageries informed by popular culture. I argued that identity permeates all spheres of society, and moving from the trite interstate analysis known from traditional theories, this book explored the interconnections between the ways in which NMD is made meaningful and the performances in fictional film and popular sports. Lastly, and to emphasise the continuity of reproducing identity through difference and the desire to fix the perceptions of self and other in the forging of US foreign and security policy, I provided an insight into the policy of pre-emption as the latest amendment to the defence debate. Drawing on official statements and texts, it became clear that pre-emption has nothing new to offer in terms of the way in which US identity is practiced. The idea of a ‘first-strike’ option is based on a similar process of problematisation as NMD in that it is informed by a certain knowledge about the other that leads to suggest the need for a permanent military preparedness. At the same time, so it was argued, pre-emption reflects the notion of ‘fixing the other’ whereby the uncertainties of danger – the terrorists, rogue states, missiles and weapons of mass destruction – are all reduced to a ‘one-size-fits-all’ security issue that implies that there is an ever-present evil and rogue other ‘out there’. Along the way, the process of rereading NMD exposed a whole set of troubling questions and concerns regarding the notion of the political, the exclusion of meanings and, simply, where exactly one might locate this discursive analysis alongside the still prioritised positivist ‘alternatives’. Some of these concerns need to be highlighted here: As has been stated many times, stripping the NMD debate of its dominant understanding and uncovering its silenced meaning for US identity was not an intention to deny the security-related risk of proliferation and military

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capabilities worldwide, nor simply an attempt to replace one set of arguments with another in order to provide a different explanation altogether. The purpose, then, was to offer a more inclusive picture of NMD and to recognise as integral to it the complexities and political aspects that have been neglected in the security realm at large and NMD in specific. In this sense, national missile defence has provided a forum in which ballistic missile proliferation has come to be discussed technically, pushing both the political aspects of worldwide proliferation and questions about our acceptance of the dominant terms in International Relations (IR) theory to the margins. Furthermore, by accepting the assumptions and articulations of the rogue states approach one reduces the ability to pursue alternative strategies of engagement. Diplomacy has been excluded from the talk of arms control and non-proliferation, since the imagery of rogue missile states as ‘hostile’, ‘evil’ and ‘reckless’ has left no option for the constitution of ‘equal’ diplomatic partners. National missile defence reflects a combination of technology and linguistic performances and, therefore, cannot and must not be reduced to a mere set of empirical data about test flights and budgetary figures. The issue, in short, cannot be the one of whether there is a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ to NMD, in as much as it is not about whether it is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ and ‘real’ or ‘untrue’. Rather than breaking with the traditional approaches, this study extended and reworked them in the context of a critical poststructural analysis. If we are expected today to continue in the empiricist tradition and the policy positivism of discovering and invoking observable and verifiable truths about the world, and encasing them again in a single dominant approach to foreign policy, then this would be disappointing. Another way of putting this is, whereas the old goal of IR theory might have been to test knowledge and to make our environment more predictable and accountable, a different task by contrast must be to look at how the choice and framing of concepts, paradigms, metaphors and imageries enables us to include – and exclude – certain ‘variables’ into categories of meaning. This book, consequently, reintroduced the strategic missile defence debate by relocating its dominant ways of understanding, its analytical confines and its empirical commitments. It thereby suggested the possibility of modifying the established terms of US foreign policy so that more inclusive and critical discussions of US thinking on security and national missile defence can be brought to the foreground. In this sense, the concept of foreign policy must not be viewed as something that gazes at an external world, but rather, as a practice that contributes to its representations in various ways – one of which this book proposed the politics of identity to be – and selects for us various avenues of action

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and policy. As such, one needs to consider how various forms of representation have helped to give a particular meaning to what appears to be in need of being permanently secured. Note 1

For more details and critical comments on the Bush doctrine, see Drumble (2003).

