http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46870-2003Oct18.html
U.S. Controls Hamper Foreign Role in Missile Defense
Bush-Ordered Review of Restrictions Is Running Late and Into
Disagreements on Exceptions
By Bradley Graham
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, October 19, 2003; Page A27
President Bush's drive to enlist foreign help in building a missile defense
network has begun to attract foreign businesses but is being hampered by tight
U.S. controls on technology sharing, according to American and European
officials.
The controls, designed two decades ago to limit missile proliferation, make no
distinction between offensive and defensive technologies. As a result, U.S.
and foreign firms eager to enter detailed talks complain of being caught in
the same net meant to keep U.S. technical know-how out of the hands of
terrorists or nations hostile to the United States.
Bush ordered an interagency review of the controls, known as the Missile
Technology Control Regime, in a presidential directive last December. But the
review is months behind schedule and fraught with disagreements over how to
carve out exceptions for missile defense technology.
Further slowing foreign involvement has been a dearth of political and
financial commitments from European governments, the officials said. While
earlier outright opposition has waned, most European governments have yet to
formally endorse Bush's ambition of establishing a global
missile defense network or provide funds for related research and development.
So far, only one European country -- Britain -- has entered into a cooperative
agreement with the United States to pursue missile defense. And although NATO
leaders last year ordered a study of options for defending alliance territory
against missile attack, public debate of the issue has been nearly nonexistent
in Europe.
"We can't continue to invest in an uncertain political environment, and
we need a clear financial commitment" from European governments, Phill
Blundell, a senior manager with Britain's BAE Systems, said at a conference in
Italy earlier this month at which frustrations were aired. "We also need
a more streamlined process for gaining access to U.S. technology."
Bush has strategic and political reasons for making foreign participation a
central feature of his missile defense vision.
Geographically, basing rights for radars and interceptors are critical to
plans for improving warning and reaction times. Technologically, foreign firms
offer advances in radar, missile and battle management systems and other
capabilities that could complement the work of U.S.
contactors. Financially, foreign involvement could lift some of the burden off
U.S. taxpayers.
Internationalizing the program would also afford Bush the advantage of
blunting the perception of his initiative as simply furthering U.S. strategic
hegemony.
To enlist European support, senior Pentagon officials devised a strategy two
years ago of targeting foreign industry. By drawing European firms into
cooperative agreements, they hoped, the companies would pressure their
governments to back the U.S.-led program.
Evan Galbraith, a former U.S. ambassador to France, said he outlined this
approach to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld shortly before Rumsfeld
assumed office.
"I told him that business prospects were not very good for the defense
industry in Europe and, in my opinion, companies would be very interested in
participating in the missile defense development,"
Galbraith recalled in an interview. "If we established an opportunity for
them to participate, then we could have them lobby their governments to have
the right to participate. He thought that was a good plan."
So good, in fact, that Rumsfeld appointed Galbraith his special representative
in Europe with instructions to help promote foreign participation. Galbraith
organized a dinner in November 2001 at a Brussels restaurant, attended by
representatives of such European defense giants as BAE, Italy's Finmeccanica,
France's Thales and EADS, a German-French-Italian conglomerate. There,
Galbraith and Air Force Lt. Gen. Ronald T. Kadish, the head of the Pentagon's
Missile Defense Agency, spoke of giving European firms a place at the table in
designing a missile defense system.
Since then, several leading European companies have entered into agreements
with the Boeing Co., the prime U.S. contractor, and other American firms to
explore options. But for deeper technical discussions, the Europeans need U.S.
government approval in the form of technical assistance agreements.
Fifteen of 19 requests for such agreements have been approved in the past two
years, but the approvals have come with provisos limiting what can be
discussed and, company officials say, blocking substantive talks.
"The problem is that the people who administer the process don't seem to
understand we're living in a new world," said a senior executive with a
large U.S. defense company. "They continue to apply the rules in the
strictest manner."
A major impediment to international cooperation was removed last year with the
demise of the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM), which specifically
banned transfers abroad of missile defense systems or their components. But
the Missile Technology Control Regime, established in
the 1980s, remains a stumbling block. It is a voluntary arrangement among 27
countries to restrict exports of longer-range missile systems.
"There's a recognition that we have to improve the way things are done,
but the solution is difficult, to say the least," said John C. Rood, a
deputy assistant secretary of defense.
In a precedent-setting move three years ago to facilitate foreign
participation in the Pentagon's Joint Strike Fighter program, U.S. officials
devised a "global project authorization," a kind of blanket approval
enabling dozens of U.S. firms to work with hundreds of foreign companies on
the basis of a single authorization.
"We've talked about doing something like that for missile defense,"
a senior State Department official said. But doing so would require the Bush
administration first to reach framework agreements with European governments.
Another idea that Galbraith is proposing would involve allowing preferential
treatment for companies in such closely allied countries as Britain. "We
can't be blanket in our denials," Galbraith said.
Behind much of the U.S. reluctance to relaxing export rules is concern that
technology shared with the Europeans will end up leaking to less-friendly
nations because of lax European controls. Congress also is wary of loosening
restrictions on U.S. technology transfers, with some
influential lawmakers even pushing "Buy America" provisions in 2004
defense authorization legislation. And U.S. industry, for all its professed
interest in furthering international cooperation, also wants to ensure the
protection of proprietary technologies.
Under the circumstances, the United States has been left to forge ahead
largely on its own. Plans call for the deployment in Alaska and
California by next September
of as many as 10 antimissile interceptors, and another 10 interceptors in
Alaska by 2005. Crucial to expanding the system -- from its initial focus on
North Korean missiles to launches from the Middle East -- will be upgrades of
early warning radars in Britain and Greenland. Britain has approved the
upgrades, but negotiations are still underway with Denmark, which has
jurisdiction over Greenland.
Pentagon officials have avoided defining what would come after the initial
rudimentary architecture is built, insisting no grand plan exists. Their
intention is to continue experimenting with a range of
technologies -- land- and sea-based interceptors, airborne lasers and
space-based weapons -- and eventually develop a network of layered defenses.
This lack of definition has drawn complaints from European and U.S. firms that
want a clearer blueprint to facilitate planning. But Pentagon officials argue
that vagueness is necessary, given the technological challenge. Besides, they
say, this flexible approach should afford
foreign firms more time and opportunity to find ways of contributing.
"We've only been out of the ABM Treaty for a little over a year,"
Kadish said at the conference in Italy, sponsored by the Aspen Institute of
Berlin. "So we're still in the early stages."
