Sharing Missile Launch Data

John Steinbruner*

When Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin signed an agreement at their September 1998 Summit to share information on the launch of ballistic missiles through a Joint Data Exchange Center (JDEC), the announcement was not received as a major accomplishment. There had been a minimum amount of bureaucratic preparation within the two governments and little negotiation. Essential details were yet to be worked out.

Nonetheless, the agreement was significant. It addressed a serious underlying problem: although neither nation proclaims the other a strategic foe, both Russia and the United States continuously maintain thousands of nuclear weapons in an operational state, poised to initiate a massive attack within minutes. These force configurations are justified as powerful deterrent threats deployed to assure that no such attack ever occurs. But as an unavoidable corollary of that logic, both countries, for their own safety, must be absolutely certain that the forces of the other side are not susceptible to false alarm. The two nations are forced to trust each other on that latter point.

However, their capacity to sustain that trust differs substantially. The United States operates a comprehensive warning system able to provide reliable assurance that any large-scale attack emanating from Russian forces would be quickly detected and then confirmed fifteen minutes before impact. Russia's warning system is incomplete and does not provide either continuous or comprehensive surveillance of attack corridors with even a single method of detection. The United States can assure Russia that it would not falsely perceive an enemy launch and would not therefore retaliate by mistake; Russia cannot offer comparable assurance. That fact is a problem for the United States and creates a strong incentive to strengthen the Russian warning system -- the implicit purpose of the 1998 agreement.

If both sides accept JDEC's operations as a reliable source of reassurance, it truly will be a seminal development with broad implications for global security relationships. If the center breeds suspicion rather than reassurance, however, the consequences could be directly dangerous. In guiding the development of JDEC and assessing its ultimate significance, it is important to consider both the good and the harm it can potentially do.

If the parties to the arrangement were to share all warning sensor data as it is generated, were to apply exactly the same interpretative algorithms at precisely the same time, and were completely confident of the integrity of the system, then the possibility of deliberate deception or inadvertent confusion would be minimized and reassurance would be as robust as possible. However, restrictions on data, interpretative filters, and time delays imposed on the exchange would tend to induce suspicion and increase the risk of perverse effects. The JDEC agreement announced last June does not provide for the comprehensive exchange that would set the highest imaginable standards of reassurance. It is not evident whether the more limited exchange projected will exceed the uncertain threshold necessary to assure that the result does more good than harm.

Strengthening the Agreement

The JDEC agreement could be strengthened by some or all of the following measures:

• enhancing the Russian surveillance system;
• gradually increasing the specificity of information exchanged for the entire surveillance area;
• initiating comprehensive exchanges in limited areas -- perhaps one used by a third nation of mutual concern to the U.S. and Russia -- and then extending those to the full surveillance area;
• introducing additional participants, thereby giving the initial bilateral effort multilateral standing that might eventually become globally inclusive.

At first glance, it seems unlikely that these more extensive arrangements would be attempted anytime soon. There are many other issues with greater immediate resonance preempting political attention in both countries, especially in Russia. Nonetheless the looming collision over the proposed deployment by the United States of a National Missile Defense (NMD) might prove to be a catalyst for expanded collaboration on missile warning.

National Missile Defense

A strong connection between JDEC and NMD is forged by the core fact that defensive technology has almost no serious chance against an unrestrained ballistic missile assault. The very difficult problems of in-flight interception are likely to be solved only if both the numbers and the overall operating characteristics of the attacking warheads are far more limited than the forces possessed by even a modest opponent. The necessary limitations can in principle be achieved by prior agreement, but in that case it is prudent to presume that the defensive deployment would have to be subjected to prior agreement as well.

Alternatively, the necessary limitations might be achieved by preemptive attack. Since current United States forces have a large and increasing advantage in offensive capability, any potential opponent is forced to consider this latter possibility. To the extent that the United States refuses to subject its projected NMD deployment to internationally agreed limitations, it conveys the impression that it is actually pursuing a strategy of preemption. That is a very threatening prospect - most immediately to China, which has only a minimal deterrent force not held in continuous alert status, but over the longer term also to Russia, which cannot maintain a deterrent force commensurate with that of the United States.

As the U.S. pursues its efforts to deploy an NMD system, the consequences for Russia and China will have to be convincingly mitigated. Otherwise their reaction is likely to overwhelm the project. Since an expanded JDEC would offer protection against pre-emptive attack, it could end up playing a significant role in this situation.

*John Steinbruner (University of Maryland) is co-chair of the Committee on International Security Studies at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, where he directs a project that is studying the proposed Joint Data Exchange Center.