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—— (ed.) (2001) Critical Theory and World Politics, Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner. Yanarella, E. J. (1977) The Missile Defence Controversy: Strategy, Technology and Politics. 1955–1972, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. Young, S. W. (2000) ‘Pushing the limits: The decision on national missile defence’, Coalition to Reduce Nuclear Dangers and Council for a Liveable World Education Fund, Washington D.C. Zalewski, M. and Enloe, C. (1995) ‘Questions about identity in international relations’, in K. Booth and S. Smith (eds), International Relations Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity.

Regularly consulted web-based links to NMD BMDO (now: MDA, but the same web link) The organisation within the US Department of Defense that is responsible for developing and acquiring BMD systems (http://www.acq.osd.mil/bmdo/ bmdolink/html/bmdolink.html).

Brookings Institution The Institution is an independent, non-partisan organisation with a large section on US defence (http://www.brook.edu/).

CDISS The Centre for Defence and International Security Studies is an interdisciplinary research centre based in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Lancaster University in the UK. Includes information on missile threats and missile defence programs (http://www.cdiss.org/hometemp.htm).

Centre for Non-proliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies The Centre provides information and analyses to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction, including missile developments (http://cns.miis.edu/).

Centre for Security Policy A Washington, D.C. based non-profit organisation that has an extensive library of pro-missile defence position papers and publications (http://www.securitypolicy.org).

Claremont Institute A pro-missile defence website (http://www.missilethreat.com).

DoD Arms Control Implementation and Compliance A Department of Defense organisation that is responsible for complying with arms control treaties like the ABM Treaty. The link connects to the text of the ABM Treaty (http://www.acq.osd.mil/acic/treaties/abm/abmtoc.htm).

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Federation of American Scientists An organisation that has historically opposed major military programs including missile defence (http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/nmd.htm).

Heritage Foundation A ‘think tank’ that supports a robust US national missile defence system. Heritage offers position papers advocating a sea-based NMD and arguing that the ABM Treaty is not legally valid (http://www.heritage.org/library/missile_defense.html).

Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis An independent research and strategic planning organisation that specialises in issues of national security, foreign policy, political economics, and governmentindustrial relations (http://www.ifpa.org).

Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology’s Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies A Russian perspective on arms control issues like START and missile defence (http://www.armscontrol.ru/default.htm).

National Institute for Public Policy Has a detailed online section on missile proliferation and a variety of detailed documents available under publications (http://www.nipp.org).

Natural Resource Defence Council (NRDC) Biggest environmental action organisation that provides regularly updated data dealing with nuclear stockpiles, materials, and forces (http://www.nrdc.org/ nuclear/nudb/datainx.asp).

Union of Concerned Scientists An activist organisation opposed to missile defence programs (http://www. ucsusa.org/global_security/missile_defense/index.cfm).

US Congress Access point to US legislation, Congressional committees (especially the House Armed Service Committee) and the individual pages of Senators and Congressmen (http://thomas.loc.gov).

US Department of Defense The DefenseLink site is the official website of the DoD with regularly updated news releases, reports, analyses (http://www.defenselink.mil/).

US State Department Bureau of Arms Control The organisation within the State Department that handles arms control matters like the ABM Treaty and START negotiations (http://www.state.gov/ www/global/arms/bureauac.html).

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Access to presidential and other administration documents on missile defence and arms control in the library section (http://www.whitehouse.gov).

Notes 1

2

A significant number of sources referred to in the References are web-based. In order for those sources to be used credibly, one needs to consider a couple of points. Initially, it is important to mention that the majority of the sources have an offline presence and are considered respected organisations; this includes, most notably, sites such as the US Department of Defense or the Missile Defense Agency, on the one hand, and institutions such as the Arms Control Association or the Brookings Institution on the other. I must point out that the web-pages references here are valid at the time of writing, and whilst the organisation itself is likely to still exist, that particular document/review/report may have been moved. Therefore, those links may not be valid for the future. As regrettable as this is, I have given sufficient information to allow tracing those sources to the organisation that published them. In lieu of this, I have given an overview of regularly consulted web-based organisations in addition to those used in the bibliography. For the purpose of consistency in referencing, the title of BMDO is used throughout the book although the organisation has officially changed its name to MDA. However, the Internet address from which all references have been taken has remained the same despite the change of name.

