Lost In Space
It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that missile defense systems are far from the minds of voters during these lazy days of summer.
It's been almost six weeks since George W. Bush and Al Gore have spoken about their prospective defense plans. But last weekend's failure of the Pentagon's anti-missile test suggests President Clinton's successor may face some important decisions about foreign policy and national defense. On Saturday, the missile defense project suffered its second failed intercept in three tries when the warhead-busting "kill vehicle" failed to separate from its booster rocket and passed harmlessly by the target missile.
"The failure gives Clinton a perfectly legitimate out," said Larry Sabato, a political scientist at the University of Virginia. The tests, he said, "suggest the country would be better off leaving the decision to the next president."
Clinton administration officials said they expect the president will make a decision later this summer on whether to go ahead with the next phase of the missile defense plan. National Security Adviser Sandy Berger said the latest failure does not necessarily mean the president will scrap it. "Obviously, this does go to the question of technical feasibility or how far along the system is, but we need an assessment," Berger told CBS News' Face the Nation.
But Mr. Clinton may take more than the counsel of his security advisers into consideration when making that assessment. Political goals are also at stake. The administration wants to protect Vice President Al Gore from Republican charges that the Democrats have weakened the nation's defense.
"I think he's (Clinton) going to follow what the Secretary of Defense says and let William Cohen, a Republican, call the shots on this," said Stephen J. Wayne, an presidential expert at Georgetown University. Such a move would "immunize him" and allow Gore - the Democratic presidential candidate - to defend his go-slow approach, said Wayne.
The vice president favors the Clinton plan to pursue a limited defensive system that would protect only the 50 U.S. states. Bush, the Texas governor and GOP presidential candidate, supports a broader, more ambitious system designed to protect American soil as well as its allies, a program along the lines of President Ronald Reagan's "Star Wars" concept in the 1980's.
Bush has also proposed cutting the nuclear arsenal to its "lowest possible number consistent with our national security" and he opposes a worldwide ban on nuclear weapons testing on the grounds that it compromises national security. Gore has called Bush's combination of proposals a "formula for a reignited arms race."
The next president also faces the tricky question of whether to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, which explicitly bans national missile defense systems. The Clinton administration has tried t convince Russia to agree to amend the treaty to allow a missile defense, a proposal that Gore supports. So far, the Russians have refused. China also strongly opposes the U.S. missile defense plan.
Experts say the subject of missile defense systems could surface in the fall presidential debates, because it highlights one of the few distinct differences between the two candidates. But they do not see the issue having much of an impact on the race unless a new security threat surfaces before November.
"Voters have to really care and they don't," said Sabato. "Since the end of the Cold War Â… these issues have been on the back burner."