North Atlantic Treaty Organization,
July 25, 1995.
Hon. Ted Stevens,
Chairman, Subcommittee on Defense, Committee on Appropriations, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC.
Dear Ted: I am writing to express extreme concern with the Senate Armed Services Committee's decision to terminate the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) program, and to urge you and your colleagues to support the President's budget request of $30.4 million for MEADS in the FY 1996 Defense Appropriations Bill.
While others have spoken to the U.S. military requirement for MEADS/Corps SAM, I would like to offer a broader NATO perspective on the matter. Cancelling MEADS would send a horrible message to the Allies. It would confirm their worst fears regarding the lack of U.S. interest in cooperative armaments projects and would seriously jeopardize on-going efforts to develop a cooperative approach for meeting the challenges posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery systems.
NATO is now closer than ever to formulating an Alliance approach to theater missile defense. At the January 1994 NATO Summit, Ministers recognized the dangers posed by proliferation and directed that work begin on developing a policy framework to reduce the proliferation threat and protect against it. Supporting this effort is NATO's Senior Defense Group on Proliferation, which recently concluded that preventing the proliferation of WMD and their missile delivery systems remains NATO's top counter proliferation priority. Additionally, the June 1994 Alliance Policy Framework on Proliferation and Weapons of Mass Destruction recognizes the growing proliferation risks, especially with regard to states on NATO's periphery, and called on the Alliance to address the military capabilities needed to discourage WMD proliferation and use, and if necessary, to protect NATO territory, populations and forces.
In addition to the political track, NATO Military Authorities have prepared a draft Military Operational Requirement for Theater Missile Defense that calls for the protection of NATO territory, forces and populations against ballistic missiles. And efforts are also underway under the auspices of the Conference of National Armaments Directors (CNAD)--where NATO's materiel development is focused--to define future opportunities and methods of collaboration in the area of TMD.
All of these efforts will lead, in the next couple of years, to the development of an Alliance policy framework on TMD cooperation endorsed by the North Atlantic Council. The termination of MEADS, the first significant TMD collaborative efforts, would be a serious setback for U.S. leadership in this area. The need to respond to the growing proliferation threat, coupled with the high cost of new defensive systems, means that we can't go it alone. We need Allied participation and MEADS is a good place to start because it responds to French, German and Italian requirements to develop a new defensive capable of addressing the threat posed by aircraft, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. And, as it has been noted by U.S. military authorities, it fulfills the requirement for a highly mobile TMD/cruise missile defense system capable of protecting Army and Marine Corps maneuver forces.
The implications of canceling MEADS go well beyond NATO TMD cooperation. As the centerpiece of the U.S. `renaissance' in trans-Atlantic cooperation. MEADS is an experiment that is being closely watched on both sides of the Atlantic. Failure of the U.S. to follow through will stifle prospects for future cooperation--such as with JSTARS--and play into the hand of those advocating a strong European defense industry at the expense of trans-Atlantic cooperation. U.S. industry will then find it increasingly difficult to solicit European cooperation across a broad spectrum of projects. It may well spell the difference between trans-Atlantic cooperation and competition.
In closing, I would again urge you and your colleagues to consider the broader geopolitical implications of this cooperative program and support the President's budget request. MEADS will pay dividends in the future both in terms of its contribution to trans-Atlantic armaments collaboration and as a military capability in support of out-of-area operations--a central tenet of the Alliance's new Strategic Concept.
Yours sincerely,
Robin Beard,
Assistant Secretary General, NATO.
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