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Americanism 118 anarchy 4–5, 19–21, 42 Anderson, B. 5 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty 34– 6, 44, 49, 53, 55n.3, 64–5, 67 withdrawal 2, 37, 43, 56n.5, 67, 108 Arendt, H. 16–18 arms control 3, 8, 35, 43, 48–9, 55, 58, 97 missile defence and 60– 8, 108, 141, 143 arms export and sales 63 Ashley, R. 21, 30n.10 axis of evil 2, 7, 84, 127 Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) 8, 47, 51–2, 54, 57n.18, 106 see also Missile Defense Agency (MDA) Bartelson, J. 27– 8, 32n.17 Baudrillard, J. 20, 109n.1, 114, 117, 122 biological weapons 36, 62, 70, 72, 75, 79, 83, 93, 115, 132 Bottom-Up Review (BUR) 8, 41–2, 88, 92 Brilliant Pebbles 18, 67, 123, 125–6, 128 see also Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)

Bush, G. W. administration 1, 2, 35, 37–8, 40, 43–4, 51, 54, 60, 64, 67–8, 75n.10, 87, 92, 95, 100, 114–16, 123, 133–6 Bush doctrine 134, 144n.1 Butler, J. 11n.14, 12n.17, 15, 29n.5 Campbell, D. 7, 11n.8, 12n.17, n.21, 15, 28n.1, 80, 90, 97n.4, n.6, 104 capabilities 4, 8–9, 39, 45, 64–5, 70–1, 77, 80–2, 84–5, 88–9, 91, 93, 97, 101, 107, 117, 129 approach and planning 40, 133–5 missile 52, 55n.1, 72, 79–80, 85, 91, 95, 100, 119, 137–8, 143 Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) 66, 71, 79, 96 chemical weapons 62, 72, 75n.8, 83, 92 China 46, 61, 63, 65–6, 68 –70, 72–3, 82–3, 89, 115 Chomsky, N. 93 Clinton, B. administration 1, 8, 40, 41–3, 48, 51, 53, 56n.8, n.11, 57n.14, 60, 65, 68, 73n.1, 75n.10, 88–9, 133 Cohn, C. 98n.10, 105, 119, 130n.2

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Cold War 1, 29n.9, 34–5, 37–41, 45– 6, 50–1, 55, 86, 94–5, 98n.11, 118, 124, 134, 137 arms race 46, 49, 64, 133, 138 see also missile defence; history Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) 64 Connolly, W. 12n.18, 21 constructivism 11n.12 containment 33, 43, 137 counter-measures 66, 75n.9, n.15, 108 see also decoys critical social theory vii, 5 Cuban Missile Crisis 10n.7, 86, 97n.1, 98n.11, n.12 Dalby, S. 22, 29n.9 decoys 54, 59, 66, 73n.6, 75n.9, 104, 108 see also counter-measures defence active 40, 42, 137 forward-leaning 135 intellectuals 105 spending 1, 38, 48, 133 see also military spending, missile defence Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) 83– 4 Department of Defense vi, 1, 33, 38, 40, 53, 55, 57n.13, 60, 67, 79, 105, 109, 133 see also Pentagon Der Derian, J. viii, 27, 32n.17, 109n.2 Derrida, J. 21, 31n.14 deterrence 9, 16, 33, 34– 44, 49, 56n.10, 67, 77, 95, 133–4, 137, 141 discriminate 93 nuclear 33, 37– 8, 56n.10, 134, 138–9 diplomacy 2, 8, 27– 8, 32n.17, 40, 42–3, 49–50, 67– 8, 125, 143

