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SCIENTISTS COOL TO MISSILE SHIELD
Instant NAS member response to Bush defense ideas cautious, skeptical
MICHAEL HEYLIN
President George W. Bush last week proposed thinking the unthinkable about nuclear weapons: Reduce the U.S. arsenal as rapidly as possible, but don't let the 1972 Antiballistic Missile agreement between the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union stand in the way of developing a missile defense system for the U.S. and its allies. He drew an instant response from some of the nation's top scientists and defense analysts.
As it happened, at the same time that Bush was speaking at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., occurring across town was a long-scheduled National Academy of Sciences symposium on nuclear weapons policy issues facing the new Administration.
Responding to a near real-time telecast of the President's address, symposium attendees generally applauded the President's appeal for new thinking on nuclear arms. But most remained highly skeptical of the need for, feasibility of, and impact of missile defense.
William F. Burns, retired major general of the U.S. Army and former director of the Arms Control & Disarmament Agency, expressed concern that the quest for missile defense may dominate and tend to diminish arms control, which he considers one of the three legs of the nuclear stability stool along with diplomacy and raw military power.
Jan M. Lodal, a former undersecretary of defense for policy, pointed out that dismantling of current nuclear policy is premature, since national missile defense is not a near-term option.
Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center and longtime government science adviser, said the missile defense proposed by Bush is designed to protect against a threat--a few missiles fired by rogue nations--that doesn't now and probably never will exist. Expressing a view widely held among scientists, he added that the nuclear threat can never be negated by technology.
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