discourse 8, 12n.17, 13, 22–8, 31n.14, 32n.17, 80 practices of the everyday and 117–20, 124, 130, 131n.5 scientific 78, 105, 111n.11, 105, 108–9, 110n.4, n.10 sports 120–3 technostrategic 101, 103–4, 142 Doty, R. 12n.19, 82, 99n.16 exceptionalism 17, 18 foreign policy approaches and theorisation 6, 22, 77–8 discourse 8–9, 13, 22–3, 77–86, 90–2, 94, 99n.16, 102, 116, 120, 124–5, 130, 131n.5, 138, 141 as identity-producing practice vii, 5–9, 13, 22–3, 28n.1, 81, 97n.6 see also international relations theory national security and 4, 6, 33, 77–8, 113, 138 see also security representation of threat and vi–vii, 2, 6–7, 13, 22, 28n.1, 30n.10, 77–85, 103, 108, 139, 141 see also US foreign policy Foucault, M. vi, 13–15, 25–8, 29n.3, 32n.15, 101–9, 110n.4–6, 141 geneology 26–7, 32n.16, n.17 General Accounting Office (GAO) 60, 78 Global Protection Against Limited Strikes (GPALS) 51 globalisation 21 Gulf War 36, 50–1, 59–60, 72, 87 Gusterson, H. 77–8, 94, 110n.9, 111n.11

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Index Herz, J. 4 High Frontier 113–14 homeland defence 135 see also pre-emption hostile intentions 69, 71, 79, 81, 94, 97, 128, 130n.2, 134, 139 Hussein, S. 43, 50, 89, 92 see also Iraq identity conceptualisation of vii–viii, 3–9, 14–17, 22– 8, 88, 97n.6, 98n.12, n.14, 112, 118, 141–2 difference and 16, 19, 78, 81, 90–1, 96, 103, 117, 130, 141–2 performance of 15, 17–18, 99n.16, 116–28, 138, 141 see also foreign policy security and 19–22, 96–7, 103, 108, 112, 132, 140 see also foreign policy intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) vi, 1, 35– 6, 42, 44, 46, 48, 54, 56n.4, 61, 64, 66, 69, 71–3, 74n.8, 75n.9, 79, 81– 4, 88–9, 96, 100–1, 106, 117, 119, 136–7 see also missile Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty 49, 61, 62 international relations theory vi–vii, 2 foreign policy and 4–7 identity and 3– 6 policy positivism and 77– 8, 143 subjectivity and 8, 11n.8, 16, 22, 30n.11 Iran 2, 42– 4, 52–3, 55, 65, 69–70, 72, 82–3, 87– 8, 97n.4, 106, 115, 117–18 see also rogue states Iraq 2, 10n.6, 36, 42– 4, 50–3, 55, 57n.16, 59– 60, 63–5, 68–70,

173

72, 80, 82–4, 87–9, 92, 97n.4, 98n.8, 103, 115, 117 see also rogue states irrational actors 14, 42–3, 81, 85, 91, 108, 111n.11, 123, 134, 137 see also rogue states Klare, M. 40, 127 Klein, B. 12n.22, 23, 106, 129, 132 knowledge construction of vii, 5, 7–9, 14–16, 30n.11, 77, 80, 88, 90, 94, 101, 105–6, 110n.4, 113–14, 119 systems of 13, 16, 22–8, 29n.3, 31n.14, 105, 109, 141–2 liberalism 4 Linenthal 131n.3, n.7 McCarthyism 118 military spending 41, 65, 83–4 see also defence; spending missile accidental launch of 51, 53, 64, 69, 72 attack 35–6, 43–5, 50–1, 53, 69–70, 84, 86–7, 92, 94, 98n.13, 100, 132–3 interceptor 1, 10n.1, 45, 47–8, 51, 60, 73n.6, 87 long-range 10n.6, 36, 42, 56n.4, 61, 66, 68, 70, 71–2, 74n.8, 78–9, 83, 85, 88, 97n.3, 98n.8, 107 see also intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) proliferation 2–3, 33–4, 61–3, 78, 86, 88, 93–5, 97, 109, 134, 136, 139–40, 143 Scud 36, 50–1, 59–60, 80, 83, 87 states vii, 51, 66, 70–6, 123, 143 technology 8–9, 44, 47, 50, 60–1, 63, 69, 72, 81, 94, 97n.3, 104

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threat vi–vii, 6, 44, 47– 8, 50, 52, 58, 70–1, 73n.3, 78–9, 81, 86– 8, 96, 97n.3, 100, 102, 104, 108, 115–16, 133, 141 missile defence costs vii, 2–3, 9, 47, 58– 60, 64, 67, 73, 78, 122, 140 deployment vi–vii, 1–2, 10n.1, 36, 42, 44–7, 50, 52– 4, 58–61, 64–5, 67, 78–9, 87–8, 95, 107– 8, 115–16, 122, 126, 128–9, 141 feasibility vi–vii, 2–3, 9, 45, 58– 60, 64, 66, 107, 140 history 45–57 interceptor kill vehicles 66, 73n.6, 106 see also missiles reliability 59 testing 2, 35– 6, 45, 50, 53, 59, 60, 67 US Patriot system 51, 57n.16, 59, 87 Missile Defence Agency (MDA) 8, 39, 54–5, 58, 66, 79, 100, 103–5 see also Ballistic Missile Defence Organisation (BMDO) Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) 62, 97 Monroe Doctrine 18–19, 28n.1, 29n.8 Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) 34 narratives vii, 6, 23, 32n.17, 78, 93, 113, 119, 126, 130, 141 see also discourse National Intelligence Council 82 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) 8, 44, 52, 66, 69–71, 95, 106, 109, 115 National Missile Defense Act 42, 53, 133

National Security Council document68 (NSC-68) 19 National Security Strategy (NSS) 92, 95, 135, 137, 139 non-proliferation 3, 9, 58, 64–5, 84, 136, 141, 143 see also arms control North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) 36, 38 North Korea 2, 10n.6, 42–4, 52–3, 55, 61, 63, 65, 68–70, 71–3, 79–81, 83–4, 91, 96, 97n.3, 100–1, 106–7, 117 see also rogue states nuclear deterrence 33–4, 37–8, 67, 134, 138–9 powers 34, 46, 61, 69, 80, 89, 98n.7 US strategy 40, 50, 56n.10, 75n.17, 131n.3 see also Nuclear Posture Review weapons 35, 37, 39, 45–9, 59, 64, 66, 74n.8, 77–8, 82–4, 88, 92, 94, 96, 110n.8, n.9, 115, 124, 133 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) 8, 38–9, 41, 44, 64, 78, 134 Obering, Lt. Gen. T. 58 Orientalism 18, 90–1, 96 otherness 14, 16, 19, 28n.1, 29n.7, 32n.17, 91, 95, 98n.14, 139 see also self/other Outer Space Treaty (OST) 67 Pearl Harbor 138 Pentagon 8, 38–9, 54, 58–9, 92, 100, 107, 114 see also Department of Defense policy positivism 77 popular culture 117–20 baseball/missile analogy 120–3 practices of the everyday and 112–14

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Index shield analogy 114–17 see also discourse post-Cold War 2, 39, 41– 4, 50–2, 83, 87, 95, 127, 136, 139 Postol, T. 66 poststructuralism vii, 12n.16, 15 pre-emption 70, 125, 132, 135–40, 142 proliferation 2–3, 9, 33– 4, 40, 42–3, 45, 60– 8, 77– 8, 81, 85–6, 88, 91–7, 105, 107–9, 134, 136, 139– 40, 142–3 image 89–91, 134, 138 see also non-proliferation Putin, V. 53, 64 Reagan, Ronald 1, 18, 38, 45, 47–9, 61, 65, 122–3, 132–3, 136 Realism 4, 10n.5 regimes of truth 9, 31n.14, 100–11, 141 rhetoric of inevitability 108 rogue states 2, 7– 8, 35, 41– 4, 53, 57n.13, 65, 81, 83–5, 87, 90–5, 116, 127– 8, 134–9, 141–3 doctrine 41–3, 87, 96 see also Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Rumsfeld, D. 40, 52, 54, 135 Commission 74n.7 Report 8, 44, 52, 60, 69–73, 79, 82–3, 85, 106–7, 115 Russia 36– 8, 40, 46, 50, 53, 56n.6, n.8, 61, 63– 6, 69–70, 72–3, 75n.9, 79, 82–3, 92, 96, 98n.7, 110n.9, 115, 118, 122, 134 see also Soviet Union Said, E. 18, 90–1, 96, 98n.14 Saussure, de F. 24–5, 31n.13 science fiction 123– 8

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security conceptualisation of vi–vii, 2–7, 9, 14, 16, 19–22, 33–4, 77–8, 81–2, 85, 91, 94, 96, 102–7, 109, 112–15, 117–19, 122–4, 126, 129–30, 131n.3, 138–9, 141–3 see also US security self/other 5–6, 8–9, 11n.9, 13–16, 18–20, 27, 78, 80, 90–2, 95, 98n.14, 99n.16, 102, 114, 116–19, 121, 123, 125, 127, 129–30, 140–2 US self 8, 11n.7, 16–18, 29n.6, 88, 95, 99n.16, 103, 105, 128, 130, 138–9 Shapiro, M. 28n.1, 91, 120–1, 126–7, 131n.4 shield 33, 35, 37, 40, 44, 48, 64, 88, 112–17, 119–20, 122–4, 128–9, 131n.9, 132–3, 138– 40 see also missile defence sovereignty 20–2, 27–8, 30n.10, 32n.17 Soviet Union 19, 37, 41, 43, 46, 48–9, 55n.2, 62, 67, 74n.8, 89, 94, 115, 118, 134, 138 see also Russia Star Trek 123, 125 Star Wars 113, 123–9 initiative 1, 45, 47–9, 57n.17, 94, 113, 131n.9 see also Strategic Defense Initiative Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) 35, 62 Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) 13, 18–19, 45, 48–9, 55, 71, 114, 118, 123, 125–6, 128, 131n.7, n.9, 132–3 Organisation (SDIO) 48, 50–1 Structuralism 24 superiority 3, 18, 46–7, 135, 64, 90, 135, 139

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systems of knowledge 13, 26, 28, 102 Taepo Dong-1 and -2 71, 79 technology 8–9, 40, 45, 103–9, 110n.3, 124– 6, 128–9, 142–3 terrorism 93– 4, 135, 140 Third World regimes 43, 91, 93–5, 130n.1, 134 threats vii, 4, 6– 8, 13, 31, 33–7, 39– 42, 44, 52– 6, 58, 68–71, 78– 80, 82–5, 89, 91–3, 96, 100– 4, 115, 126, 130n.2, 134–5, 138, 141 see also foreign policy US foreign policy vii–viii, 2, 9, 22–3, 33, 41–2, 56n.11, 80, 86, 96, 99n.16, 100, 123–5, 127–8, 130n.1, 131n.5, 141, 143 post-Cold War 41–3, 95 US military build-up 2, 50, 128 US security viii, 1, 8, 13, 33–4, 37, 41, 45, 55, 56n.11, 86,

98n.11, 101, 113, 121–2, 126, 131n.3, 133, 142 offensive 37, 39, 46, 65, 85–6, 94, 116, 136 strategy 3, 8, 22, 29n.9, 33–4, 77, 81, 113, 119, 132 see also deterrence Virilio, P. 101, 110n.3 vulnerability 34–5, 49, 84–5, 88, 116–17, 132, 136 mutual 34 see also deterrence Waltz, K. 4 war game 100–1, 107, 110n.3 weaponisation 67 of space 8, 128 space-based laser 108, 128–9 weapons of mass destruction (WMD) 35, 41–3, 61–2, 66, 68, 73, 92, 133, 135–7, 142 Weldes, J. 10n.7, 17, 86, 97n.1, 98n.11, n.12, 108, 112, 125–6, 130n.1, 131n.5